Why create a culture of evangelism?

Bud Brown Feb. 21, 2020

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You’re looking at the business end of the A-10 Thunderbolt II. This rotating cannon (aka Gatling gun) puts 4,200 30mm depleted uranium rounds per minute on target—a devastating barrage of firepower. Affectionately known as the “Warthog,” this aircraft was specifically designed to put “steel on target” from the big gun. 

Everything about the aircraft—avionics, propulsion, hydraulics, airframe design, titanium armor around the cockpit, ground and air crew training, rockets and bombs—contributes to the aircraft’s mission of destroying enemy armored vehicles, tanks and troops. When it all works together the A-10 is a fierce weapon.

If all systems aren’t green, the aircraft can’t fulfill its mission.

Do you see the parallel with your church’s evangelism? The church’s systems must support the mission of bringing the power of the gospel to bear on the lives of unbelievers through the ministry of the believers. 

Realigning church systems to support the mission is a crucial leadership task for pastors of plateaued or declining churches. Their systems must be redesigned to put the mission front and center. 

If a picture is a thousand words, let me save you a lot of reading (and me a lot of typing!).

The Bible is clear: Jesus gave us the task of making disciples. No matter how you slice it up, evangelism is front and center (Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:46-49; John 20:21; Acts 1:8) as a crucial part of the task. 

Everything the church does should contribute to making disciples. The church’s public worship, the instructional program, budget, staff, governance and pretty much anything and everything else the church does should advance the mission in some concrete, identifiable way.

That’s not what you’ll find in plateaued and declining churches. Most of them pay lip service to evangelism because they know it’s supposed to be important. But the reality is evangelism (or disciple making, if you wish) is a mere aspiration. 

The net result—and the source of many of the problems the American church faces, in my opinion—are tens of thousands of churches that run like buffet lines. Patrons get to pick and choose from the board of fare and feel entitled to complain when an item on the menu doesn’t suit their taste. 

Evangelism is demoted from its rightful place and is treated as nothing more than one menu option among many. 

This leaves a gaping hole in the center. Consumer mentality quickly rushes in to fill the void. When the pastor permits the members’ focus to shift from the salvific mission, the church slowly drifts off course all by itself. 

If evangelism is not a church’s top priority—which means that everything the church does supports that task—it is not a priority at all. Is it any wonder that Barna has recently found that half of the pastors they surveyed for a recent project agree that “declining or inconsistent outreach and evangelism” is a major problem in their churches?

Photo source: istock 

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Bud Brown is an experienced ministry leader, writer and educator. He is co-founder of Turnaround Pastors and co-author of the ground-breaking Pastor Unique: Becoming A Turnaround Leader. He brings special expertise to change leadership in the local church, mentoring pastors to become revitalization leaders, training churches how to find and recruit the best talent, and training leadership teams how to achieve their shared goals. Learn More »

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