This is lesson three in our series of lessons on personal evangelism. We have examined many ideas so far.
• In our first lesson, we looked at the Great Commission and how it applies to each one of us. We each need to love those who are their way to an eternity separated from God enough to open up our mouths to talk to them about the Lord. We also need to trust in the power of the Gospel and show our faith in this message by sharing it.
• In our second lesson, we defined evangelism from the word of God and looked at examples of evangelism, seeing how many today have redefined evangelism to make it something that it is not, to the point in which very few actually do the work of evangelism as the Bible defines it. We will talk a little more about this shortly.
In this lesson, Lord willing, we will look at the barriers to personal evangelism. What is stopping us from fulfilling the call of God to share this gospel with the lost? I would like to examine briefly at least six things that keep us from doing this work. There are more things we could talk about, but I think most of our barriers or excuses fit into one of the six categories I will mention.
1. THE PROFESSIONAL PASTOR/PREACHER MENTALITY
We may not see at times how much churches today have been affected by denominationalism. We may not call the preacher a “pastor”, but in many ways, many churches do look at the preacher in the same way as denominations view the preacher. He is at times viewed by the local church as the employee who is paid to do the work of the local church. This may not be the view of many here, but I believe it is becoming more and more common in churches today, especially churches that do not have an eldership. The preacher has become being viewed as THE leader or even THE worker of the congregation.
The evangelist is not hired to do all of the church’s work. He is supported to do his work that he is doing for the Lord. I believe such a view misunderstands the work of the evangelist. In Ephesians 4:11-12, Paul says that God gave His church the offices of Apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor for the purpose of “equipping the saints for ministry.” Among the offices that God gifted His people is the office of evangelist. The role of these offices is to equip the saints for the work THEY are to do, not to do all of the work for the saints.
We may agree with this in principle, but without even knowing at times, we can make it so that all of the work of evangelism is done by the evangelist. At times, most of the work that the saints do has the purpose of getting the lost people to the preacher so he can share the gospel with them either in the sermon or in a Bible study. If we remember our evangelism timeline from our previous lesson, I showed what “evangelism” looks like at times among many churches:
As we talked about in our previous lesson, the only one doing evangelism as we see it defined and shown to us in scripture is the preacher. Evangelism defined and shown in scripture is the giving of good news. In this scenario, the preacher is the one who teaches the gospel to the lost person, whether that be in the pulpit or when he is finally able to get together with the lost person to study with them. Instead of having a professional preacher mentality in our evangelism in giving the evangelist all of the contacts and opportunities to give the gospel to the lost, we each need to see that we have the responsibility and privilege to teach the gospel to the lost. We all need to be doing this important work. And as I said in the last lesson, these other things that people call “evangelism” are good things to be doing, but they cannot replace our personal responsibility to give the gospel to a lost person. They may be good ways to open doors for evangelism to be done, but they in and of themselves are not evangelism.
All of the evangelism should NOT be done within the walls of the church building by one man. We all need to teach the gospel as we go out into the world.
2. A NEGATIVE OUTLOOK ON PERSONAL EVANGELISM
Many people say, “It is just not going to work. People are not going to be converted. The world is just too evil. What the Apostles and early church did won’t work today” etc…etc…
Many of these things may be true, but is this ever a reason to not do what we are commanded to do by God? Even in the New Testament, where we see plenty of people converted to the Lord, the MAJORITY of people did not obey the Gospel. The MAJORITY of people were not converted. On the day of Pentecost, the majority of the people in Jerusalem did not obey the Gospel. We have three thousand repent and be baptized. Do you know how many people are normally estimated to have been in Jerusalem at that time? Anywhere from 1-2 million people. Assuming there were 1.5 million people in the city, 3000 people are not even close to being 1% of the people. It is 0.2% of the people (if I did my math correctly).
What I believe we see in scripture is that Biblical Evangelism, when done correctly, will be rejected by the majority of people. Jesus told us in Matthew 7:13-14:
13 "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. 14 "For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:13-14)
The percentages of people being saved today probably are not dramatically different than at the time of the early church. There are few today who are obeying the Gospel. But just as it was in the first century, this should not stop us from doing what they did. The results we may have should not stop us from giving the gospel to a lost person. Whether they may want to hear it or not should not stop us.
I believe that one of the big problems we have is that we measure success wrongly. It is too often the case that we (I am included in this group) that we feel like we have failed the Lord if no one is baptized. But is this truly the case? Are we not being successful in preaching the Gospel if people are not being converted.
I believe we are being successful when we obey the Lord regardless of the amount of people who obey the Gospel. When I in faith obey the Lord, go and share the gospel with a lost person, I am being successful because I am being faithful to the Lord. It is not my job to bring the increase. That is the Lord’s job. All we can do is sow the seed of God’s word, water the seed, and wait to see what happens. As Paul said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6-7).
Brethren, the only way we fail in the area of evangelism is if we are not doing it.
3. FEAR, LACK OF COURAGE
How often is it the case that we are just too afraid to start a conversation with someone? Sometimes this may seem like a constant battle for us. The question we must ask is, “what is it that we are afraid of?” Are we afraid of what people will think of us? Are we afraid that we will get ridiculed or mocked? Maybe a door will get slammed in front of us or just get rejected? For many of us it may be that we are just afraid of the awkwardness of talking to a lost person. Or we may be afraid of failing; not being successful in converting someone. All of these things keep us from doing the work that we need to be doing for the Lord.
All of these fears lead us into self-preservation mode. We ignore what we need to be doing so everyone will like us and not be annoyed with us. We make it so no one slams a door in our face. We run away from any awkward situation and talk about other things with our lost friends instead of the Lord. There is a very challenging verse that comes to mind when we think about these things.
23 And He was saying to them all, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. 24 "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. 25 "For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? 26 "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels” (Luke 9:23-26).
I believe this verse shows that self-preservation is not the mindset of the one who is following Jesus Christ. The one who is focused on self-preservation is the one who is ashamed of the words of Christ. This passage should challenge us! It is too often the case that we are more concerned about what men think of us or can do to us instead of what God thinks of us and can do to us? Which is really more important to us? Man can do nothing more than kill the body, but God can do more. He can kill the body and then cast soul into Hell. He is the one to be feared.
A little bit of awkwardness, or being rejected by someone we may be close to, is a small price to pay to try to bring a lost person to the Lord.
At least at the present moment, we don’t have to worry (in America) too much about physical suffering or persecution from the government for the preaching of the Gospel. I have only heard about one brother in this country who has been physically assaulted while he was doing personal evangelism, and as far as I could understand, the only reason he was assaulted was because he was being rude and unloving to the lost person. But if we show our concern for the lost person and are loving in our interaction with them, we don’t have much physical suffering to worry about.
4. LACK OF KNOWLEDGE
This is one of the more common excuses that are given to not share the gospel with the lost. But regarding this excuse, I think we need to remember a few things:
First, let’s ask the question” “What do I need to know to evangelize?” all you need to know to share the gospel with someone is: the Gospel. Every person who is a Biblical Christian should (and must) know the Gospel message. You know about sin and what it does to one’s relationship with God. You know what Jesus did to make it possible for reconciliation to be made possible through His death and resurrection. You know what God commands must be done to obey the Gospel. If you know all of these things, you know everything you need to know to share the Gospel.
Second, we most of the time are wrong in assuming that the lost person will ask a question that we do not know the answer to. If we are reading and studying our Bibles like we should, there are very few questions that we will not know the answers to. Out of all of the people I have shared the gospel with, I can think of very few questions that have been asked that did not have simple answers from scripture. The majority of people just do not know the word of God, and they do not think as deeply about God as we think they do.
Third, whenever we think we don’t have the answer to a very difficult question… WE ARE WRONG. You already have an answer to every question that will be asked. If one of your answers can be, “I don’t know, but I will find out the answer and get back with you,” then you have an answer to every question, and you have opened up the door for another chance to talk to the person and study God’s word with them.
At times, the real problem behind our fear of “lacking knowledge” is that we are not spending the time that we need to in God’s word. This is something that we need to change if we not only want to know more about God’s word, but also if we want to know the Lord better.
5. TOO BUSY? DON’T HAVE THE TIME?
If there is an excuse that shows clearly that our priorities are wrong, this is the excuse. There are so many times that we fill up our schedules to the point with what we want to do that we just squeeze the Lord and His will, especially the work of evangelism, out of our lives. Is the Lord pleased with this? When this is how our lives are, we are like the soil with the thorns in Matthew 13. We are being choked spiritually. The word is being choked out, we don’t obey it like we should, and we are not bearing the fruit for God that we should be.
We make time in our schedule for what is important to us! The person who is committed to a certain sports team has no problem talking about their team. It is second nature to them because they are on fire for their team. May it be the case that we are not as on fire for the Lord as we are our favorite sports teams?
The question you need to ask yourself is, “Is God’s will for me to give the gospel to the lost important to me? Is His work really something I have committed myself to? ”
Make “giving the gospel to someone” (evangelism) important to you! Plan to do it on a weekly basis. If you do this, you will find time to do it!
6. “I DON’T WANT TO EVANGELIZE”
What can be said to the person who understands the obligation that they have to share the gospel with the lost and is unwilling to do it? I believe there is only one way to respond to this excuse: Repent! If one agrees that Christ gives this command to every Christian, and then willfully defies it in saying they just don’t want to obey the Lord, what other response could one give?
In our first lesson, I shared a quote that I believe is true that fits here, “Have you no wish for others to be saved? Then you're not saved yourself, be sure of that!”
This is a challenging thought… If we have no desire at all to share with our family, friends, coworkers, etc. the gift of grace which we have been given, what may that say about how we truly stand with God? Jesus said, “go and preach the gospel.” If our response is, “no, I don’t want to,” is Jesus really our Lord? Can we really pick and choose which of the commands He gives us to obey?
Jesus says, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46), and “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven (Matt 7:21).
