“Jesus said, ‘Follow me and I’ll make you fishers of men.’ He didn’t say every time you fish you’re going to catch something,” said Mike Smith, LifeWay Christian Resources’ FAITH/Evangelism specialist.
“I think we have to celebrate the people who are fishing and not just the people who are catching. We’ve got to encourage people to fish.”
Smith and numerous other speakers – including Spartanburg pastor Don Wilton – at LifeWay’s annual National Evangelism and Discipleship Conference repeated the concern over and over: The church must do a better job of discipling its members, and the members must do a better job of going outside the church to evangelize.
The five-day conference, sponsored by LifeWay Christian Resources at Ridgecrest Conference Center, had 11 different study tracks ranging from youth ministry to a chaplaincy. Noted Bible scholar T.W. Hunt taught his “Mind of Christ” discipleship study for the first time in nearly 10 years, while Wilton, pastor of First Baptist Church, Spartanburg, and Roy Fish, Distinguished Professor of Evangelism at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, were the keynote speakers.
“Evangelism is the heartbeat of missions,” said Wilton. “Our mandate is to equip the saints for ministry … reach all people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We do that through evangelism. It’s the functional goal for which we strive. Evangelism and discipleship run down parallel tracks. You can’t have one without the other. They are inseparable.”
Wilton’s four messages explored why people attend this type of conference. Some people are looking for miracles from God, but that doesn’t have to be a grandiose act, Wilton said; it can be as simple as healing a relationship or fixing a marriage in trouble.
Everything should point to the “functionality of the local New Testament church,” Wilton said, describing it as pastor-led, deacon-served, team-organized and body-approved.
In his concluding message, speaking from 2 Timothy 1:6-8, Wilton stated that “Timothy knew God called him and he embarked on what God called him to do. Paul gave Timothy four mandates: Settle up, stir up, stand up and step out.”
Wilton then asked, “What has God done to you this week?”
Preaching a message about evangelism from John 4:35-39, Fish said, “There is equality in sowing and reaping.”
“As Southern Baptists, we have failed to see this. We have made heroes out of reapers. Maybe not consciously, but we have relegated sowers to relative unimportance. The reaper is the person we put in the spotlight.”
Churches use all sorts of means to disciple their members. In today’s “one size does not fit all” world, churches have used FAITH and other programs to teach believers how to evangelize. But, as noted at the July conference, young believers are given the tools, but not the instructions on how to use them.
“The population is growing, but we’re not converting the lost,” Smith said. “We can’t keep doing this and survive. Look at plant life or animals. If they don’t reproduce their own kind, they die. What happens if the church multiplies its kind? If we don’t reproduce our kind, we die. What is the purpose of why we exist? It’s to make disciples.”
Smith and Fish both acknowledged that people want instant gratification. So if someone presents the gospel and it is not embraced, many times that person thinks he or she is a failure and doesn’t move on to the next person.
“Sowing must always precede reaping,” Fish said. ” Chuck Kelley once said, ‘Part of our frustration in evangelism is that we are a reaping denomination. We are living in a field that has not yet been sown.’
“The average person in the United States who comes to Jesus Christ comes the seventh time that he or she hears the message,” Fish continued. “Are you willing to be the No. 4? Are you willing to be the No. 4 five times? There would not be a No. 7 if there wasn’t a No. 4.
“Usually when you sow a seed, you never find out what happened. But when you get to heaven, you will see the results of your sowing,” Fish added. “You will see people in whose hearts you dropped the seed of the Good News of Jesus.”
Smith said evangelism confronts Christians with three major issues:
Loving people – “People are not a notch on a gospel belt. People aren’t always easy to love,” Smith said. “I think a lot of people look at people like a target instead of being people. They are people whom God loves, and whom we are to love. We struggle with loving sinners. It takes time and that means inconvenience.”
Loving God – “Jesus said, ‘If you love me, you’ll obey me,’ ” Smith said.
Fear – “Fear locks up so many people,” Smith said. “They say, ‘I’m afraid I won’t say the right thing or get asked questions I don’t have answers to. I’m afraid I’ll mess it up.’ But I think our love for God and our love for people will help us overcome these fears. How uncomfortable will they be in eternity if I don’t talk to them?”
Claude King, LifeWay’s editor-in-chief of leadership and adult publishing, said the greatest evangelism will occur from a foundation of discipleship. The message of Christ’s life and what Christ did for us, when lived out, is contagious, King said.
“People see it. They want it. And people who have it bubble over with vitality,” King said. “That’s really what the Great Commission is all about: As we are going, be serious about making disciples.”