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From the Checkout Lane to the Sidewalk Gospel Presentation: Evangelism as a Way of Congregational Life and how a whole congregation can recover the ordinary, joyful habit of speaking of Jesus<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2767 \u2726 \u2767<\/span><\/p>\n Sometime in the early 1650s, a tinker named John Bunyan went to the town of Bedford on business. In one of its streets he came upon \u201cthree or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun,\u201d talking about the things of God. They were not preaching. No one had trained them, scheduled them, or assigned them a territory. They were simply talking, Bunyan recalled, \u201cas if joy did make them speak,\u201d about the new birth, the treachery of their own hearts, and the love of God in the Lord Jesus. Bunyan, by his own admission, a \u201cbrisk talker\u201d about religion, walked away shaken. Their conversation followed him back to work. In time God used it to bring him to Christ, and the man who overheard them went on to write The Pilgrim\u2019s Progress<\/i>.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Mark Dever retells the story in The Gospel and Personal Evangelism<\/i> to make a point the modern church has nearly forgotten. God did not convert Bunyan through sermons alone; as Dever puts it, \u201che used normal Christians.\u201d<\/p>\n Three and a half centuries later, David Platt describes a strikingly similar scene in his foreword to Mack Stiles\u2019s Evangelism: How the Whole Church Speaks of Jesus<\/i>. After preaching at a church in the Middle East, Platt was introduced to Abdul, a former Muslim who had come to faith by reading the Gospel of Mark with Stiles. Then came Rajesh, a former Hindu. Then came Matthew, a nominal Christian, who had been led to Christ not by Stiles but by Abdul and Rajesh. Matthew then introduced Stephen, a friend still exploring Christianity, whom he had brought to church that morning. Platt calls what he saw a culture of evangelism \u201cnot ultimately dependent on events, projects, programs, and ministry professionals.\u201d<\/p>\n The washerwomen of Bedford and the friends in Dubai have something in common, and it is the subject of this essay. In both cases, the gospel moved, not because a church launched a campaign, but because ordinary believers could not stop talking about Jesus with the people already around them.<\/strong><\/span> That is the New Testament pattern. In much of the Western church today, it is the exception rather than the rule. Drawing primarily on three works (Stiles\u2019s Evangelism<\/i>, Dever\u2019s The Gospel and Personal Evangelism<\/i>, and Rebecca Manley Pippert\u2019s classic Out of the Saltshaker and Into the World<\/i>), together with recent reports from practitioners, this essay presses one admonition on the church: evangelism must stop being a program a few members join and become the culture an entire congregation breathes.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u2767 \u2726 \u2767<\/span><\/p>\n Pippert first published Out of the Saltshaker<\/i> in 1979. In the twentieth-anniversary edition, she wrote that her central conviction had not changed: much of our evangelism is ineffective because it depends too heavily on technique and strategy.<\/p>\n \u201cEvangelism has slipped into the sales department.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2014 Rebecca Manley Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker and Into the World, Introduction<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The metaphor is exact. A sales culture measures closings, rewards a few high performers, and treats everyone else as support staff, and churches have adopted all three habits. Stiles opens his book with a memory from the 1970s. He and his roommate John, whom Stiles had led to Christ only weeks earlier, walked forward during the invitation at a large Memphis church. The aisle filled with ushers who appeared to be responding. The pastor asked Stiles whether he wanted to \u201crededicate\u201d his life, then turned to a television camera in the balcony and announced that the two young men had just given their lives to Jesus. Neither had. What the pastor missed, Stiles writes, was the best evangelism in the building: an eighteen-year-old who could hardly find the book of Mark had just led his friend to Christ simply by explaining what he knew of the gospel.<\/p>\n Stiles is careful not to sneer. God is sovereign, and many have come to faith through methods their pastors would now reject. But he draws a firm line:<\/p>\n \u201cThe Bible never uses results to guide or justify evangelistic practice.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n \u2014 J. Mack Stiles, Evangelism: How the Whole Church Speaks of Jesus, p. 24<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Little has changed, he warns, except the packaging. Soaring choirs have given way to laser light shows, and the high-pressure sales pitch has given way to the soft sell of self-help. \u201cJesus was engaging,\u201d Stiles observes, \u201cbut he never entertained.\u201d<\/p>\nIntroduction: Three or Four Poor Women at a Door in the Sun<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
I. The Diagnosis: How Evangelism Became a Department<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n
Slipped Into the Sales Department<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
The Professionals and the Spectators<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n