Help Wanted – Evangelist
When I came to San Francisco in 1975, I looked for a church that was committed to evangelism. I found a small church of about 100 that had two full-time staff members: a pastor and an evangelist. The primary ministry of the evangelist was to train church members to evangelize and oversee outreach ministries in the church.
Today, the staff evangelist seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur. I am familiar with hundreds of churches, but do not know a single one that has on staff an equipping evangelist. Some are large churches with thousands of members and 30 or 40 full-time staff members, yet nobody on staff has as his primary ministry to equip, motivate, and coordinate outreach ministries for the church.
Two months ago, I wrote about two kinds of church growth–the addition of new converts (conversion growth) and attracting Christians from other churches (transfer growth). Most church growth that has occurred in the U.S. since 1980 is transfer growth. Adding a youth pastor, singles pastor, or music minister to your staff will make the church more attractive to Christians, contributing largely to transfer growth. Adding an evangelist to your church staff should lead to conversion growth.
Many churches today experience growth by attracting self-centered, worldly Christians and false converts who like attending church. Our churches would be healthier without such people. Instead, we need to attract true believers who want to die to self and serve Jesus Christ by reaching out to the lost.
“Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but from the strength of the ox comes an abundant harvest” Prov. 14:4. Evangelists cause problems for the church. They challenge complacent Christians to witness. They bring new believers into the church who have lots of problems. Often long-time church members don’t want these new people in their church.
What our churches need is a “back door revival.” We could use a few “blessed subtractions” of those who oppose the Great Commission. A good way to achieve this is to hire a full-time staff evangelist. Give him opportunities to preach on Sunday morning about the responsibility of Christians to witness and to train people in witnessing. Give him freedom to organize, facilitate, coordinate and promote various kinds of outreach in the church. Those who do not want to witness can find hundreds of other churches to attend. Those who believe in the Great Commission will be attracted to a church that is committed to evangelism.
I encourage each of you to speak with your pastor, elders, and church board. Urge them to make the next person they hire an equipping evangelist. You can show them this teaching. Then pray. Pray that God will raise up an evangelist in your church who can be on staff, or lead you to one who would work well with your church fellowship. Pray that God will move in the hearts of your church leaders to hire him. Please call or write me if I can help you with this.
Honolulu Outreach
After the SOS outreach, I had an opportunity to join seven Christians from Evangel Christian Fellowship in San Jose for a ten day ministry trip to Honolulu. We had an opportunity to minister at several churches and take Christians to the streets. Several churches, including the Assembly of God, Calvary Chapel, and Hope Chapel, as well as Youth With a Mission, bring teams of 30 or more Christians to Waikiki and downtown Honolulu every week. The streets here are filled with tens of thousands of tourists from all over the world. On the final Saturday, we set up a PA system right on the beach and ministered for three hours. Three music groups from a Vineyard Church in Southern California ministered, as well as a mime group from Evangel and some local Christians. Hundreds of people stood around all night, and we prayed with several people. We gave out 1000 of our SOS tracts.
Half the people on the streets of Waikiki were Japanese tourists, almost all of whom spoke no English. None of the groups that witness in this area reaches out to these people. Yet most of them have never heard the gospel. One fifth of the tourists who come to San Francisco are from Japan–several hundred thousand a year. When I returned to California, I searched the phone book and found a few Japanese-speaking churches. Today I spoke with a Japanese pastor from a Baptist church in San Francisco. Please pray that he or someone else would come to some of our Powell St. outreaches to preach the gospel in Japanese and minister to those who respond to the gospel.
Fresno Outreach
Last weekend, I went to Fresno to teach evangelism at the Cornerstone Assembly of God. Afterwards, we went to the Fulton Mall to witness. Half the people at this mall didn’t speak English but we had some Spanish-speaking Christians to witness to them. I was happy to help train a team of Christians from this church, and I hope they will continue to reach out to the people in this city. Over 700,000 people live in the Fresno area.
Tract Responses
For the past 17 years, we have been writing and printing our own tracts. This summer, as we redesigned our tracts for the SOS outreach, we did something different. We put a coupon on the back of our tracts that people could mail to us to learn more about Jesus Christ. Almost every day we’ve been getting from one to four new responses to these tracts in the mail. I write a personal letter to each person with some literature and the address of one or more nearby churches. We also phone as many of these people as we can. This simple coupon has proved to be a great way to get more responses from tracts.
Focus on the Gospel
Last week I was interviewed on an hour-long radio program on KCIV — Modesto called “Focus on the Gospel.” The program is hosted by Alan Peters, Pastor of Central Valley Christian Fellowship in Modesto. Central Valley sent a team of youth to SOS-Hollywood and SOS-San Francisco this year. Before the show, Pastor Alan told me that he was having a hard time finding Christians to interview who were focused on the gospel.
Today, Christians are focused on everything except the gospel. The early church didn’t have this problem. Ancient Rome had plenty of social problems–slavery, killing of infants, sexual abuse of children, idolatry, homosexuality, etc. But there is no hint that the early church focused on anything except our Lord’s commandment to go into all the world and preach the gospel. The result was that multitudes were transformed by Jesus Christ and as their perspective changed, many of these social evils were done away with. But the focus of the early church was on the preaching of the gospel and discipling of believers.
We urge you to join us for one of our October outreaches. On Saturday October 9, Family Worship Center from Pleasant Hill will lead an outreach at the Powell St. BART station from 3-6 PM. On Saturday October 23, Bethel Christian Church in San Francisco will lead a worship rally. This is the first time Bethel Church has done an outreach with us. Bethel Church is located in the Mission District and has about 500 attending weekly.
Please continue to pray for us, for those who have responded to the gospel during SOS-San Francisco and for those who have sent in responses to our tracts. Our Tape of the Month is Ministry to Family, Friends and Co-Workers by Rick Rael. This teaching will help you be more effective in reaching those who are closest to you.
Yours in His love,
Larry Rosenbaum
