Present-day Evangelism

Evangelism is the promulgation of the Gospel. It is that line of service which follows obedience to the command of Christ. It is specific and earnest, and its direct aim is to carry the Gospel tidings to every creature in every land.

Evangelism is simply rolling away the stone and giving the dead a chance to hear the word of life. It is bringing the Evangel or Gospel into contact with the unsaved, and it is for contact, not conversion, that the Church is responsible. We are to do our part and leave God to do his.

Every child of God may truly say” Christ sent me to evangelized and to evangelize is the first duty in the order of time, for there must be 13 believers to be baptized and converts to become believers in order to form the Church.

“It is first in the order of importance, for it is accession and growth that keep the Church in being. Everything therefore, both as to accessions and enlargement of the Church of God hangs on evangelizing men.” Under this definition and its enlargement may be described all the aggressive work of the past.

Bounded on the one side by Pentecost the other boundary is to-day, and in all of this stretch of time there must be included the work of the apostles, the church fathers, the martyrs and heroes of other days, the faithful pastors, whose quiet, earnest, and ofttimes unheralded work has meant the permanent growth of the Church; the consecrated evangelists like Finney, Moody, Whittle, Earl, Needham and others, now in the presence of God, all these together with a host of others still living, whose ministry has meant a multitude of souls for Christ. The special agencies of the Church must not be forgotten, such as Rescue Missions, the Salvation Army, the Volunteers, the Young Men’s and the Young Women’s Christian Associations, and the 1 Eyangelistic Work.”

Young People’s Societies, all these together have made a glorious history.

“The progress of the Church of Jesus Christ is strikingly depicted by the pen of John, the Disciple of Love. The attractive story of the multiplication of the disciples runs through all his writings, like a thread of gold running through an exquisite fabric of the loom. I call you to follow the progress of the growth of the Christian Church in John’s writings. First there was only one man who believed in Jesus; John the Baptist. Then we read of two; then of three; then of four; then of five; then of twelve; then of seventy; then of one hundred and twenty; then of five hundred; then of one hundred and forty and four thousand; and then of ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, a great multitude which no man can number, all singing, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.’ Truly the pathway of the Christian Church as depicted by the Disciple of Love, in Gospel and in Epistles and in Apocal)^se, is a pathway of triumph which leads to perfection. We cannot but praise God that we are part of the Christian Church which is ascending the steeps of light to its eternal destiny.”^

Present-day evangelism is just the adaptation of the principles of which the above is a definition to the times in which we live.

Truth never changes, it is always the same, but the adaptation and application of truth may be a matter of times and seasons.

The evangelism of the present day must be the evangelism of the first century or it is not true to Christ and his word.

Many people are asking with intense interest the question, “Is there to be another awakening?”

The question is timely, not only because we have just fairly entered upon a new century but because the need is simply appalling. Of this we may be assured if we but open our eyes to take note of the progress of sin and indifference, the decrease in many places of Church attendance and the lack of interest shown in certain parts of our country in those things which contribute to the advancement of the Kingdom of God. There are quite as many to-day, however, Rev. David Gregg, D. D., LL. D.

who optimistically view the situation at large and answer the inquiry above made with an emphatic affirmative.

During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries as well as in certain parts of the nineteenth century there were powerful awakenings, whole nations were moved by the power of God, “but these movements differed widely in character, in method, and in the conditions from which they sprang; some of them had political as well as religious elements, whose causes were complex and remote; and yet the study of them reveals the fact that each of these great religious awakenings came in connection with the preaching of a neglected Scriptural truth which was precisely adapted to the peculiar needs of the times.”

Since, therefore, it is true that every awakening has had its distinguishing characteristic, this better day which is believed to be dawning must have its peculiar mark.

I cannot but think that with all that may be

accomplished by pastors and evangelists that

the great work of this new day is to be the

winning of the individual by the individual, or to

“The Next Great Awakening.”

put it in another way, Pergonal Evangelism is to be the key-note of our present work.

It is quite generally acknowledged that during the past few years evangelistic methods in general have been under the fire of criticism. In some cases this criticism has been unjust, in other instances it has been only what might have been expected. Out of this, however, we are coming to a better service for Christ than we have known for years.

It is also equally true that until recently — there has been a real sag in the evangelistic spirit of the Church. That this is true, has been in part due to the fact that pastors in some instances have not realized their evangelistic gifts, in other cases they have failed to exercise the gift that was in them, for many more pastors by far, than we, or even they imagine, could preach along evangelistic lines with telling effect.

The ineffectiveness of some is due to the lack of training in the seminary, which is alas too often true, for with all that the seminaries have accomplished, and their mission has been truly wonderful and greatly owned of God, there is scarcely a theological seminary in the land to-day but is defective in the matter of the training of evangelists or the assisting of theological students in the development and exercise of evangelistic gifts.

The failure of others is due to the fact that they have not realized the responsibility resting upon them for this particular form of service; and unless there is an awakening along this special line the judgment upon those who have failed will be sharp indeed.

Again this sag in the spirit of evangelism has been in part due to the fact that the Church has exercised little or no care in the training of evangelists. While here and there throughout our country there are institutions, like the Bible Institute in Chicago, which have had actually to contend for existence, still it is true that the Church has done practically nothing for the evangelist. He has gone forth frequently untrained, at times unwisely, to exercise his ministry, but he has been almost entirely without oversight and too often without sympathy where sympathy was really deserved. In frequent instances because of his conviction that he ought to preach the Gospel as an evangelist he has been obliged with real distress to himself to maintain his position.

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