Ed Stetzer: Stand and Share—Part 2

By Paul J. Pastor • December 8, 2016

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“It’s unfashionable to speak about eternal destiny, but it’s unfathomable to believe it and not tell people about Jesus.”

In Part 1 of the interview, Ed Stetzer discusses the big picture of American evangelism today, why Christians have drifted away from evangelism and how the church can move forward.

In today’s culture, what skills do pastors need to cultivate in their congregation to get that “faithful and fruitful” outcome?

Part of it is that pastors need to be on the journey with their congregants. What does it look like to play the game of evangelism in a culture where Christians have lost home-field advantage? A lot of our evangelism is predicated to the idea that people are close or open to Christian faith, and just need that last bit of evidence or persuasion to push them over the edge. We act as if we’re in a mostly religious culture.
That’s true in some places, but for the most part, we’ve lost the home-field advantage. Today, most people are far away from any real understanding of the gospel. It’s not just an issue of persuasion, but often one of education. That shift means that we have to stop thinking that we are people who have “arrived,” inviting people to join us where we are, and start to think like people who have been sent, joining them where they are to ultimately share the gospel. That’s the journey of being on mission. Pastors need to lead that.
This is where the missional focus becomes helpful—it helps us engage culture in missionary ways, not simply as people who are similar to us but just need a little encouragement to believe. That’s one of the shifts. Also, there’s a very common frustration with the way we used to do evangelism. Nobody would deny that there’s been a decline in crusade and large-meeting evangelism. Whether you like that or not; that’s just math. If Finney and Graham were bookends of the mass-evangelism movement heyday, then what replaces the crusades?
Christianity Today wrote an article not long ago arguing that it’s church planting that has replaced it. That’s certainly part of it. I would point to the Billy Graham organization today as well—there’s a shift from the crusade evangelism that really defined an era to an in-home gathering strategy. It’s a space where unchurched or irreligious people can join Christians to ask hard questions without being shunted to the side. That is another picture of new emerging approaches to evangelism.

Right now, do different regions or subcultures in America contain different challenges to evangelism?

You bet. I grew up outside of New York City, planted churches in the inner city of Buffalo, New York, among the urban poor; in suburban Pennsylvania, among lapsed Catholics; have lived in Tennessee, and so on. There are huge differences depending on your context.
The how of evangelism is in many ways shaped by the who, when and where of culture. That’s key. If people have a near-religious memory, it’s a different conversation. Wheaton, Illinois, is very different from downtown Chicago, where I’m the interim pastor at Moody Church right now. Those miles make a big difference.
You want to ask the question of where and when you are on the cultural scale. Paul does this—at Pisidia and Antioch, he takes the Jews he’s preaching to on a journey of Jewish history. At Lystra, he’s with pagans, and takes them to the harvest and to the sea. He tries to get to the gospel, and they riot. At Athens, he notes that they are very religious, and quotes their own poets to them, sharing Jesus by beginning with their religion. Just from those examples, we have three very different examples to contexts and approaches by the same evangelist. In each context, Paul walks across a bridge of culture to communicate the gospel that saves in every culture.

Walk us through how you would help a local pastor ask the right questions about evangelism in his or her own culture.

This is the cultural exegesis question. How do we examine and notice our culture in a way that’s appropriate?
Honestly, the first step is a heart issue. A lot of pastors, rather than reach the people to whom the Lord has sent them, would rather be in love with somebody else’s community or culture. I call this “demographic lust.” [Laughs.] It’s community envy. They want to reach the cool people, in Southern California or Manhattan or wherever. But if that’s you, you need to “love the one you’re with.”
Once the heart piece is in place, the key is to simply listen to people’s stories. We need to take the time to hear what brought people to the place they’re in now. What is their trajectory? What is their spiritual journey? That teaches us about our culture in the most connected way to your congregation.
For me, in formerly Catholic or nominally Catholic areas, it has been a very different starting point than in, say, Tennessee, where the culture is nominally Baptist.
I don’t think that you can love or reach a community if you don’t know it. Evangelism involves telling people about Jesus. Mission involves understanding them before you tell them. Missional thinking, when it precedes evangelism, helps us to more effectively share the gospel.

What would evangelistic success look like in our generation?

Ultimately, I don’t think it looks like one thing, but multiple things. I think it looks like God’s people acknowledging that Jesus has sent them to a broken and lost world, and that the same Jesus who came serving the hurting and marginalized, like he preached in Luke 4:18-20, also came to seek and save the lost, like he said in Luke 19:10.
In this day, it feels like we need to stand up and rally people to both—serving the hurting and saving the lost. But look at the landscape today in evangelicalism. I could show you a hundred conferences on justice, multiethnicity and church planting. And I am so glad that they are here. But how many can we find that are calling people to proclaim the gospel for evangelism as well?
Success is that we would learn to walk and chew gum at the same time. To rightfully care about social and societal concerns, and recognize, you can’t speak of true justice without telling people about Jesus, and hopefully you can’t really follow Jesus without caring about true justice. These things must be deeply connected with one another.

Do you have any advice for pastors who feel that they have tried pushing an emphasis on evangelism in their community only for it to fall flat?

Isn’t evangelism predominately a failing enterprise? Most people with whom I have shared the gospel have not trusted and followed Jesus. The question is if that ought to lead me to not do it anymore. Of course the answer is no. It is the most important thing in the world that Jesus died on the cross for us and in our place.
Stop cycling through these patterns of “we tried this and it didn’t work.” Instead, just continue to ask the question, over and over again: How can I, personally and congregationally, share the gospel today?
Pastors need to personally engage in this. You can’t lead what you don’t live. It really matters that we consistently become those who share the gospel ourselves. It really matters. But I think that at the end of the day, it’s helpful at times to walk through a particular emphasis in our churches on sharing the faith. It can be helpful for Christians and churches to have new opportunities to rally together on a given issue. Have this ongoing ethos of sharing the gospel in your church, but then also find connection points that can bring special attention to it—whether or not you think it will be popular.

What segment of the church is doing evangelism really well?

Well, the Pentecostal/charismatic movement is growing a lot through evangelism. As well, some older and more traditional congregations using older evangelism methods are still seeing some success.
One other thing that’s funny—it’s all the rage today to follow the example of the Two-Thirds World overseas. But what the Western church doesn’t want to learn from them is a passionate commitment to evangelism. It characterizes almost everything that they do in growing churches. One of the things that we need to learn from the rest of the world is that sharing the good news of the gospel could and should be a natural part of life.

Do you think there’s hope for wholesale cultural revival in our current situation?

Historically, no one thinks there’s hope for revival—until it’s here. If you had asked that question five years before the Great Awakenings, people would have said “no.” I’m always hopeful—I’ve read the end of the book. Jesus wins. But I don’t know his pathway between now and then.
Yes, I do think there’s hope for revival. But the marginalization of the church—which is beginning, but will grow, will ultimately bring greater sense of clarity to who is and who is not a committed Christian. This is one of the reasons that Pentecostals do so well in evangelism. If you’re a Pentecostal, and already are doing and believing things outside of the mainstream, how much different is it just tell people that they need Jesus?
The more distinct you are from culture—not [withdrawn] like the Amish, but recognizably different in some way—the more comfortable people tend to be to simply share the gospel because they’re already distinct from culture. They must take opportunities to share the good news.

What other signs of hope might we be missing in our culture? What’s special about our time for sharing the message of Jesus?

I think there’s an increasing sense of openness to the gospel, believe it or not. Lots of Christians think non-Christians are going to be closed off or hostile if they talk about Jesus, but our research shows that people are overwhelmingly open to having a conversation with someone who sincerely believes.
In fact, in our study, the younger unchurched were more open than the older unchurched. So I think that now people are open, and becoming more so, to spiritual conversation and more. As people are open to exploring other spiritual ideas, Christianity is new for many of them, especially for the younger generation. The end result could be that people will consider again, afresh and anew, the truth claims of the gospel, perhaps in a way they never have before.
They’re open.
A lot of people aren’t anti-organized religion. Many are actually very intrigued. Ultimately, in a world that is open—and I can demonstrate statistically that our world is open—we have a lot of Christians whose mouths are still closed. That’s a shame.

What’s the biggest threat to evangelism today?

That’s hard. But ultimately, the biggest danger lies with us. It’s the possibility that Christians will choose cultural acceptability over gospel fidelity. I think the desire to fit in—which, by the way, is a 2,000-year-old issue, why otherwise would Paul write “I’m not ashamed of the gospel”—is the greatest threat.
Ultimately, evangelism is God’s sovereign work. It’s how the Lord works in people’s hearts and lives. But the Lord prays for workers to go into the harvest.
In our day, the danger is that the workers choose acceptability over fidelity.

What, in your experience, snaps people back to fidelity?

When we really understand what Jesus has done for us. We return to the gospel ourselves. When that deeply dwells in our hearts, when we fully and richly believe in the gospel, we want others to have the gospel as well. That’s the key.
Evangelism is not ultimately a mouth issue, but a heart issue. Jesus looked over Jerusalem and wept, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. We need the heart of the Good Shepherd for anyone who is not in his fold. He sought and saved us. Now he calls us to join him.
The nature of eternity should turn up our passion for evangelism. It’s unfashionable to speak about eternal destiny, but it’s unfathomable to believe it and not tell people about Jesus.
I’m committed to spending the rest of my ministry pushing us to stand up and share the love of Jesus, because ultimately we’re on his mission. He came serving the hurting and saving the lost. That should be our message as well.
Paul J. Pastor, an Outreach magazine contributing writer, is author of The Face of the Deep: Exploring the Mysterious Person of the Holy Spirit (David C Cook, 2016).