In 1988 former Presidential candidate Pat Robertson got extremely upset when a reporter referred to him as a “former television evangelist.” In Robertson’s camp this was considered slander. I can understand that - given the recent publicity some evangelists have gotten.One of the things which I find so puzzling is that, even after a television evangelist has been discredited, disgraced, defrocked, fired from his denomination, told not to preach, and cancelled by many of the religious TV networks, he still pulls in more money in one week than most of our churches receive in a year! How can you explain it? Perhaps only with the words of that arch-cynic H.L. Mencken who once said that “Nobody ever went broke overestimating the bad taste of the American public!” That may be too cynical...but
I. WE HAVE TO ADMIT THAT THE GRAND OLD TERM “EVANGELIST” HAS FALLEN ON EVIL DAYS. A writer said recently in Quote magazine, “Parents used to worry if they caught their children playing doctor. Now they worry if they’re playing evangelist.” In the early days of our century, Sinclair Lewis wrote his fiery indictment of a traveling evangelist named “Elmer Gantry.” Many of the mainline churches got upset with Lewis’ depiction of an all-too-human evangelist who fought (and lost) many battles with the weaknesses of the flesh. Fortunately, most folks are bright enough not to associate such goings-on with their local church and its pastor or pastors, and I am grateful for that. But I am sure that the revelations of the various “Jimmys” has taken its toll. For many years, clergy ranked first as the institution in which we lace our confidence as a people, but those days are on the way out. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 57 percent of respondents had “a great deal” of confidence in their churches...down from 66 percent in 1985.
Jesus sent His disciples out two by two. That was the first evangelistic mission. But they didn’t travel in Lear jets or wear Rolex watches. They didn’t beam their message from satellites. Here is how Jesus told them to travel: “He commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts...” (Mark 6:8) They were allowed to wear sandals, but to take only one coat. That is how they travelled. Not many present-day evangelists have followed their example. When queried about their extravagant lifestyles, present-day evangelists will sometimes tell you: “God goes first class!” Now, that is doubtful...when we think of the Christmas story and the familiar words: “no room at the inn;” but even if it were true, there is no promise in Scripture that God’s servants must go first class. I remember a story told about Albert Schweitzer who was visiting a certain city, and dignitaries were awaiting him at the train station. But he was not to be found among the first-class passengers. Then they waited while the second-class passengers disembarked. Still no Schweitzer. Finally, they saw him coming out of the third-class compartment, carrying his own suitcase. “Why on earth do you travel third-class?” they asked him. “Because there is no fourth-class!” he replied. The word “evangelist” has fallen on evil days. Which is a pity, because
II. THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS THAT JESUS CALLED HIS DISCIPLES TO BE APOSTLES AND EVANGELISTS. The word “apostle” means “One sent with a message.” The word “evangelist” means one who proclaims Good News. Evangel means, literally, “good news.”
“He sent them forth two by two...” Why two? According to Jewish law, two witnesses were needed to pronounce a truth. They didn’t have much, but look what they did with it: “They went out, and preached that people should repent. And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them.” (Mark 6:13) Wow! We could certainly use a few more folk like that today! There are all sorts of demons and sicknesses all around us that cry out for cure.
“HE SENT THEM FORTH TWO BY TWO” Some of us can remember when we Methodists took that literally. During the early 1950’s we developed a plan for reaching new members called “Visitation Evangelism.” The folks down in Nashville came up with a handy-dandy flip chart which gave detailed instructions about how to go about visiting in people’s homes, and winning them for Christ and the church. I’m not knocking it...it produced many fine results. But I have learned that what works in one generation may not necessarily work in another. (And, during my 16 years in Ann Arbor, I have learned that what works someplace else may not necessarily work here.) “Visitation Evangelism” began to decline in the early sixties. For one thing, when you visited people’s homes, chances are they wouldn’t be there. And if they were, they were usually sitting around with their eyes glued to television, and, (in those pre-VCR days), usually resented their favorite programs being interrupted. As I recall, the flip-charts had an answer for that problem: the visitors were to lower their voices until the visitees could not hear them. Then they would (it said) get up and lower the television volume. I never tried it. I always wondered: “What if they didn”t?” Anyway, after the fifties, “visitation evangelism” - meeting people “on their own turf,” as it were, began to fade into disuse. Pastors still make visits upon people - but usually only after a telephone call ascertaining whether or not they will be at home.
During the 1960’s and early 70’s the watchword for evangelism was: “Meet ‘em on a neutral turf.” All across the land, churches developed “Coffee House” ministries...places where folks could come and sit and drink coffee, eat doughnuts, and listen to folk music (usually). And there would be amongst the coffee-drinkers a sprinkling of clergy and laity who were unafraid to talk about their faith with others. The best example was one started by the Rev. Dr. Sir Alan Walker in Sydney, Australia. It wasn’t a bad strategy. And it, too, worked for awhile. Everything works...for awhile. But, as the hymn and poem by James Russell Lowell says: “New occasions teach new duties.” And there aren’t that many church-oriented coffee houses left around. I can’t even think of one.
In the 70’s and 80’s the strategy for winning new disciples has changed once again. The trick now is to get them into the church - “our turf” - by offering people that which meets their needs. And then inviting them to come. By now most of us are familiar with the statistics which tell us that most people who come to join a church do so because a friend or relative brought them. I have an idea that the best evangelism is that which is done by people when they don’t know that they are doing it. The best advertisement for this, or any other church, is the hundreds of faithful laypersons -men, women, and children, whose daily lives show forth some of the radiance of the Gospel. Jesus called us the “salt of the earth.” The proverbial child in Sunday School was asked if she knew what that meant. She replied: “All I know is that salt makes me thirsty.” Just so; we are supposed to be persons whose lives have been touched by Christ in such a way that people, seeing us, will be thirsty to know our Saviour. Martin Luther suggested that we, as Christians, are called to “be Christ to our neighbors.” As the poem puts it, “You (may be) the only Bible the careless world will read...”
One of my “heroes” is the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. His words have brought me a good deal of inspiration and help over the years. Rabbi Heschel was one of the most influential religious thinkers of our time. In one of his writings, he said these startling words: “If there are no witnesses there is no God to be met.... For God to be present we have to be witnesses... There are no proofs for the existence of God; there are only witnesses.”
“THERE ARE NO PROOFS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, THERE ARE ONLY WITNESSES.” This is not to suggest that God’s existence depends solely on our witnessing. The point here is that God’s reality for us, God’s relevance in our lives, God’s reality in the world, is dependent upon out witnessing to Him. The ancient Jews did not speculate on the existence of God. Nor do present-day Jews. That is why they tend to turn out philosophers rather than theologians..for who can “speak of God?” For them, God is not found at the end of an argument, but in the midst of life. God was not known to them in metaphysical thinking, but in creative encounter. In the awareness of God’s impinging on their minds and hearts and working in and through the community of faith. The people of the Bible did not try to fathom the mystery of God, or to describe God. That task was left for the Christian theologians...some of whom tell us a lot more about God than they really know!
One of the things that has always attracted me to Judaism is its reticence to speak of God. It seems to me that we Christians are all too glib in our speaking of God. In his famous “Letters from Prison,” Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that he was put off by people who were always talking about God. He was helped much more by persons who, while they didn’t say much about God, acted like godly people. Actions do speak louder than words...and especially so, when it comes to religious faith.
This is not to say that words are unimportant. Heavens, no! I have given the better part of my life to the using of words to communicate the Gospel. And after all, when God wanted to communicate with the world in the most dramatic way, God sent a Word. But that word became flesh. And unless our words become flesh and dwell in the midst of our world, all of the nice things we say and do in the sanctuary are really for naught. Words are important, and our words will always outdistance our deeds - for who can live up to the high and holy calling which is ours as Christians? When Malcolm Boyd wrote his best-seller, “Are You Running With Me, Jesus?” in the sixties, my first reaction was, “Heavens, no! He’s way out ahead of us...and we are all always playing ‘catch up’ with Christ.” Our words are always fallible, faltering, and frail, but they are still instruments which God can use. The real anomaly is that we may sing “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise..” and then refuse to use the one tongue we have to “sing lustily,” as Wesley commanded us, or use our tongues to invite others to experience the joys of the Christian Faith. “There are no proofs for the existence of God; there are only witnesses.”
III. LIKE IT OR NOT, WE ARE ALL CALLED TO BE “EVANGELISTS” MESSENGERS OF THE “GOOD NEWS.” It is clear from the New Testament that evangelism is the first business of the church. According to Mark’s Gospel, Jesus first called the disciples to be with Him. Then he sent them out, two by two, to spread the Good News of the Kingdom of God. The word “evangel” and “evangelist” comes from a couple Greek words meaning “Good News.” We must, therefore, rescue it from those who have given the good news a bad name.
You and I, like Pat Robertson, may be embarrassed to be called evangelists, but that is what we are...or are supposed to be. Our calling as we leave this place this morning is to go out and lead the world to repentance, to cast out demons, and to heal the sick. And, believe me, there are a lot of demons and lot of sicknesses out there. There is war, racism, poverty, chemical dependency, greed, and a host of other social and personal ills. And we are called to heal them. That’s a pretty big order, isn’t it? But it’s our calling, if we are Christians. I had a minister friend who died a few years back who always put on the front of his church bulletin: “The Ministry” - then he named the church staff...and after the ordained-types names added: “and 1200 church members.” He was right! Our General Conference last April mandated that the word “minister” not be restricted to the ordained, but applies to all Christians. The late Reuel Howe said that, “All Christians, by virtue of their baptism, are called to be ministers.” “Minister” means “one who serves.” One way of serving is by witnessing. There are different ways of doing it, but it must be done.
Did you know that our English word “martyr” comes from a Greek word which simply means “to witness.” The word became associated with death because that was the end result of one’s witnessing during the first centuries of the Christian Era. It was worth one’s life to proclaim one’s faith. Now, martyrdom per se will probably not be required of any of us. But it could be. Originally, the word “martyr” meant simply one who witnessed to one’s faith.
It later came to mean one who dies for that faith. The best form of witness is always martyrdom. It has been required, and may be required again. Editor J. Richard Peck of the International Christian Digest, (a magazine which I have come to admire for its breadth of scope and provocative articles), writes in July/August 1988 issue: “I never give much thought to martyrs. On the rare occasion that I do, I think about lions, gladiators, and Charlton Heston.”
But the opportunity to relive some chapters in the lives of Dorothy Kazel and Jean Donovan, and the cover photo of the slain Archbishop Romero shakes me from my two-car garage attitude that Christian suffering and death are confined to the first century. (p.3) To refresh your memory: Dorothy Kazel and Jean Donovan were two of the four missionaries slain by “death squads” in El Salvador on December 2, 1980. The transition from “witness” to “martyr” is more than linguistic. It is life. Do you know that the first-century Christians were called atheists, immoral, and cannibals, by their enemies??
They were called “atheists” because they refused to accept the popular gods of the day; “immoral,” because they amazed the world by the way in which they loved one another; and “cannibals” because they regularly partook of the Body and Blood of Christ. Even at great risk! And it is still going on. In the June 6 issue of the Michigan Christian Advocate, the Rev.Clem Parr of our Aldersgate Church in Redford, tells of his recent experiences in Mozambique.
He describes the services which were held in that war-torn country. “People often walked many miles to be with us. They repeatedly risked their lives to walk through war zones to...worship. It struck us with forceful impact to see people walk so far, ride trucks in the hot sun, to come to church when so many American Christians miss because of ‘weather’ or whatever excuse...” (p. 2) “Weather” is always a good excuse: good or bad, it can be used. If it is too bad, we stay at home. If it is too good, we stay at home. In the second century, when Christians were only a small, persecuted minority, one of their most outspoken opponents was a man named Celsus. He said, with a mixture of scorn and admiration, that the gospel was being carried forth by “wool workers, cobblers, laundry-workers, and the most illiterate and bucolic yokels,” instead of bishops and theologians. Reading that, I think of the highly educated and talented people who make up our congregation, and I wonder what God might do with us - if only we had the sense of mission and excitement of those second century “wool-workers, cobblers, laundry-workers, and ...illiterate bucolic yokels.” It was said of the early Christians that they won the world because they “out-thought, out-lived, and out-died, their enemies.” That is how they won their world for Christ. How are we going about winning ours? How are we going about getting the Gospel out? We have heard it this morning, through sermon, song, and Scripture. But how will it get out of here, and into the world? Will it walk out the door on our feet today?
A prison chaplain went to talk with a man sentenced to die in the electric chair. He urged him to believe in Jesus Christ and be baptized; that forgiveness and eternity with God awaited him if only he would turn towards God. The prisoner said, “Do you really believe that?” “Of course I do,” replied the chaplain. “Go on,” scoffed the prisoner. “If I believed that I would crawl an hands and knees over broken glass to tell others, but I don’t see you Christians making any big thing of it!” He had a point. How do we get the Gospel out?...by taking it with us when we go!