The duplicate conferences on lifestyle evangelism for women in Taylors, Myrtle Beach and Columbia Jan. 29-31 and the upcoming state evangelism conference Feb. 23-24 in Columbia and attended mostly by pastors are timely reminders of the importance of evangelism in the life of the South Carolina Baptist Convention — and in the lives of individual churches and their members.
Don KirklandThe active and consistent calling of people to accept the good news of God’s grace and to commit themselves to Jesus Christ is a responsibility of believers that is ever urgent, never-ending and always challenging for those who hear with their hearts and take seriously with their actions the command from our Lord that, after receiving power from the Holy Spirit, “You will tell everyone about me.”
I cannot imagine a greater task assigned to us, or a higher joy available to us as believers, than the responsibility and the privilege of bringing others into the family of God — where we share brotherhood with Jesus himself and become brothers and sisters with each other through Christ our Lord.
It is especially significant that the three women’s evangelism meetings, which year after year attract large and enthusiastic audiences from our churches, decided from the outset to put the accent on what is termed “lifestyle evangelism” in both the name and the content of the conferences, underscoring the importance of how we live as well as what we say.
Our words of testimony to the life that we have in Jesus Christ and our actions toward others in obedience to our Lord come together to form a balanced witness in the world. The words “lifestyle” and “evangelism” complement each other and should never be separated. The verbal witness without the life is ineffective, and the life without the verbal witness is incomplete.
The South Carolina Baptist Convention is in the final year of its missions partnership with South Asia. Twice, I have visited India along with other volunteers participating in the partnership. For the volunteers, there is a constant and burdensome awareness, both from information provided by the International Mission Board and from what each of us experiences, of what is termed the “lostness” of that region of the world and especially in India with its teeming population.
While in India, I visited the Gandhi museum and stood at the site of the funeral pyre where the body of the revered nationalist leader was cremated after his assassination. He regularly and religiously meditated on the Sermon on the Mount, finding spiritual value and guidance for daily living in the words of Jesus. “If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible,” Gandhi is quoted as saying, “All of India would be Christian today.”
And he said this as well: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
In that Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “You are like light for the whole world. Make your light shine, so that others will see the good that you do and will praise your Father in heaven.”
Those who do not believe in our God or in his Christ will be drawn to us by the attractiveness of our lives, lived in the full view of others with the aim of showing the world what it is like to claim Jesus as both Savior and Lord. They will look at us day in and day out, and wonder why and how we live as we do, especially keeping hope alive despite circumstances. They will, sooner or later, want a word with us, and we can tell them of the love that drew salvations plan and the grace that brought it down to man.
Our authentic Christian lives will validate our words, and our witness will be complete.