“…People destroy the chance to lead others to Christ everyday by exuding their own issues of anger, ignorance, and fear under the hole filled umbrella of “telling the truth in love” and turning people away from the gospel. Let’s try hard not to be THAT Christian people try to avoid.”
Forming relationships then allowing those people to ask you about your faith works.
What doesn’t work:
Threatening people with hell
Beating them over the head with scripture
Preaching instead of conversation
Offending the person then blaming them for the offense instead of apologizing
People destroy the chance to lead others to Christ everyday by exuding their own issues of anger, ignorance, and fear under the hole filled umbrella of “telling the truth in love” and turning people away from the gospel. Let’s try hard not to be THAT Christian people try to avoid.
Your topic about the evangelism that “works” is a bow to pragmatism, which involves reliance on our experiences to show us what’s right. That being said, any approach of control or disrespect for people is not God’s way, which is “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4).
That’s Not the Bible, that’s Sentimentalism in a Sunday Hat.
Let’s be clear-biblical love is not cowardice in a cardigan. It’s not the soft glow of polite tolerance or the sentimental fog of niceness. The Bible’s definition of love often wounds, warns, rebukes, and contends. Truth doesn’t always come dressed in lavender and lace-it sometimes comes with fire in its lungs and a sword in its hand.
Here’s ten verses that utterly shatter the idea that Christian love is always soft-spoken, crowd-pleasing, or pain-averse:
Galatians 1:10
“Am I now seeking the favor of men or of God?.. If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
πειθῶ – present active indicative – “am I persuading?”
Paul draws a hard line-people-pleasers don’t preach Christ. Period.
Galatians 4:16
“Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth?”
ἀληθεύων – present active participle – “truthing”
When truth becomes offensive, love still speaks. Paul wasn’t allergic to fallout.
Jude 1:3
“Contend earnestly for the faith…”
ἐπαγωνίζεσθαι – present middle infinitive – “agonize/fight for”
The gospel isn’t something we simply discuss-it’s something we defend, even if it costs relationships.
Acts 20:31
“I did not cease… to admonish each one with tears.”
νουθετῶν – present active participle – “admonishing”
Paul’s love wasn’t passive. He warned with passion, not platitudes.
Revelation 3:19
“Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline.”
ἐλέγχω, παιδεύω – present actives – “I rebuke… I discipline”
Christ’s love comes with correction. Always. If He’s never correcting you, it might not be Him you’re listening to.
So no-love is not the absence of offense.
No-truth is not obligated to be polite.
No-Scripture does not idolize keeping peace over keeping purity.
Christian love tells the truth, stands firm, and rebukes when needed-even if it splits the room.
Jesus was full of grace and truth-never one at the expense of the other.
Drop the mask of man-pleasing. Pick up the sword of the Spirit.
The gospel isn’t always safe-but it’s always good.
Bruce, I hear you on the danger of pragmatism—and amen, the Gospel isn’t a sales pitch. But let’s not confuse calling out bad methods with chasing results. When Paul reasoned in the synagogues and the marketplace (Acts 17), he wasn’t just winging it—he was strategic and Spirit-led.
“Speaking the truth in love” doesn’t mean avoiding critique. It means doing it with Christ at the center and maturity in mind (Eph. 4:15). If our methods dishonor that, they need to be exposed—not to be pragmatic, but to be faithful.
Love doesn’t silence correction. It sharpens it with grace.
—Sincere Seeker. Stay grounded. Stay sharp. Stay in the Word.
Every single one of your quotes is spoken to the people of God, either Jews or Gentiles or both, not to complete unbelievers.
What I’m advocating is to total unbelievers. Start where they are by finding out more about them so that you have a point of contact with them–something to talk with them about–like sports or work or other things with common interest. Your approach to complete unbelievers would turn them completely off from the beginning. Then, as God guides you, share what God has done for you that is similar to their experience. Then, as your relationship grows and as you sense they are ready, present the Good News. Always, be sensitive to their reactions and bathe your conversations in your prayers for God’s guidance. This approach respects them as God’s creations.
@Bruce_Leiter,
In movies, there are portayals of street-corner preachers’ hellfire and brimstone messages. @Rev12_11 asked for proof so I (jokingly) replied.
Why do you care if a certain method “works?”
If God puts it on your heart to witness, you witness.
We are called to give a reason for the faith we have.
1 Peter 3:15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:
That’s our function.
It’s the Holy Spirit’s concern to draw the unbeliever to Christ.
If someone doesn’t receive Jesus after you speak to them, do not take it as a personal rejection.
Perhaps the most prevalent form of counterfeit Christianity in America is the “Altar call” variety. Since Charles G. Finney introduced his set of innovations, conversion is viewed, taught, practiced, and experienced as a HUMAN (and humanistic) phenomenon.
Mystical experiences are easy to induce – every religion has its way of creating 'em. Hindus empty their minds and meditate on “Aum.” Sufis dance in circles, one hand up to receive from heaven, the other down to distribute to earth. Muslim guys perform gymnastic prayers, pressed tightly together, elbow to elbow.
And in America, we have a highly developed, structured, and formal ritual that requires a special place, a special time, special music, and a special emotional appeal from a highly trained and/or charismatic special speaker (that’s HUMAN charisma, a.k.a. salesmanship). The speaker addresses the anxieties and angst of adolescents, compelling them to play their prescribed role in the ritual – to “go forward.” Some “evangelists” step over the line into demonic territory, and practice stage hypnotism to brutally overpower those who are conditioned to trust them, in order to impose their will on vulnerable hearers, and override one’s sense of personal integrity and volition – "every head bowed, every eye closed … "
MAYBE some of those who “go forward” experience genuine Christian conversion. Billy Graham had a 4% success rate. The other 96%? False conversions, transient mystical experiences that failed to change lives. A vaccination – just enough of the killed version of the Gospel to immunize them against the real thing.*
This humanistic brand of religion CRIPPLES those who participate in it. You win people TO what you win them WITH. Get a “church Christian” out from under a steeple, and he’s useless.
(see the bitter and ironic chapter in Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer” – “Huck Finn Quotes Scripture.”)
Let’s **not overlook the issue of IMPRINTING. Get saved in context A by technique A, and you find it easy and natural to lead your friends to the Lord. Get saved in context B by technique B, and you will almost always be crippled for life, when it comes to sharing your faith. **
Context / technique A: real human beings, folks you know and trust, probably a number of them, explain the Gospel to you. You count the cost, evaluating the ways your life will be different. And, at a moment of divine confrontation – perhaps alone in a hotel room – you realize that this is it. Say “no” to God then, and it will be easier to do so the next time, etc. So you pray with your latest friend, then compare notes with other friends, saved and unsaved. Those who respond to your invitation find it obvious, and normal, to “pass it on.” It only takes a spark, to get a fire going.
Context / technique B: a “SPECIAL” professional orator in a “SPECIAL” building with “SPECIAL” music and an atmosphere filled with “SPECIAL” expectations all converge to induce a temporary and artificial “SPECIAL” experience. If you are one of the 4% who experience genuine conversion, the fact that it took at that “SPECIAL” stuff to make it happens sets your expectations. You can’t carry a “SPECIAL” building around in your back pockets, let along a “SPECIAL” music production team. The most you can hope for is to become a “SPECIAL” orator yourself …
As Southerners would say, in their trademark trait of wrapping searing derision in innocuous words, "Oh, how “SPECIAL.”
One spring day in 1970, as the semester drew towards a close, friends who’d spent hours trying to talk sense to me heard of a “SPECIAL” event, starring an evangelical superstar with name-recognition “second only to Billy Graham.” They invited me to come along, hoping that this would be the catalyst for my conversion. Well, the crowd inside that civic center went wild, swept away by a tsunami of patriotic emotion – and my friends wept. You see, the “gospel” shared by this “SPECIAL” speaker was not that of the Kingdom of God, but of red-blooded American cold-war patriotism. The kind of “gospel preaching” that the John Birch Society loved to subsidize.
But, nearly a month later, the real and true and truly special GOD met me in a normal environment, in the course of a normal conversation.
Brother, this blast against altar calls swings at the smoke and misses the fire. The problem isn’t the call, it’s the content. The New Testament didn’t need a Hammond organ, but it absolutely issued public, urgent, and confrontational calls to repent and believe, and it did so with blood, not background music. Let’s answer the charge with Scripture, with verbs, and with the Cross.
Peter didn’t whisper into a darkened sanctuary, “every head bowed, every eye closed.” No, he raised his voice (Acts 2:14), pierced their hearts with the crucifixion (Acts 2:23), and demanded repentance in the open air: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38). That’s an altar call, apostolic style. No lights, no fog, just a crucified Messiah and a command to bow or burn.
Was it human manipulation? No, Acts 2:37 says they were pierced to the heart, κατενύγησαν τὴν καρδίαν, divine conviction, not hypnotic coercion. And what followed? 3,000 souls were added that day (Acts 2:41). You think 4% is bad? Maybe the problem isn’t the method but the message. Peter preached Christ crucified, not self-help, not emotional therapy. That’s the problem today: too many preachers entertain the goats instead of feeding the sheep.
Paul persuaded, reasoned, and testified, in synagogues (Acts 17:2), on hillsides (Acts 17:22), in homes (Acts 20:20), and under arrest (Acts 26:28). Was he emotionally compelling? Yes, because the Gospel demands a response. He didn’t ask for “decisions”, he proclaimed a crucified Lord before whom “God now commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). That’s not manipulation, that’s divine mandate.
Yes, Finney introduced gimmicks. Yes, emotionalism can produce dead fruit. But don’t throw the cross out with the altar call. Jesus Himself called publicly, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). That’s not mystical fluff. That’s bloody allegiance.
You say these altar-call converts are useless outside the church building? Then they never heard the Gospel. The Gospel doesn’t breed steeple-sitters, it produces cross-carriers. It crucifies the flesh (Galatians 5:24), transforms the mind (Romans 12:2), and equips the saints for war (Ephesians 6:10–17).
You don’t fix false conversions by eliminating the call, you fix them by preaching the cross, calling for repentance, and demanding obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel doesn’t entertain, it commands. It doesn’t soothe, it slaughters. The Son of God bled, not to give you a goosebump, but to demand your surrender.
So if someone walks the aisle for emotion, that’s man-made religion. But if they fall at the foot of the Cross, cry out in repentance, and are born again, then brother, I don’t care if they heard a harp or a jackhammer playing in the background. God saves sinners, not by ambiance, but by the power of the crucified Word (1 Corinthians 1:18). Let the cross be preached, let repentance be demanded, and let the altar call thunder, not with music, but with the blood-soaked call of the Lamb.
On the one hand I don’t think we should think of evangelism in terms of “what works”; as though through a purely pragmatic approach we can find the tools to convince people. I’ll admit, however, that a lot of this comes from the fact that I don’t believe conversion happens because of having the best apologetic, or the best appeal to emotion, or having the best philosophical argument–conversion happens because the Holy Spirit bears the Good News to the broken-hearted sinner and actually affects change in them. So that the Gospel is itself living, powerful, active; the Gospel is God’s power to save all who believe (Romans 1:16).
That said, I also believe there is a fundamental difference between evangelism and mere proselytizing. Evangelism, as the word implies, means the Evangel–the Gospel. We aren’t merely out here trying to beat people over the head with our religion, we are proclaiming Good News, the Good News of Jesus; and yes because there is Good News that means there’s also bad news–which is why the Church must preach both Law and Gospel. And rightly making the distinction between the two. The Law condemns sinners; the Gospel redeems sinners.
If one starts spending a lot of time around Lutherans a common refrain that you’ll start hearing about evangelism is in biblical phrases like where St. Mark records the Lord saying, “The kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the Good News!” and also where St. John records the Lord saying to Peter and Andrew, “Come and see”. Jesus invites people to come to Him, to repent, follow, and witness what He is saying and doing.
So that it’s not our job to convince; but rather our job to bear witness to Jesus. We are not all missionaries, but we are all disciples; and as disciples we bear witness to our Master in all that we say and do. So that the Word of the Gospel should be on our lips, our good works should be done in order that men see our good works and praise our Father in heaven. For this reason the Apostle reminds us to do what is honorable in the sight of all, to be peaceable with all insofar as it is up to us; it is why St. James tells us to show no partiality to the rich but regard all justly in the sight of God and rebukes the tongue which confesses the blessedness of God but speaks evil against our fellow man made in God’s image.
And when the Gospel is preached, the Holy Spirit will come bearing the Word to the broken stony heart of the sinner, and there create faith out of the grace and goodness of God. For it is God’s will to save, that all come to repentance and that not a single person should perish.
We therefore bear witness, we live Christian lives which are honorable in the sight of all, doing and bearing good, with Good News on our lips, for Christ the Lord reigns in our hearts and over our lives; and the Holy Spirit who works faith in us will work faith in those who hear Good News.
lol, in levity - see Proverbs 17:22)