Bill: It’s easy to let evangelism take a back seat. Many churches are content shuffling sheep and luring switchers to their fold rather than catching Jesus’ Luke 15 burden for lost sheep and pursuing and penetrating lostness. On the whole, we have lost the lostness of the lost. Evangelism by and large is not a passion. It is an afterthought or a hiccup rather than the heartbeat of most churches.
We need to be awakened afresh to the beauty, power, and truth of the gospel and invite the Lord to ignite the fires of evangelism.
We need to wake up to the cultural moment we find ourselves in. It can’t be business as usual. James Emory White says, “If you build it, they won’t come!” We are now planting churches and scattering gospel seed in increasingly Post-Christian soil.
With the rise of the Nones and Dones, evangelism must involve gracious and patient explanations and powerful demonstrations of the good news.
Some of our inherited evangelism paradigms don’t serve us well in this moment we find ourselves in. We need to ditch reductionist sales pitch approaches to evangelism.
My new article, 'Preoccupied with Love: Lifting High Evangelism Again' – An interview with Bill Hogg. "The love of God is a grand missionary motive – Paul tells us he was compelled by love."https://t.co/fqww1zOdNN
— Ed Stetzer (@edstetzer) November 27, 2018