Go!

Here is my sermon from Sunday, part four of our eight-part series on the challenge of being a disciple of Christ. The text was Matthew 28:16-20

We continue in our series of the challenges of being a disciple of Christ, by today looking at the issue of evangelism. But before I begin I’d like to take a little straw poll. By a show of hands, who here has ever recommended a book, restaurant or a movie to another person? If there are any marketing people here today they would tell us that this is word of mouth advertising. It’s normally the type of advertising you can’t pay for, and it is the most powerful form of advertising possible.

Several years ago the movie Little Miss Sunshine seemed to rise from nowhere to box office success because people who saw it told their friends they should see it, and they did, and a small film became a major hit and academy award nominee. So let’s conduct another straw poll, by a show of hands, who here has come to a church or come to Christ because of a revival you have attended (and I’m not talking about rededicating yourself, but instead doing it for the first time)? Who here has ever come to a church or come to Christ because of something you have received in the mail? Who here has ever come to a church or come to Christ because of someone who has knocked on your door? Who here has ever come to a church or come to Christ because someone, a friend or relative, asked you to or told you about it?

For many of us, evangelism is one of those scary words. We don’t want to have anything to do with evangelism, and there are several reasons for this. Probably the biggest one is that when we think of evangelism we often picture people knocking on our door or standing on street corners asking us if we’ve except Jesus as our Lord and savior. Most of us don’t want to be that person, and most of us also don’t want to have to talk to perfect strangers about our faith. But evangelism does not have to be something scary. The word, evangelist, comes to us from the Greek word euangalian. In the ancient world, a messenger who brought good news would often receive a reward, which was called a euangalian, or literally good messenger, or good news. We also get the word angel from this root word. It was later translated in the vulgate, which is the Latin translation of the Bible as evangelium, and then into middle English as godspel, from which we get the word gospel, or again, literally, good news. An evangelist is a bringer of good news, but messengers can be both effective and ineffective based on the information they provide and most importantly who they provide it to.

On April 18, 1775, a young boy overheard two British soldiers in Boston talking when one of them said there would be “hell to pay tomorrow.” This concerned the boy and so he went to find Paul Revere, who had been hearing similarly information. The local patriots had already intercepted a message from London to General Gage that the British regulars were planning to march to Concord to capture the arms that had been stored there, so they knew something was going to happen. They were also concerned for the safety of John Hancock and Samuel Adams who were staying in Lexington.

Revere and Joseph Warren met and decided that they needed to warn the local militias and Hancock and Adams that the troops were coming. Warren sent Paul Revere and William Dawes to send out the word. Revere made his way across to Charlestown and waited for the fires in the lanterns to be lit in the Old North Church, and Dawes set out to tell the western towns. But, we know the name of Paul Revere and yet few of us remember William Dawes. Why is that? Because Revere was successful and William Dawes was not.

In his excellent book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, tries to look at what causes some things to be successful, to move beyond the tipping point, while other things never do. Even though the message was exactly the same, Dawes did not get the same response that Revere did. Local militia leaders never got the word. So few men from one town responded that later historians concluded that it must have been populated by Tories, or those who supported the king. But the records indicate that that was not the case. In other towns no one from the local militia gathered, leading other historians to speculate that Dawes must not have stopped there but why would Dawes not stop to warn people? That is after all what he was sent out to do. But, according to Gladwell, there were distinct differences between Dawes and Revere which set them up for success of failure.

In Boston at the time, there were seven groups of revolutionaries. No one belonged to all seven groups. In fact, 80% of the members belong to only one group, but two men belonged to five of them, and one of those men was Paul Revere. Therefore, Gladwell says, it’s no wonder that Revere would not only be the one that a young boy would approach with an overheard conversation, but that Revere would also know exactly who he needed to talk to in each town. He would know who the town and militia leaders were and where to find them.

Dawes, on the other hand, did not know this information. When he went into each town he did not know on which door to knock, and so the leaders in these towns simply never got the message. It wasn’t that Dawes didn’t do what he was sent to do, but instead that he didn’t know the right people to tell and so the message never took off. The alarms were not set off the way they were North of Boston, on the route that Revere took because he knew who to tell, they knew him and they trusted him, and because of that they were willing to listen to him and then take action on the information he provided.

It is estimated that by the time the British regulars marched into Concord on April 19, that there were at least 40 riders out spreading the words to towns almost as far as Worcester, which is about 45 miles from Boston. A flame was lit in two lanterns in a church in Boston, and the flame kept going, but it kept going because Revere told people who knew him, trusted him, were willing to listen to him and to act on what he told them. That was really the difference between he and Dawes, and that is why I like the story so much. For you see, Paul Revere was an evangelist, and he teaches us an important message about evangelism: it is most effective when it is done with people we already know.

One of the things people fear about evangelism is having to talk to total strangers, but as we just saw from Paul Revere that is not where the most effective evangelism takes place. The most effective evangelism is done when talking with people who know us, who trust us, and who are willing to act on the information we tell them, in other words our family and friends. It is word of mouth advertising at its best. I know this is not what we often hear or witness. I have even heard a bishop say that churches should be knocking on doors to get new members, but it’s true, and we need only look at the two groups who are most commonly associated with doing evangelism by knocking on doors, the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons.

How many people do you think the average Mormon missionary converts? Guesses? The answer is one. And here is the kicker: If they get one convert then their mission is considered a success. A large percentage of missionaries never convert anyone. Now remember that Mormon missionaries spend all day, a minimum of five days a week, knocking on doors, and at best they will convert one person in one year. We obviously do not have the resources or the time to do that. This is also not to say that knocking on doors for churches is a waste of time because there are appropriate uses for that, but straight evangelism is not one of them.

Mormonism is one of the world’s fastest growing religions, but the majority of their converts come not from their missionaries knocking on doors, but instead from conversions from friends and families. In fact, I would argue that the training and sending out of Mormon missionaries has more to do with training and indoctrinating an entirely new generation into the faith then it does with evangelism, but that’s a different message, that has more to do with how we conduct our Christian Education, or more appropriately Christian formation.

The best and most effective evangelism takes place with those we already know. These don’t have to be our closest friends, they can be just acquaintances, but people who know us are more likely to trust us and to accept an invitation from us. If you were to be invited to attend a party from a total stranger or from an acquaintance, whose party are you more likely to attend? I suspect that all of us would say from the acquaintance. In a poll done of unchurched people in America, they were asked how likely they would be to attend a new church if they were invited, and 25% said they would attend a church if they were simply invited. 25% of unchurched people said they would attend if only someone would invite them.

Now the problem with this is that we obviously don’t know in advance who those people will be in advance, so we need to invite more than just one, but we know that the odds are that for every four we invite one of them will probably attend. But we also have to be ready for them, ready to greet them, ready to introduce them to others, and ready to have the best worship service we can for them to participate in, and you also have to be committed to whatever it is that you are inviting them to. If you say, “would you like to come to church with me?” What do you think the response is going to be? Versus if you say, “I am attending the best church and it’s made a difference in my life, and I would love it if you would come with me sometime so you can experience it as well.” What do you think the response to that would be?

Like just about everything in our faith, evangelism begins with prayer. To be effective evangelists we need to be praying to God for those who do not yet have a relationship with Christ and are not also attending church, and as you’ve already heard me say the two are related. Now the two easiest times to invite people to church are Christmas and Easter, and this is true for several reasons. First is that most people have some experience at some point in their lives of having attended these services so there is something familiar for them there, they know what to expect. Second, these are also the two times of the year in which our culture gets caught up in the pattern of the church. Third is that non-churchgoers know there will be others there who don’t usually attend. And finally, and these relates to all of the above, but most directly to us, at these times of the year the number of people who are thinking they should attend church and would go if they were invited is even higher than 25%.

So as we progress towards Advent and Christmas, I invite you to make a list of 4 or 5 people you want to be in relationship with Christ and a church and then begin praying for them every single day. But we should be praying selflessly for them. This is not just about getting them into this church, because this church might not be where they are being called to be, or obviously might not be even where they live. Instead we simply pray for them to be attending church, any church.

As methodists we believe in prevenient grace, the grace that goes before, so we know that God has already invited them into relationship, we are merely being conduits for the work that God is already doing in the world, because here is the easiest part of evangelism, it is not about us. It is about God and allowing God’s grace to flow through us. When we try to spread the word of Christ without trusting in God and the Holy Spirit we are bound to fail. Can I get an amen? When we try and tell people about our faith in Christ but don’t live that faith out in the world, we are bound to fail. Amen? When we try and send out the word on our own without being filled with the Holy Spirit then we are bound to fail. Amen?

John Wesley once said that he didn’t do anything special in order to have Methodism spread, he simply set himself on fire and others came to watch him burn, but it was so much more than that. If people had only watched him burn we would not be here today. Instead in coming to watch him burn, he caused other people to catch fire because fire wants to spread and envelope everything it sees, and that is how the spirit works. Once it is set loose it cannot be contained.

The Christian movement grew from several hundred followers after Jesus death to around 6 million followers just 300 years later, and Methodism grew from just a handful of students at Oxford in the 1720s to more than 25 million people today, and all of those converts came because someone was willing to go out and share the good news of Jesus Christ with someone else. People come to Christ and people come to churches because they are invited to come, and in seeing other people burn with the Holy Spirit they too want to burn. Can I get an amen? But we too must burn in order to be proper evangelists.

Two years ago I attended the annual Congress on Evangelism, which that year was held in New Orleans. Now as it happens the hotel was less than a block from Bourbon Street, which is, of course, known for a lot of things, but one of them is for the music. And so after the evening speaker, I headed down hoping to find some live jazz music. It’s New Orleans after all, surely I can find at least one jazz club. But as it turned out, everyone was playing rock music. Even the “country” bar had a rock band on the stage, and then I found a little hole in the wall with a blues band playing and they sounded pretty good and so I went in, and they were awesome.

At many times during the night there seemed to be more people on stage then in the bar, because in addition to the house band there were two other lead guitarists and another vocalist who cycled in and out, and other local musicians kept coming in, and you know they are good when other musicians are coming to see them, and they would be invited up to perform one song, and they were blowing the roof of the place.

I kept saying that I was only going to be staying for one more set, and then it was just one more set, until finally I ended up closing down the place with them. So I was committed to them with my time. I also bought the CDs of two of the musicians, so I was committed to them financially. The next day all I could think about was being able to get back down there to hear them play again. I was looking forward to it all day, and I was telling everyone I met that I had found the best blues bar and they should go. In other words, I had also become an evangelist for them.

I’m sure that all of us have had similar experiences, things that we just could not hold in, that we had to invite other people to or tell them about, and I hope that your faith and your church are one of those things. If they are not then changes can and must be made to make sure that they are. People don’t want to be a part of something that is mediocre or dying. People want to be involved in something that is alive, that is full of spirit and life, something that will change their lives and will set them on fire.

We are enjoined by Christ to go make disciples of all the nations, and I hope that you want to share your faith with others who are important to you, and it doesn’t need to be you walking up and asking people if they’ve accepted Jesus Christ as their savior or if they know where they would go if they died tonight. In fact, I would implore you not do such a thing, because that is, in my opinion, not good or effective evangelism, nor is to true to the Gospel message. It is not the good news, it is not euangelion, it is not evangelism. Instead tell them the difference that Christ and the church have made in your lives, and invite them to be a part of it, and then allow them to make their own decisions because then we are trusting God as the primary actor in bringing people into relationship.

Through this simple act of telling people about your relationship with Christ and about your church then people can begin to see the fire that is burning inside of you, and once you feel the fire burning you’ll find that it cannot be contained. What is burning in your heart will also burn on your tongue because that is what fire does. In the words of three preachers from the last several generations, “Nothing but fire kindles fire,” “if you want to set someone on fire, you have to burn a little yourself,” and “a burning heart will soon find for itself a burning tongue.” Say that with me, “Nothing but fire kindles fire,” “if you want to set someone on fire, you have to burn a little yourself,” and “a burning heart will soon find for itself a burning tongue.”

As the story of Pentecost shows us, the church has always relied upon the tongues of fire of its members proclaiming the gospel to the world, and it still does, it requires each and everyone us of because “nothing but fire kindles fire, “if you want to set someone on fire, you have to burn a little yourself,” and “a burning heart will soon find for itself a burning tongue.” Thanks be to God sisters and brothers for the fire that burns in our hearts and on our tongues, and for the gift of the Holy Spirit which gives us the words to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to the world. So go into the world, and make disciples. Amen.