The Greatest Evangelist?

I was led to faith in Christ through a Canadian fellow student while I was an undergraduate at Manchester University in England.  Michael was a wonderful model of prayer, of a life of righteousness, of taking me seriously, of encouraging my questions and answering them carefully.  He was a fine example of someone who lived the gospel well and communicated it well.  

“They loved people well.”

After graduation in early June 1967, a young believer of 6 months with my life turned upside down, I went to L’Abri in Switzerland, where I became the gardener and cook of Edith Schaeffer.  Both Francis and Edith Schaeffer were Christians with a passionate commitment to making the gospel known, praying for the Lord to bring people to them in whom he was at work and to direct their lives and ministry.  They welcomed people into their home, encouraging all questions, doubts and objections to the Christian faith to be expressed, and then taking endless time to answer them.  They loved people well.

I fell in love with Vicki (from rural California) who was Francis Schaeffer’s secretary, and we were married in the middle of that year of work in Switzerland, in December 1967.  Schaeffer encouraged me to move to the USA and study at Covenant Seminary.  We were here in St. Louis from the summer of ’68 to early 1971, and while here we were involved in starting a church, Grace and Peace Fellowship, which still flourishes today.  This church grew out of three things: a prayer meeting for local needs among a small group of us who had met in Switzerland; a Saturday evening discussion group for unbelieving friends modelled on a L’Abri discussions; and a deep commitment to practicing hospitality.

After graduation from Covenant, we returned to the UK as my father was dying of cancer and we were longing to be able to share the gospel with him. In God’s kind providence a new branch of L’Abri began that year, 1971, in the south of England, just 15 miles from my parents’ home, so I was able to visit them every day during the final months of my dad’s life (he came to faith in April 1972, just 6 weeks before his death).

Working at L’Abri we were involved in sharing the gospel every day.  We were praying for the Lord to bring people to us and lead us; we were opening our home to welcome people to eat with us daily (from a dozen to up to 30); no questions were off limits, so I was constantly answering people’s questions and giving lectures and Bible studies on whatever subjects were troubling or were important to those who were coming to our table.  It was like a firestorm of questions and objections!

In addition, we planted a church there in rural England.  My wife was the musician and I led worship one Sunday and preached the next, becoming the pastor of this congregation.  The church soon began to bring people in from the local villages and towns and grew to over 200 people by the time we moved back to St. Louis in 1988 for me to begin teaching here at Covenant.  

“The call to teach apologetics and evangelism led me to reflect more deeply on what we had been doing..”

The call to teach apologetics and evangelism (in my mind the same thing) led me to reflect more deeply on what we had been doing and to develop principles for training our students in outreach.  I started with the direct commands of the New Testament.  

First, Peter’s charge in 1 Peter 3:15 is to always be prepared to give a defense (apologia in Greek) to anyone who asks us to give the reason for the hope that is in us and to do this with gentleness and respect.  The context is the good behavior of Christian believers in and before a hostile world.  

Second, Paul’s encouragement in Colossians 4:5-6 to walk in wisdom towards outsiders, making the best use of the time, and to let our speech be always gracious, seasoned with salt so that we might know how we ought to answer each person.  In this context, Paul has urged the Colossians to pray for him that God would open a door for the gospel and help him to communicate it clearly (in Ephesians he also asks the believers to pray that the Lord would give him courage in fulfilling this calling). 

Third, the command of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, is that we are to be salt and light in this world, and to let our light shine before people so that they would see our good deeds and glorify God. 

For my teaching, I turned next to the example of Paul in the Book of Acts.  I studied how Paul proclaimed the gospel as he traveled the Roman world and I sought to develop abiding principles from his practice so that we might learn from him (see The Heart of Evangelism).

“…who is the greatest evangelist?  The answer is, of course, Jesus.”

From there I asked myself the question: who is the greatest evangelist?  The answer is, of course, Jesus.  So, I turned to the gospels to look at the example of Jesus.  I discovered that much teaching and preaching from the gospel records often fails to consider the context of Jesus’s words and, even more often, fails to consider the persons to whom Jesus was speaking.  Instead, the text is preached as if it were written directly to the Christians of today.  

For example, I have heard many fine sermons on the parable of the Prodigal Son, but most of them simply expound and apply the story of the prodigal younger brother, without observing that the parable is told to a mixed audience of sinners, tax collectors, Pharisees and teachers of the Law.  Most sermons fail to even consider the elder brother, clearly a representative of half the audience of Jesus’s words.  Another example is the many sermons I have heard on the Good Samaritan.  Almost all of them have disregarded the context of the teacher of the Law who has come to Jesus to parade his own knowledge and to test the understanding of Jesus.  As soon as we pay attention to the setting of Jesus’s encounters with people, we begin to learn many beautiful things about how we are called to communicate the gospel in our own time and place.  

Another way that we need to learn from Jesus is from the manner he dealt with sin in his own time.  He never forgets his stated purpose: that he came into the world, not to condemn it but to save it.  We all hear many pastors and preachers in churches or on radio and television who seem to think their calling is to condemn the sinners of our world and who encourage Christians to hate and avoid the people around them whose lives and ideas are not Christian.  But Jesus shows us another way!  Do we listen to him and love our neighbors, both believers and unbelievers?  Do we do good to those who hate us?  Do we bless those who curse us?  Do we pray for those who abuse us?  The one who saves us daily from our sins is indeed the best model for us if we desire to make the gospel known today.