I want to continue on with “Joyfully sharing the good news of the sovereign love of God.”
For this part, we focus on the activity: Sharing.
As I travel and speak, I discover many different definitions of sharing. What comes first to my mind is conversation. For others, what comes first is deeds.
Conversation:
In most every occasion, our faith needs described as well as defended.
We share the content of our faith. Jesus died for sins, paid the price for sins, etc.
We explain how we are separated from God by sin and that Jesus was God’s provision for solving that.
We explain how God calls us to repentance, to faith in Christ, etc.
All of this is explained in the course of conversations, sermons, books, events, etc.
We share through a variety of means words, images, sermons, printed materials, etc. There is content to communicate. Many evangelism books and tracts focus on this.
I’ve written on about scripts that people use and various models of evangelism. These focus on content.
Deeds:
For other people, what comes to mind is actions. A famous quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi is “Preach the gospel everywhere. If necessary, use words.” (Did Assisi get it wrong?)
For example, during a health outreach our church did for its neighborhood, one unchurched person commented,
“I don’t like to listen to sermons, today I saw one.”
Our service to the community was interpreted as we wanted – a tangible demonstration of the love of Christ that we have for our neighborhood.
It’s a witness to the world thru actions.
Yet that interpretation came about because we gathered all the volunteers at the beginning and I explained to them why we as a church are doing this outreach. We are serving because God first loved us and we want to demonstrate that to the community.
In our committee discussion last week, we got into a debate over whether sending church teams to build a Habitat house, or taking our week’s turn for providing overnight housing for the town’s homeless ministry was evangelism.
I get into this at: Is Community Service really Evangelism?
Servant evangelism focuses on actions. Many churches have social outreach programs to their local areas, but often, many find that doesn’t increase significantly to church attendance or new members.
My take:
When it comes to action based activity, I want to be clear – I’m not convinced it’s evangelism in and of itself.
Good works demonstrate our faith.
Without any overt explanation that our actions are propelled by God’s love for whom we are serving, what makes our good deeds any different than what a social service agency provides, or what good corporate citizens provide?
I’ve written more about this in a prior post.
Actions can be a good support or point of contact for evangelistic conversations.
Either/Or?
It’s not an either/or proposition for me. Both are necessary forms of sharing. Deeds are love demonstrated, but a further explanation of the gospel is necessary.
Giving food to the hungry, tutoring underprivileged kids, providing free medical care are all good deeds. They demonstrate love.
But beyond the demonstration comes explanation. It is my view that many churches that only serve are not growing because there is often no conversational explanation of the gospel to go along with the service.
Let me ask you this?
How do you see deeds in relationship to evangelism?
For more in our series “What is evangelism?”
Related posts:
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I appreciate the quote by Francis Assisi and I agree with it.
I believe any missionary will affirm the importance of building bridges, of sharing the love of Christ to others and allowing them to see Christ in you, through your sharing and actions.
But yes, I also agree that is through Word and Deed that we are to bring the gospel to the unsaved.
If we are just helping and aiding, without preaching and evangelizing, then this is secular humanism.
Our loving aid and service will allow the Holy Spirit to prepare or soften the hearts of unbelievers but at some point it is up to us to share the gospel in a loving way with discernment as to when God has opened the door.
Sometimes it can take years of hard work to just get to the point of sharing the gospel. But sometimes it can be very quick.
In His grace,
Dave.
I,too, like the quote by Francis Assisi though believe we can also use those very words as an excuse to NOT share via words. I think tis best when actions/deeds precede words as that order might provide a greater receptivity on the part of the hearer.
Thanks for those thoughts Chris. I agree that social action, mercy ministry – it goes by many names – is not evangelism. But it is mission. Evangelism (which has loads of definitions, but I’m using it in the sense of proclaiming the good news as a witness) is an essential component of mission, but I wouldn’t consider social action to be only a preparation for or inferior partner to evangelism. I think Christian social action stands alone and is a valid expression of mission in and of itself which should be combined with evangelism wherever possible. We seek to walk in faith, hope, and love. The faith part is often expressed in actually verbalising what we believe and persuading people to turn to Jesus. The hope part is expressed in our actions because we believe that the kingdom of God is prevailing and therefore it is worthwhile caring for the poor, for example, because this is a kingdom thing whether we happen to have an opportunity to evangelise or not. And love crowns the whole enterprise.