Evangelism: Learning from the Past

Introduction

Everyone needs a goal in life. Last night I saw a BBC program about a man whose whole purpose in life was to produce the largest gooseberries. My purpose in life has been to pass on, as best I can, good news. It is the best news anyone could ever hear: that there is a living God, who cares enough about us to become one of us, who dealt at great personal cost with the evil in the world, who is alive to make us into a renewed community, and who invites us to share his home after death. This is the message of the Bible: it is a magnificent message, and I have made sharing it with others the great passion of my life. I have done so by preaching God’s good news in every inhabited continent, by seeking (very imperfectly) to conform my life to it, and by using not only preaching, personal conversation, and debate, but radio, TV, and books in the cause of evangelism.

I had already written quite extensively about spreading the good news of the gospel: Evangelism in the Early Church, Evangelism through the Local Church, Evangelism Now and Then, Sharing Your Faith with a Friend, When God Breaks In, and Compelled by Joy. In this book I have set out to trace some of the path from Jesus to the present day and to highlight some of the most effective evangelists. The final chapter details some of my own experience, since I believe nobody should write about evangelism without doing it. Inevitably I have sometimes incorporated material from my previous books.

Be clear what this book is not. It is not a concise, systematic history of evangelism. It is not complete, but selective. It is not comprehensive, but majors on the evangelical tradition and particularly its outworking in Britain.

Be equally clear what it is: merely one man’s perspective on this great story of evangelism, with the hope that it will lead the reader to reflect on the past and resolve to take the good news of Jesus into future passionate outreach.

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Evangelism, Jesus Style

Jesus of Nazareth is God’s good news in person, and he has been recognized as such by the worldwide church down twenty centuries. So any attempt to encapsulate the good news that Jesus embodied is sure to be inadequate to do him justice. Nevertheless, there are significant elements in his ministry, life, death, and resurrection that stand out and have become a pattern for his followers to seek to emulate. In what follows we shall look at some of these.

In one sense the gospel or good news that Jesus embodied and proclaimed burst on the world with all the suddenness of an invasion. Mark grasps this well in his opening words about Jesus: After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has drawn near. Repent and believe the good news’ (1:14–15). It was unexpected for a number of reasons, but particularly because the prevalent Jewish hope and expectation was of a royal figure of King David’s line who would forcibly deliver Israel from her enemies—in this case, from their Roman overlords. And Jesus came from a humble working-class family in Nazareth, an insignificant village, and had no militaristic intentions.

When the Time Was Ripe …

But in another sense, the good news that Jesus embodied had a long history. It began not on Christmas Day but two millennia earlier with God’s gracious covenant with Abraham, and his promise that in Abraham’s descendants all the world would be blessed. Abraham’s descendants, the Jewish people, repeatedly failed to be a blessing to the world, but at last one of them became just that, a blessing to the whole world, and today around a third of the world profess to follow him. The entire history of Israel finds its fulfillment in him. He is the ultimate priest, the ultimate sacrifice, thus eclipsing the sacrificial system so central to Israel. He is David’s son and also his Lord. He is the suffering servant of whom Isaiah spoke, and the glorious Son of Man, raised after terrible suffering to God’s right hand (Daniel 7:13). In images like this the way was prepared for Jesus, as Malachi had said it would be (3:1). And the message was reinforced by John the Baptist, the last and greatest of the prophets, who proclaimed the coming of the Savior.

What is more, the world situation was just right for the coming of Jesus and his unique message. Three factors combined. First, there was the Greek language. Alexander the Great had conquered most of the known world, and one of his goals was to bind the whole world together through the use of the Greek language. He largely succeeded. The Greeks also brought to the world a quest for truth and wisdom through the work of their great philosophers, and the Christian faith benefited enormously from this linguistic and intellectual inheritance. Second was the Roman peace. After nearly a century of civil war, practically the whole known world was under the control of Rome, and Rome was, since 27 BC, dominated by an emperor. The first of these emperors, Augustus, made sure that the rule of law was established and that communications were easy through the magnificent road system and through the elimination of piracy so that sea travel was fairly safe. Third, of course, was the Jewish faith, with its strong belief in one God, faithful to his people, utterly just and yet full of love and mercy, a God who demanded holy living in his people. Ever since the northern kingdom of Israel had been carried off in the eighth century BC, Jews had spread (and prospered) worldwide, so their faith was well known even if most people regarded it as very strange. But Jewish faith, Roman roads and justice, and Greek language and culture all combined as never before or since, to prepare the world for the spread of the good news that Jesus would bring.

What, then, were some of the key elements in the good news that Jesus brought and embodied?

Features of the Good News

First and foremost was his authoritative teaching. He taught with authority and not like the scribes—the clergy of the day (Mark 1:22). They would laboriously quote authorities who had preceded them. He never did that, but just gave them his message, often prefaced by Truly, truly I tell you—something unprecedented in any previous teacher. The essence of his message was that the kingdom of God was upon them. This did not mean a physical realm: the word means primarily kingly rule. It means the time when God breaks in to establish his royal rule, a red-hot topic in his day. Every Jew was on tiptoe waiting for God to do just that. The trouble was they all had different ideas of how it would come to pass. The Sadducees were the aristocratic party, and they were very much in bed with the Roman overlords: they hoped that this would eventually bring in the kingdom. Their opponents, the Pharisees, reckoned that if Israel could keep the whole law for a single day, that would bring in the kingdom. The zealots, who were committed to violent revolution, chipped away at Roman rule by killing the odd one off on a dark night and by periodic revolutions that were put down with massive Roman savagery. Then there were the Covenanters—as scholars call them because they lived according to a community rule, or covenant—in their desert refuge at Qumran. They kept to themselves but were determined to fight when God’s great day appeared. So it was a time of massive expectation and a variety of suggested methods.

It was into this tinderbox of anticipation that Jesus dropped his spark: the kingdom of God has drawn near! And as he continued his teaching, he made it abundantly clear that he was showing what God’s kingly rule looked like, embodying it, and furthering it. The message was sharpened by a unique and stirring call: men and women were to repent of the evil in their lives and follow him—not follow the law or the temple, central though these were to Judaism, but him. For he was the kingdom in himself. This powerful, explosive teaching, with its challenge to personal response to himself, is perhaps the most distinctive and amazing element in the way Jesus sought to bring in the kingdom.

But Jesus’s proclamation was matched by his deeds. This caused amazement from the very start of his ministry. In the first chapter of Mark, the oldest Gospel, we read, after a powerful exorcism, The people were all so amazed that they asked one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him’ (1:27). The power of his exorcisms is stressed in the Gospels: the writers realize that this is a battle between the kingly rule of God and the rebel rule of Satan, and they do not hesitate to say so, time and again. Whether we look at the demons of Mark’s Gospel or the satanic temptations of Matthew and Luke or the usurper prince of this world in St. John, it is made clear that the proclamation of good news stirs up the wrath and power of evil forces, but that, despite appearances, they do not prevail.

Another aspect of Jesus’s deeds that caused such amazement, joy in the recipients, and wrath among the authorities was his healing of a variety of illnesses, many of them on the Sabbath day. He was demonstrating God’s desire for wholeness and healing in his people, whether it was leprosy, lameness, blindness, paralysis, or deafness. In addition, there were instances when he exercised God’s power over nature, causing storms to cease or a handful of loaves to feed five thousand. There can be no doubt that he both proclaimed the kingly rule of God and demonstrated it. That was his good news.

An utterly amazing feature about Jesus and his good news project was this: unlike any great leader before or since, he actually practiced what he preached. Socrates did not do that. Muhammad certainly did not. Nobody but Jesus set a perfect example of servant leadership unmarred by any failings. I have given you an example, he said, that you should do as I have done for you (John 13:15). Nobody will listen to a preacher whose life belies his profession.

Another of his notable characteristics was his compassion. When overprotective disciples tried to shoo children away from their master, he invited them to come to him and even dandled one or two of them on his lap. When he saw an old widow throwing her day’s livelihood into the collection, he marveled at her self-sacrifice. When an unknown woman crept into a meal and anointed him prior to his death, he said that this deed would be known all round the world—as it has been. When he saw the distress of Martha and Mary at Lazarus’s tomb, he wept with them. Here was no strong, authoritarian preacher with remarkable powers but someone who was compassionate and loving to all.

Another feature of Jesus, the bringer of good news, was this: he had a passionate concern for justice. All through the Old Testament, particularly in the Prophets, it is emphasized that God cares about justice and exercises his power on behalf of the poor and needy. We see precisely the same in the attitude of Jesus. He is furious with the crooked leaders who devour widows’ houses, and, in a very telling passage in Matthew’s Gospel, he offers a scathing denunciation of the Pharisees and teachers of the law (23:13–38). Have a look at it and ask yourself if anybody concerned for justice ever dared to speak so powerfully and so directly against the abuses of his day. Sadly, the passion for justice does not always characterize modern evangelists.

A very significant thing that strikes me about the way Jesus went about the good news business is the priority he gave to training a team. He was not a solo operator like most Old Testament prophets. He gathered around him twelve very ordinary men, and he selected them as representatives of the new kingdom of God. He took them with him everywhere and trained them, not in a college like the rabbinic schools but on the job. He loved them and poured himself into them. Often they did not understand. Often they were recalcitrant. But he persisted with them, and after his day there was a magnificent band of men and women ready to carry the good news forward.

Finally, of course, Jesus offered himself up as a sacrifice for the benefit of all who would avail themselves of it. He did not merely proclaim the good news. He lived it and he died for it. His voluntary, sacrificial death was the culminating climax of his life. But that was not the end of the story. He rose again and energized the first apostles for a ministry that became worldwide.

That is one way of looking at how Jesus shared the good news of the kingdom. There is another way of looking at it: not so much what he did but what he was.

The Characteristics of Jesus as Good News

First, I notice his confidence. He knew God was his Abba, his dear Father. You can’t evangelize if you do not have confidence in who you are. Otherwise, you are always looking to what others think of you.

Second, he was visionary. Karl Marx ended his Communist Manifesto with the words, You have a world to win. That was precisely Jesus’s vision. Unless you have a clear aim, you will never succeed in effectively passing on the good news.

Third, he was fully aware of spiritual battle: it was not just the hostile religious authorities that he faced but the dark and hostile spiritual forces behind them. In Africa and Asia, evangelists are almost always aware of this. In the West, we are often blind to it, and as a result we are ineffective because we are defeated before we start.

Fourth, Jesus was heavily involved with the public. He did not hide away in books and colleges but was a familiar figure on the hillsides, in the streets, and in the temple. Public acts of kindness and generosity were central to his kingdom purpose.

Fifth, he was fearless in proclamation. Note his clarity, the consuming interest and gripping power of his words, his brilliant illustrations, his combination of depth and simplicity, his meeting people where they were and starting at that point to bring God in, his flexibility, his challenge to decide. All are magnificent qualities for evangelists to seek to emulate.

Sixth, he was intentional in personal conversations. Think of the woman at the well, of Nicodemus, Zacchaeus, or the rich young ruler. One of the best