The “New” Evangelism: Part 1
By Brad Thayer October 25, 2007
I’ve been meaning to note an article by Christianity Today that was published about a month ago. Due to busyness I’m just now getting time to comment on it. It’s entitled “Go and Plant Churches of All Peoples” by Tim Stafford. Let me briefly summarize.
Mention the word “evangelism” and what comes to mind? Fifty years ago it would be evangelism crusades such as the Billy Graham Crusades. Thirty years ago programs like “Evangelism Explosion” and “Four Spiritual Laws” would come to mind in personal evangelism. Well, that was fifty and thirty years ago. Today there are fewer and fewer crusades and many churches are still teaching personal evangelism. But the new “cutting edge” evangelism is church planting.
This new or, depending on your perspective, old form of evangelism stems from a few things. First, many churches with younger leadership are frustrated with the lack of growth from current methodologies. Second, church planting networks like Acts 29 Network are rethinking biblical evangelism and its methods. They see church planting as essential to the local church’s nature. Third, researchers have found a trend that new churches are growing at a faster conversion rate than older churches. The trend is for churches to look “inward” instead of “outward” after about 15 years. Whereas church plants have to look outward in order to survive.
And yet church planting doesn’t look the same as it did in the second half of the 20th century. Many church planters are targeting immigrants, “which means adjusting church traditions to diverse ethnic cultures.” Furthermore, it produces “niche audiences.” The SBC’s NAMB effort in California is a prime example. And this isn’t a manufacturing of diversity. It simply reflects the “neighborhood’s” changing nature. Emerging church plant efforts have been extremely successful because of their “unconventional” and “non-institutional spirit” and methodologies.
Church planters also have a different perspective than their predecessors. America is seen as a “mission field” with the same barriers as those overseas - “religion, language, tribe, caste, and socioeconomic status.” Church planters are learning from missionaries overseas and using their methods to penetrate the culture with the gospel and provide places for disciples to mature. Thus, planters are domestic missionaries with the “same sociological perspective” as their overseas counterparts.
In addition, they believe it’s a faulty assumption that the U.S. is a post-Christian nation. It’s half-Christian and half post-Christian. And these new “missionaries” are penetrating the “post-Christian pockets.” Although some new churches fail, all face the same “demographic” difficulties. And it’s here where the “entrepreneurial, independent, and stubborn personalities” that mark the “new” missionaries persevere in obedience to the Great Commission. Therefore, “a church that seeks to obey the Great Commission will keep sending out missionaries” even if that means “they never leave home.”