I want to be a clone

P

ersonal evangelism seems to be a dying activity among conservative evangelicals. I have seen fewer and fewer attempts at personal evangelism and know of only a couple of churches that still teach their people to carry the gospel to their neighbors. Why is this? I have been wondering about this for a few years now.

This morning I was reading The Soul Winner by C.H. Spurgeon and I came across the following passage, which I think speaks directly to this issue of why personal evangelism has fallen out of our repertoire of church activities:

I hope we all sympathize in the bighearted spirit of Dr. Chalmers, who, when it was said that such–and–such an effort would not be beneficial to the special interests of the Free Church of Scotland, although it might promote the general religion of the land, said, “What is the Free Church compared with the Christian good of the people of Scotland?” Indeed, what are all the churches put together, as mere organizations, if they stand in conflict with the moral and spiritual advantage of the nation or if they impede the kingdom of Christ?

It is because God blesses men through the churches that we desire to see them prosper, and not merely for the sake of the churches themselves. There is such a thing as selfishness in our eagerness for the aggrandizement of our own party. From this evil spirit may grace deliver us! The increase of the kingdom is more to be desired than the growth of a clan. We would do a great deal to make a infantile Baptist brother into a mature Baptist simply because we value our Lord’s ordinances.

We would labor earnestly to raise a believer in salvation by free will into a believer in salvation by grace, for we long to see all religious teaching built upon the solid rock of truth and not upon the sand of imagination. At the same time, our grand object is not the revision of opinions, but the regeneration of natures. We should bring men to Christ, not to our own peculiar views of Christianity.

When I was a child, my father’s church taught evangelistic outreach. They used the Evangelism Explosion method of teaching personal evangelism and it worked quite well. It got many church members involved in personal evangelism and God was pleased to draw many individuals to himself through this outreach. Some of those folks ended up attending our church (Evangel Baptist Church of Woodbridge, Virginia). Others found Christian fellowship in other churches in the area. This was not of particular concern to the evangelistic efforts being made. The point was always to share the gospel with those in the community and to call them to repentance and to faith in Christ. The evangelistic outreach was never intended to grow the size of Evangel Baptist Church.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Our first care must be that the sheep are gathered to the great Shepherd. There will be time enough afterward to secure them for our various folds. To make proselytes is a suitable labor for Pharisees. To lead men to God is the honorable aim of all laborers of Christ.

But I noticed a shift in the intention of personal evangelism training in later years in churches I attended after becoming an adult and starting a family. The intent seemed, more often than not, to be focused on bringing more members into the specific local church in order to increase the size of the church. No longer was the focus placed on seeking individuals to worship God in spirit and in truth.

I wonder if this shift in focus is contributing to personal evangelism’s apparent dying out. Our God is a jealous God; he will not share his glory with another—not even with a local church. Our personal evangelism should be By His grace and for His glory.