Core Values: Evangelism – The Great Commission – Mark 16:14-18
14 Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.
15 He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.
16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.
17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues;
18 They will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."
We are in our series on Core Values. Core Values are the DNA that define who we are, what we are in infancy and in greatness. What God has called us to be. They are not just creeds on plaque or notes in book somewhere. They are the essence of who we are, if you were to describe our church in 12 words, the core values would be it. The core values we’re going to be speaking of for the next few months are establishing a foundation for New Mercy Community Church – Prayer, Holy Spirit, Evangelism, Equipping, Relationships, Love, Family, Sound Doctrine, Character, Excellence, Worship, and Missions. Today we’re going to talk about the core value of evangelism.
How many of you have heard of Coca-Cola? Coca-cola is one product that has far outgrown its humble beginnings. In 1886, Dr. John Pemberton first introduced Coca-Cola in Atlanta, Georgia. The pharmacist concocted a caramel-colored syrup in a three-legged brass kettle in his backyard. He first "distributed" Coca-Cola by carrying it in a jug down the street to Jacobs’ Pharmacy.
After nearly 120 years, surveys show that 97% of the world has heard of coca-cola. All due to the fact that the company made a commitment years ago that every one on the planet would have a taste of their soft drink.
We should stand up and take note here! 97% of the world has heard of this sugar and water concoction while 1.7 billion people world-wide have no access to the good news of Jesus Christ! It is estimated that 17 million people die every year without having heard the name of Jesus!
In his book The Purpose-Driven Church, Rick Warren reports on a survey that found 89% of church members believe the church’s purpose is to “take care of my needs and those of my family.” Only 11% said, “The purpose of the church is to win the world for Jesus Christ.”
According to George Barna, in his book called, “Evangelism That Works,” most churches have only a small group of people who have a passion for evangelism. Barna asks a probing question to churches like ours: “Is evangelism deemed the highest priority of the church?”
He concludes by saying, “If not, the organization is not truly a church but is simply a group of people intrigued by religion.”
Brothers and sisters, let’s admit something this morning. Evangelism is not easy. In fact, for many of us, it’s downright scary. Evangelism is one of the highest values in the church – and one of the least practiced. Studies show that most believers don’t have many – if any – friendships with non-Christians. We may talk a good game, but our actions speak louder than our words. Do we really care about lost people? Do we sincerely believe that knowing Christ is the best way to live and the only way to die?
Some of you know that I got strep throat this past week. I tried to keep my germs away from others in the family. I wouldn’t want anyone to get what I had. By its very nature and purpose, the church ought to be a contagious place that is “infecting” more and more outsiders with the Christian faith. There ought to be an epidemic of people trusting in Christ. Why isn’t that happening?
In his book called, “Building a Contagious Church,” Mark Mittelberg points out that the evangelism value in every church tends to head south over time. He calls it the “second law of spiritual dynamics,” in which Christians, if left to themselves, move toward self-centeredness. If we’re serious about telling others the gospel, then we must fight this gravitational pull inward.
We live in a world full of turmoil, where terrorism, earthquakes, devastations and many other terrible things are gripping our world. There is fear, there is doubt and there is lawlessness. Yet in spite of all these: God needs men or women who are willing to go the distance, to pass the difficulties they are facing by faith in His Powerful Name. Going on the highways and byways, to go in the valleys and reaching to the needs of the people.
I believe that all true Christians have a desire to share their faith w/ others. And that is only natural. If you were to cure cancer, you’d want to share the cure w/ the world. Now, if you’re born again, you have a knowledge of something far greater than a cure for cancer.
But something keeps us from really evangelizing & witnessing…and the #1 cause is fear. We hear a message like this on witnessing and w/out exception, each one of you will hear your faith say “go” and then your fear say “no”!
But 3 people die every second. If this fact is true, then 180 people die every minute, 10,800 people die every hour, 259,200 people die every day, and 94,608,000 people die every year. Of the six billion people on earth today, experts also say that 2/3 of them have never heard the Gospel one time. If these percentages hold true, then 63, 103,536 people die every year without ever hearing the Gospel one time! Not everyone that has heard the Gospel one time, accepts the Gospel. Therefore, many more people die every year without hearing the Gospel!
Our core value of evangelism is summed up in our passionate drive to reach lost souls for the kingdom of God by any means necessary. To be effective, our evangelism must be loving, relevant, community-focused, and with urgency.
I. Evangelism must be LOVING
A. How many of you noticed a guy standing at Fayette Mall with a Body Sign that said “Turn or Burn?”
B. Many Christians feel that evangelizing is passing out tracks or putting a bumper sticker on your car. But evangelizing must flow out of a loving relationship – Jesus was a friend of sinners.
C. ILLUSTRATION: While speaking in London, evangelist D. L. Moody was approached by a British companion who wanted to know the secret of Moody’s success in leading people to Christ. Moody directed the man to his hotel window and asked, "What do you see?" The man looked down on the square and reported a view of crowded streets. Moody suggested he look again. This time the man mentioned seeing people--men, women, and children. Moody then directed him to look a third time, and the man became frustrated that he was not seeing what Moody wanted him to see. The great evangelist came to the window with watery eyes and said, "I see people going to hell without Jesus. Until you see people like that, you will not lead them to Christ."
i. They have families like you have
ii. The work beside you, live in your neighborhood
iii. They love UK basketball, feel the shame for UK Football
iv. They live moral lives, but will spend eternity in hell unless they believe on Jesus Christ
v. Jesus looked out over Jerusalem and was moved with compassion as He saw the multitudes. He calls us to lift up our eyes and see the lost souls in our city – 200,000 needing His mercy, longing for friendship, fulfillment, and peace.
vi. We MUST LOVE people’s souls with God’s love and reach them with His Kindness
D. I too feel the weight of 200,000 in our city who are lost without Jesus Christ bearing upon me. They must be saved or they will be eternally damned. If they are to be saved, we must reach them with the gospel. We must do everything within our power to share that old, glorious story of Jesus Christ with them.
E. ILLUSTRATION: JOHN HARPER’S LOVING EVANGELISM
i. It is our job to do anything we can to tell lost people about Jesus Christ. John Harper was born into a Christian family May 29, 1872. He became a Christian 13 years later and had already started preaching by age 17. He received training at the Baptist Pioneer Mission in London, and in 1896 he founded a church, now known as Harper Memorial Church, which began with 25 worshipers but had grown to 500 members by the time he left 13 years later.
ii. In 1912 Harper, the newly called pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, was traveling on the Titanic with his 6-year-old daughter. After the ship struck an iceberg and began to sink, he got Nana into a lifeboat but apparently made no effort to follow her. Instead, he ran through the ship yelling, "Women, children, and unsaved into the lifeboats!" Survivors report that he then began witnessing to anyone who would listen. He continued preaching even after he had jumped into the water and was clinging to a piece of wreckage (he’d already given his lifejacket to another man).
iii. Harper’s final moments were recounted four years later at a meeting in Hamilton, Ontario, by a man who said: I am a survivor of the Titanic. When I was drifting alone on a spar that awful night, the tide brought Mr. Harper of Glasgow, also on a piece of wreck, near me. "Man," he said, "are you saved?" "No," I said, "I am not." He replied, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved."
iv. The waves bore him away, but, strange to say, brought him back a little later, and he said, "Are you saved now?" "No," I said, "I cannot honestly say that I am." He said again, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved," and shortly after he went down; and there, alone in the night, and with two miles of water under me, I believed. I am John Harper’s last convert. He was also one of only six people picked out the water by the lifeboats; the other 1,522, including Harper, were left to die.
II. Evangelism must be RELEVANT
A. Meets real needs in life
i. Putting Others First
B. Relationship-based
C. Kindness & Servanthood
D. Creative, outside-the-box outreach
i. Outreach on Sunday morning so you capture the un-churched
ii. Outsourced Bus ministry
iii. Free-Enterprise Cell Groups that allow people to use their creativity to build relationships with and share Christ with the un-churched
E. “Compel” communicates that we should use every means necessary
i. What are we doing this year?
1. Seeker Services to invite your un-churched friends to
2. “Seeker Life Groups” where we have fellowship dinners within the life groups to invite your un-churched friends to
3. Community Outreach led by our newest team members, Mike & Kathy James
4. Contagious Christianity as our Life Group study for the first 4 months of the year to equip you to become the evangelist God created you to be!
5. Commercial advertising campaign “People Like You”
6. Accountability in life groups to make sure everyone is “practicing evangelism”
7. We want to focus our efforts to reach the lost where they are!
F. Impact List
i. Mike Peterson / Tim Smith / Steve Perry
G. I have heard figures that say 95% of all Christians never win a single soul to Christ in their life.
H. “Young couples who are prospering materially and socially are admired and congratulated, but if they do not know Jesus Christ, they are not doing well. We act as if their lost-ness were incidental, that it does not matter. Either it is a stupendous issue of heaven or hell or we might as well forget it. If our unsaved friends were in danger otherwise, we would go to their assistance without apology. Yet Jesus came to seek and to save the lost and died for their salvation. There is something hypocritical about claiming to believe that and then acting as though it was unimportant.”
III. Evangelism must make COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
A. We must build bridges to connect with the lost –find ways to become friends with sinners
B. We have the wrong attitude: Nobody wants to hear it.
i. Gallop Poll : Over 6 million people "What would it take to get you to church?"
ii. #1 Answer (nearly 90%): Someone to ask me to attend.
C. How did you come to know the Lord?
i. .0001% .........TV or Crusade
ii. 1-2% ............. Cold turkey evangelism
iii. 2-4% ............. Church program
iv. 4-6% ............. "Walk-in"
v. 6-8% ............. Minister
vi. 74% ............. Friends and relatives
D. We must meet people where they are and build relationships with them
E. ILLUSTRATION: CONSIDER JIM
i. Jim had a passion for God, a love for people, and a burden to communicate the gospel. But he wrestled with the question of how to bring the message of Christ into a setting that seemed so far from him. How could he help people see and embrace the truth when they had so little biblical understanding? The barriers seemed insurmountable. The task appeared virtually impossible.
ii. Even with all of the obstacles in front of him, Jim knew he had to try. God had given him a vision to make a difference in the lives of these men and women. For starters, he shaved his head right down to the skin, except for one patch of hair that he let grow long. Not only that, he began wearing it in a pigtail and then dyed it a different color so that he could fit in with those he was trying to reach.
iii. He also gave up his suit and tie and began to dress like the people he was trying to reach. He changed his eating patterns. He worked hard to learn new vocabulary and expressions, in the hopes that he would be able to effectively convey biblical truth in their everyday street language.
iv. Jim didn’t do all this from a distance. He actually moved into the neighborhood with these people. He tried to become their friend. This wasn’t easy because of their non-Christian lifestyles and their outright rejection of his message.
v. Jim paid the price of loneliness, weariness, and discouragement, along with criticism from many Christians. He also lived with the daily rejection of most of those he wanted to reach. And he did this year after year. Jim owned the mission. His life is a powerful illustration of evangelism against the odds. And today, generations later, countless people from the neighborhoods he worked so hard to reach have come to saving faith.
vi. Is it worth taking risks to reach lost people with the love of Jesus? Is it right to proclaim the gospel in ways that break a few paradigms, push back a few boundaries, and ruffle a few feathers? If you’re not sure, you might want to ask the millions of Chinese Christians who have been touched, directly or indirectly, by Jim – or, as he’s more widely known, James Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission over a century ago
IV. Evangelism must be with URGENCY
A. There will be a time when it will be TOO LATE
i. The harvest is past, the summer is ended and we are not saved
ii. The night cometh when no man can work
iii. TOO LATE -- LAZARUS & THE RICH MAN
1. He lifted up his eyes too late (vs. 23)
2. He was too busy in life to stop and look up.
3. He was too involved with earth to look up to heaven
4. He was too absorbed with the Now to think of the Here-after.
5. He shed tears too late. (vs. 24)
6. Nothing moved him in life.
7. Lazarus was full of sores lying at his gate; yet he never helped him.
8. The needy were all around him; yet he only thought of his own tables, clothes, & life.
9. He never thought about the spiritual welfare of other including his family.
10. He was concerned about the lost too late. (vs. 28)
11. While he was living, he was never concerned about his family or friends salvation.
12. Many of us are just like this man:
a. We never witness to the lost
b. We never form friendships with the lost
c. We never invite the lost to church
d. We never request prayer for the lost
13. “How shall they hear without a preacher!”
14. DO NOT WAIT TOO LATE!
a. If you are here today and don’t know Christ as your personal Savior, DO NOT WAIT TOO LATE!
b. If you are here and do not have a burden for souls that you should, DO NOT WAIT TOO LATE!
c. If you are here and are holding back your life from serving God, DO NOT WAIT TOO LATE!
d. WHEN YOU WAIT TOO LATE, THERE ARE NO SECOND CHANCES!!!
iv. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap into hell over our bodies. And if they will perish, let them perish w/ our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, let not one go there unwarned and un-prayed for.”
1. Let’s make a covenant to make it hard for someone to go to hell out of Lexington!
B. Examples of MEN WITH EVANGELISTIC URGENCY:
i. David Brainerd, won many thousands of American Indians to Christ. He said, “I cared not where or how I lived, or what hardships I went thru, so that I could but gain souls for Christ. While I was asleep I dreamed of these things, and when I awoke, it was the first thought that I had, the thought of this great work.” He caught the vision, he heard the Indians crying, “come over here and help us!”
ii. David Livingston, the first man to take the gospel into the heart of Africa, said, “I must open a way to the interior or perish!” It was do or die…he caught the vision, and he heard the Africans crying, “come over here and help us!”
iii. J. Hudson Taylor, pioneer Missionary to China, said, “I feel as though I cannot live if something is not done for China.”
iv. William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, said, "Oh, God, what can I say? Souls! Souls! Souls! My heart hungers for souls!"
v. Adoniram Judson (1788-1850) sweated out Burma’s (between India and China) heat for 18 years without a vacation and six years without a convert. Enduring torture and imprisonment, he admitted that he never saw a ship sail without wanting to jump on board and go home. When his wife’s health broke and he put her on a homebound vessel with the knowledge he would not see her for two full years, he confided to his diary:
1. "If we could only find some quiet resting place on earth where we could spend the rest of our days in peace. . ." But he steadied himself with this remarkable postscript: "Life is short. Millions of Burmese are perishing. I am almost the only person on earth who has attained their language to communicate salvation."
C. Example of APATHY:
i. The story has often been told of the little church in Germany sited near train tracks that carried Jews to their death. "Each Sunday Morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed by. We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the cars!"
ii. "Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would hear the cries of the Jews en route to a death camp. Their screams tormented us."
iii. We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard the whistle blow we began singing hymns. By the time the train came past our church we were singing at the top of our voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon we heard them no more. Years have passed, and no one talks about it much any more; but I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. I can still hear them crying out for help. God forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians, yet did nothing to intervene."
iv. How dare we sit in our comfortable building and sing our songs and eat our food and enjoy our fellowship, and not walk out those doors into the mission field w/ a vision, hearing the call, and answering it!
