by Jacob Ninan
We all know evangelism is the process by which we share the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ to people around us, hoping that they will able to come to God through the Gospel. When the Gospel is preached with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and people receive that into their hearts and submit to it, many miraculous and wonderful things can happen. God washes their sins away with the blood of Jesus Christ, makes them His children, gives them a new heart, puts away their old ways, and they become renewed in their minds and hearts. And they begin a new life with God. But one very common mistake is to assume that once a person is born again this way, God will take care of Him automatically and help him to grow spiritually. That is where we make a mistake, thinking that our work is done. No. Preaching of the Gospel in this way is good, but it is not enough. It is the beginning of a work of grace in these people's minds who have heard the Gospel, but that is just the beginning. That will not be enough to take them through to the end.
Many don't even hear the Gospel properly because of the deficiencies in different people's preaching, and many don't understand it properly. Some come very near to God when they hear the Gospel because they have had some experiences of miraculous healing or answers to prayer. They have come near to God but they have not yet been born again. Some other people fall away because after they were born again, they were left alone, and they did not have any fellowship with other people near them. Therefore there was no nourishment, encouragement and comfort for them, and when trouble came they fell away. Some people fell away even though they were in churches because when troubles came they could not handle them, and nobody was there to help them to handle them. Some other people fell because they could not get the answers to their intellectual questions about suffering in this world, why God does something and does not do something else, etc. Some are confused in some part of their life and they don't know how to move forward or how to deal with the situation.
So, just preaching the Gospel, or evangelism, is not enough for a person's growth and development. We generally refer to the great commission which Jesus left for us before He ascended to heaven. "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matt.28:19,20). Here it is so plain that going and preaching the Gospel is just one part of this commission. It is not the full commission. God's purpose is not just to make believers. God wants people to become disciples who will learn to obey everything that Jesus has taught. Disciples are not people who are just following behind Jesus. We remember that in the days of Jesus in one place, multitudes were following Him after He had miraculously fed the 5000. Jesus was not impressed with them. He told them He knew why they were following Him. He wanted disciples who wanted to become like Him, who would learn to live like Him and be transformed in their lives to have the character of Jesus. It is a fact that not everyone who hears the Gospel from an evangelistic programme becomes a disciple. If we look at the statistics in USA where 69% of people profess to be Christian, a recent poll has shown that only about 9% of people actually have a Christian world view. Thousands of people have supposedly come to Christ, but only a very few are actually following Christ. So, evangelism is not enough.
If we truly believe in Jesus, we will also desire to walk like Him (1Jn.2:6). To become able to walk like Jesus in every aspect of our life, not only what we do externally, but what we speak, think, plan and desire – when every part of our life becomes transformed over a period of time to become like Jesus – that is God's goal and our goal too. So, evangelism gives us a start in this direction, but that is not going to be enough. Many people are not clear about this. Not only those who preach or evangelise but even the people who hear think that now that their sins have been forgiven, they would be going to heaven when they die. Then they carry on with life without any commitment, or any goal in their life except to be in heaven finally. They never become like Jesus, and when troubles or calamities come they may even fall away. That is the stark truth we find when we look around.
There are many godly people who are into personal evangelism. They give a tract or share a word or a testimony to whoever they meet at various places. But what happens if there is no follow up after that? They don't even know what has happened to those people who have heard the Gospel. They are not in touch any more, and nobody knows how much those people have understood.
So, evangelism is a starting point, but that is not the end of it. We have to teach people who come to follow Jesus with determination and to deny themselves (Lk.9:23). When we try to follow Jesus, we find another law in our flesh with all kinds of sinful desires coming up from our flesh which oppose the way Jesus wants us to walk. That is why Jesus tells us that if we really want to follow Him we will have to decide that we are going to die to our self, take up our cross, deny these desires that are coming from our flesh and do what Jesus would do. If we don't do that, Jesus says we can't be following Him. We can't follow Him unless we are willing to do this. We have to teach the people who come to understand that this is the way we have to walk.
We can't follow Jesus and the world at the same time (1Jn.2:16,17). We have to teach people that they have to be separate from the world. They can't be like the rest of the world and still be following the Father. Those two ways are opposed to each other. The world is going to fade away and perish, and Jesus has come to take us away from that to eternal life. People don't understand these things automatically. It is not that when they come to Jesus they immediately know all these. That is why there are pastors, teachers and other people in the church who encourage, comfort, prophesy, exhort and rebuke people. Without this, evangelism is incomplete. This is what is missing in many churches and Christian organisations. The focus is many times on evangelism, thinking that once people are 'saved' everything will be fine for them. That is a serious mistake.
Another mistake that people make is that when people come to the church, it is all the responsibility of the pastor or the elders to take care of all these people and to meet all their needs. That is not how the church works. Very few people teach that the church is the body of Christ now on earth, and every member of the body of Christ, everyone who is born again, has a certain part to play in the building of that body. No one is exempt, and no one can relax and hope to be taken care of by the others. Everyone has something to contribute. The responsibility of the leaders in the church is to train the members to do the work of ministry (Eph.4:11,12). Many times people's understanding is that ministry is for apostles, prophers, pastors, evangelists, teachers, etc. But what we see here is that it is the task of these leaders to equip the 'ordinary' brothers and sisters to do the ministry or service. This ministry may not be a prominent one, but each one of us has a ministry to fulfil. That is the body of Christ. Each member along with all the other members is doing his small part, and then together they fulfil the purpose of God. We have to recognise that we are the eyes, hands, legs and the mouth of Jesus Christ right now on earth. If we sit back and expect to be taken care of by the other members, we are not functioning as members of the body of Christ.
A practical mistake that happens in many churches is that when some new person comes into the church who is new to the Christian life, immediately they are assigned a task in the church meeting. Somebody is made a member of the worship team, somebody plays the guitar, someone is in charge of the projection, etc. The leaders think that once they have this responsibility, they will stay on, and hopefully listen to the preaching too. But what happens in many cases is that these people are coming to the church with a lot of baggage from the past which have not been resolved. Some people have experienced rejection, neglect or abuse in their childhood, some have gone through broken relationships, some have got into bad habits, some have been involved in occult practices and some are even going through demonic oppression. Christians too can find themselves under the oppression by demons if they have been indulging in different forms of sin without repentance, they have exposed themselves to demons through occult practices or because they have been worshipping idols and not really given it up. After coming into the church, even though they are active in all kinds of responsibilities, they have never been set free from their baggage. People get married to them thinking that they have been in the church for a long time, not realising that they are being weighed down by their baggage. It is not enough to think that they have heard the Gospel message.
Some churches have entry level interviews where they meet with the new people and understand about their spiritual condition and help them with counselling. Some churches have classes for the new beginners, and care cells where people get closer to one another and begin to support one another. But in many other churches such things are not happening, and many members are suffering secretly. Meetings of those churches are mechanical even though there is singing, prayer and preaching. People mark their attendance and go away. When troubles come their way they struggle with no strength or understanding to cope with them. The problem is that nobody has been there to equip them to face life and fulfil their ministry.
Even in a healthy church, we do recognise that there are people at all different levels of spiritual growth. So we need to have programmes that meet the needs of children, teenagers, youth, elderly, married people, men, women, etc. Also, the preaching has to cater to people at different levels of understanding and doctrines of salvation, baptism, baptism in the Holy Spirit, sanctification, discipleship, forgiveness, overcoming temptations, etc., need to be taught again and again. New people are coming in, and also those who have been there have not necessarily become clear about them.
The more effective we all are in our ministry, the better our Lord Jesus Christ is able to fulfil His work on earth now. But if we are actually occupied with our work, promotion, etc., and the church is just a secondary part of our life, it is the work of God that gets affected. Especially those of us who have come to know the Lord and His ways, it is our responsibility to pass them on to the people around us. Jesus will be there to empower us, give us spiritual gifts to serve others with, give us understanding and wisdom from above to lead our lives. Let each one of us recognise our individual responsibility to the body of Christ.