Evangelism in the Small Church

EVANGELISM IN THE SMALL CHURCH

Ronald Allen Johnston

B.Th., Ontario Bible College 1980 M.Div., Ontario Theological Seminary 1996

Submitted to the Faculty of Theology, Acadia Divinity College in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements for The degree of Doctor of Ministry

Acadia Divinity College Acadia University Spring Convocation 2012

This thesis by RONALD ALLEN JOHNSTON was defended successfully in an oral examination on 8 March 2012.

The examining committee for the thesis was:

Dr. Bruce Fawcett, Chair

Dr. Myles Krueger, External Reader

Dr. Doug Loveday, Thesis Supervisor

Dr. Andrew MacRae, Faculty Reader

This thesis is accepted in its present form by Acadia Divinity College, the Faculty of Theology of Acadia University, as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree of Doctor of Ministry. iii

I, RONALD ALLEN JOHNSTON, herby grant permission to the Head Librarian at Acadia University to provide copies of this thesis, on request, on a non-proﬁt basis.

Ronald Allen Johnston Author

Dr. Doug Loveday Supervisor

March 8 2012 Date iv

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... viii

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. THE BIBLICAL FOUNDATION ...... 5

The Foundational Truth of Godʼs Mission in the World

The Centrality of the Kingdom of God in the Ministry of Jesus

The Place of Discipleship in the Great Commission

The Danger of Deﬁning Conversion Too Narrowly

Conclusion

3. THE THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATION ...... 33

The First Three Centuries

The Reformation Period

The Eighteenth Century

The Nineteenth Century

The Twentieth Century

Conclusion

4. THE SMALL CHURCH ...... 59

Deﬁning the Small Church

Characteristics of the Small Church

Types of Small Churches v

A Biblical Perspective

Conclusion

5. THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATION FOR THE ORIGINAL ...... 83 RESEARCH

Qualitative Research

A Case Study Approach

The Framework for the Case Studies

Conclusion

6. THE RESEARCH PROJECT ...... 97

Pinewoods Gospel Chapel

Elmvale Community Church

Bridletowne Park Church

The Rock Community Church

Glenelg Centre Baptist Church

New Dundee Baptist Church

Observations

Theoretical Propositions

7. EVANGELISM IN SMALL CHURCHES SEMINAR ...... 139

Session One: Laying A Foundation

Session Two: Laying A Biblical Foundation

Session Three: Lessons From History

Session Four: The Place of the Small Church

Session Five: Observations from the Research

8. CONCLUSION ...... 167 vi

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 173

Appendix

1. INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ...... 180 vii

ABSTRACT

Small churches are an important but often neglected part of the Canadian evangelical landscape. Considering that the majority of churches in Canada fall into the small-church category, more attention needs to be paid to the unique problems that they face. This thesis examines evangelism in small churches with a view to determining what is effective in a small-church setting. This was done through interviews on the subject of evangelism with the leaders of six small churches. An interview was then conducted in each church with someone who had become a believer through the ministry of that church. The observations from those interviews are combined with a biblical and theological study of the subject. Thus the thesis combines a solid biblical foundation with a historic, theological survey and develops this into a practical approach to evangelism in small churches. All of these ﬁndings are developed into a seminar that takes into consideration the unique qualities of small-church life. The study shows that relationships are at the heart both of effective evangelism and small-church life which should make small churches uniquely effective in their evangelistic efforts. viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The subject of this thesis came out of a life-time spent in small-church settings. The foundation for my faith and my passion for ministry was formed in my childhood and teenage years in the context of two small churches in rural

Ontario, the Sundridge Gospel Mission and the Burks Falls Baptist Church. For more than twenty years I had the privilege of serving as the pastor of small churches. Today, even though I am no longer serving as a pastor, I still attend a small church. Numerous people have contributed both to my passion for the small church and my understanding of small-church life. I could not begin to name all of those people but I do thank each and every one.

I want to thank Acadia Divinity College for the quality of the Doctor of

Ministry program of which I was able to be a part. Not only has the faculty challenged me academically but they have contributed to my personal spiritual growth as well. I would especially like to thank Dr. Andrew MacRae for his encouragement throughout the program.

Two people took the time out of busy schedules to read through the entire manuscript of this thesis, offering suggestions and corrections which greatly improved the ﬁnal document. While taking full credit myself for any mistakes that might still appear, I want to thank Marilyn Draper and Paul Atkinson for their valuable contribution to the ﬁnal product.

Doug Loveday has been so much more than just a thesis supervisor. He has been a friend who has shared my passion for the church and who has encouraged and supported me every step of the way. I have treasured our times ix together and appreciated his input into each part of the thesis. Thank you for your time, your encouragement and your friendship throughout what at times seemed to be an impossible task.

One person more than any other has been responsible for this thesis coming to completion. She has been there with me every step of the way. She has encouraged me when I needed encouragement and gently pushed me when

I needed pushing. She has sacrificed when sacrifice was needed and celebrated with me every small victory that enabled me to keep moving down the path to completion. Without her I would never have been able to finish the task. Words cannot express the debt that I owe to my wife, Gloria. Thank you seems so inadequate for the depth of your love and support over the years. 1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this thesis is to examine evangelism in small churches with a view to determining what is effective in a small-church setting. Too often mega-church leaders set the direction for churches, both through the resources they develop and the example they set. The problem is that small churches have unique strengths and weaknesses that are radically different from those of the mega-churches that they attempt to follow.

This thesis considers both sides of the purpose statement above. This thesis considers both evangelism and the small church, bringing the two together in a way that is consistent with the unique character of the small church.

In looking at evangelism, William J. Abraham, Professor of Evangelism at

Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, sums up the challenge involved in any study of evangelism.

We need to spell out an account of evangelism that will be both serviceable in the actual practice of ministry and viable in its own right theologically. Beyond that, such an account must be suitably informed by historical considerations and true to the richness of the Christian gospel. We need an analysis of evangelism that will be at once historically grounded, theologically credible, and practically apt.1

While understanding the impossibility of fully carrying out the task presented by Abraham, this thesis attempts to combine a solid biblical foundation with a historical, theological survey and develop this into a practical approach

1 William J. Abraham, The Logic of Evangelism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989), 18. 2 that will be applicable to small churches in the twenty-ﬁrst century Canadian context.

This thesis considers evangelism in the narrow context of small churches.

For the purpose of this study, the small church is deﬁned as one with less than one hundred and ﬁfty people in attendance on a Sunday morning. The majority of churches in Canada fall into this category. While mega-churches may get the majority of the attention, small churches are important, if for no other reason, they are still found in every part of Canadian society.

The small church is not simply a smaller version of the large church. It is unique in its own right and must be understood as such. Before attempting to develop any program within a small church, the characteristics that make it different must be understood. To move ahead without understanding those characteristics produces the same results as if someone tried to organize a pickup sports team on the same principles as those under which a professional team operates. It simply does not work.

Thus, it is not enough just to study evangelism and then apply such study to the small church. The results of the study must run through the small-church matrix so that those results are applied to that unique small church context. The purpose of this thesis is to do exactly that. It is to combine a deeper understanding of evangelism with a contextual examination of the small church so that the two ﬁt together in a practical approach in order to impact the community encountered by each congregation. 3

For some, the thought of bringing evangelism and the small church together seems to be an oxymoron. The underlying assumption is that if a small church practices evangelism, it will attract people and not remain a small congregation. In reality, there are a number of factors that can affect the size of a church other than evangelistic effectiveness.2 Every congregation, regardless of its size, needs to have a mindset that involves reaching out to its community because, as I demonstrate in the first chapter of this thesis, there is a clear scriptural mandate for such evangelistic involvement. The challenge is to find ways that fit the small-church context. Whether this results in growth is Godʼs side of the equation. The churchʼs side of the equation is to be faithful in its attempt to reach out and this applies to the small church as much as it does to any church of any size.

As just noted, there are two sides to every conversion experience. There is the divine side in which God is actively involved in the process of someone coming to faith in Jesus Christ. There is also a human side in which people who are Christians share their faith and people make response decisions. How these two sides ﬁt together in any story of conversion has been a matter for theological debate over a long period of time. This thesis project considers evangelism largely from the human side but recognizes the truth that in every conversion,

God is an essential and initiating part of the process both in the work of

2 One small church, located in rural Southern Ontario, calculated that over one pastorʼs eight-year term more than one hundred and ﬁfty new people joined the church as regular attenders. During that same period, however, more than one hundred and twenty people left the church, almost all because of relocation to another community. More than forty of the people who left were students who moved to a large urban center to attend college or university and never returned to their home town. The rural setting in which this church was located played a large part in the rate of growth that it experienced. 4 evangelism and in the faith decision on the part of the person who becomes a believer. For this reason, even though it is not stressed throughout the thesis, prayer is an essential part of any evangelistic strategy. 5

CHAPTER 2

THE BIBLICAL FOUNDATION

Attempting to develop a chapter on biblical foundations is like a person trying to empty the ocean of its water using only a pail. The subject of evangelism is far too vast and the enormity of placing it on a ﬁrm biblical foundation too great to do anything more than merely scratch the surface. William Abraham captures something of the impossibility of the task.

The subject of evangelism raises some very fundamental questions about a variety of issues that are of great importance within theology. Reﬂection on evangelism forces us to wrestle with what the essence of Christianity is and with such topics as conversion, faith and repentance; it leads us to come to terms with the nature of the kingdom of God and the place of the kingdom in the ministry of Jesus; it leads us to think deeply about the nature of baptism and of Christian initiation; it encourages us to explore the relation between the intellect and the emotions in Christian commitment; it draws us to examine how far the faith of the early centuries can be expressed in the modern world; it makes us tackle anew the nature of apologetics; it makes us focus on how far, if at all, theistic proposals are amenable to rational persuasion. This is just the beginning of the list of topics that can be drawn up.3

Realizing the impossibility of covering everything, this paper will concentrate on four biblical themes that taken together provide a solid foundation for developing an evangelistic strategy. These four truths are the foundational truth of Godʼs mission in the world, the centrality of the Kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus, the place of discipleship in the Great Commission, and the danger of deﬁning the conversion experience too narrowly.

Before considering the ﬁrst of these themes, the importance of laying a solid biblical foundation for evangelism at the local church level must be

3 Abraham, The Logic of Evangelism, 11. 6 considered. Evangelism is a perceived priority in any evangelical church. John

Stackhouse, Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology at Regent College, gives five concerns that he believes define Evangelicals. Three of them deal directly with the content of the gospel and the need to proclaim that gospel.4 He then states that these three points so define evangelicalism that they supersede denominational attachments.5

This concern for evangelism is evident in the number of seminars developed, sermons preached, programs created, and books written. All have the same desired outcome to challenge people to become more involved in sharing their faith. Unfortunately, in most cases, the focus of these seminars, sermons, programs and books has been the practice of evangelism without a solid biblical foundation being set for that practice. As is true in every facet of church life, practice without a solid foundation leads to problems. Don Posterski, Vice

President of National Programs for World Vision, Canada, suggests that we need to reinvent evangelism if we are going to relate to people in todayʼs world.6 Mark

Mittelberg, previously Evangelism Director at Willow Creek Community Church, outlines four points that will help churches develop a strategy that will transform

4 Stackhouse states that the very word evangelical comes from the Greek word for gospel. Evangelicals believe that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ. Evangelicals also believe in conversion away from sin and towards God. They also believe in mission. Even the fourth point, which is a belief in the authority of scripture, while not relating directly to evangelism, provides evangelicals with their authority for evangelism. They believe in good news, conversion and mission because they believe that these points are grounded in biblical truth.

5 John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Evangelical Landscapes: Facing Critical Issues of the Day (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 49-50.

6 Donald C. Posterski, Reinventing Evangelism (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1989). 7 them into contagious churches.7 Rick Richardson, Director of the Masters in

Evangelism Program at Wheaton College, tries to provide an approach to evangelism that will work in a post-modern world.8 Each of these books and many others like them provide helpful approaches to doing evangelism but none of them builds on a solid biblical foundation. This chapter on the biblical foundation of evangelism is written with an appreciation for the importance of such a foundation and the realization that far too often it is the missing ingredient in many of the seminars and books that have been developed for popular use in churches.

The Foundational Truth of Godʼs Mission in the World

I wanted them to see not just that the Bible contains a number of texts which happen to provide a rationale for missionary endeavor but that the whole Bible is itself a “missional” phenomenon. The writings that now comprise our Bible are themselves the product of and witness to the ultimate mission of God. The Bible renders to us the story of Godʼs mission through Godʼs people in the engagement with Godʼs world for the sake of the whole of Godʼs creation. The Bible is the drama of this God of purpose engaged in the mission of achieving that purpose universally, embracing past, present and future, Israel and the nations, “life, the universe and everything,” and with its center, focus, climax and completion in Jesus Christ.9

As Christopher Wright, Director of International Ministries for the Langham

Partnership International, has pointed out, an understanding of the missionary endeavor must be set in the context of the whole of Scripture and of Godʼs

7 Mark Mittelberg, Building A Contagious Church: Revolutionizing the Way We View and Do Evangelism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000).

8 Rick Richardson, Reimagining Evangelism: Inviting Friends On a Spiritual Journey (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006.

9 Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bibleʼs Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academics, 2006), 22. 8 ultimate mission. While Wright makes this point for the whole of the missionary endeavor, it is equally valid for evangelism. Our understanding of evangelism must ﬁrst and foremost be grounded in the larger setting of Godʼs mission or purpose for his creation.

The Bible begins with the story of creation. Whatever oneʼs perspective on such issues as the length of time that God took to bring the world into existence, one thing is clear from the ﬁrst two chapters of Genesis. God and God alone is responsible for the worldʼs existence. God was not one of a pantheon of gods who together created the world. It was the work of the one, true God.

As recorded in Genesis 3, the human race fell when Adam and Eve sinned. In Genesis 3-11, the author records in stark detail the impact of sin on the world. The murder of Abel (ch. 3), the destruction of the world by a ﬂood (chs.

6-9), and the human pride behind the Tower of Babel (ch. 11) all demonstrate the universal fact of sin and the destructiveness that sin brings. The remainder of the

Bible is the account of Godʼs response to sin in the world.

Genesis 12 expresses a tension that is essential to understanding the unfolding story of the Bible. God is the Creator of the whole earth. He is the one, true God, the God of all people. On the other hand, beginning with this twelfth chapter, God becomes uniquely the God of Israel. Walter Brueggemann, previously professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, stresses the importance of this tension.

It is important in doing Old Testament theology to keep in purview the tension between YHWH as the God of Israel (“I shall be your God”) and YHWH as God of all peoples. It is a tension that cannot and must not be resolved, though it is evident that the great weight of the text and of the interpretive 9

tradition is on the side of YHWH as the God of Israel. It is evident that the God of the Bible is no tribal God, even though the God of the Bible had made and can make concrete historical commitments.10

The call of Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 contains this tension. In that call,

God sets in motion the events that will lead to Israel becoming Godʼs unique people. There is, however, also a universal side to this passage that causes

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., distinguished Professor of Old Testament and former

President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, to say that “if an Old

Testament “Great Commission” must be identiﬁed, then it will be Genesis 12:3.”11

In this call, God makes it very clear that his purpose is not merely to establish a nation that will be in special relationship with him but also to impact all people through the instrument of this one unique nation.

A detailed study of this passage would involve more room than the conﬁnes of this chapter allow but there are two points that are important to note.

The ﬁrst is that the central theme of this passage is blessing. In either noun or verb form the word “blessing” occurs ﬁve times in these three verses. Christopher

Wright describes these ﬁve occurrences as “gleaming like jewels in an ornamental goblet.”12 God is going to bless Abram (v. 2). Abram is going to be a blessing to others (v. 2). Those who bless Abram will be blessed (v. 3). But there can be no doubt that these blessings climax in the ﬁnal phrase of verse 3: “all

10 Walter Brueggemann, Old Testament Theology: An Introduction (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2008), 247.

11 Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Mission in the Old Testament: Israel as a Light to the Nations (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), 7.

12 Wright, The Mission of God, 208. 10 peoples on earth will be blessed.” Victor Hamilton, Professor of Bible and

Theology at Asbury College, makes this point.

The grand ﬁnale in this catalogue of blessings and promises is: (so that) by you all the earthʼs clans shall be blessed. Again, the syntax of this passage helps isolate this climatic phrase. This unit began with an imperative, continued with a number of ﬁrst singular imperfects (punctuated with an imperative that has imperfective force), and now climaxes with a perfect. V. 2 had already said that Abram would be a blessing. But to whom? For whom? Now we have an answer: all the earthʼs clans (or peoples, families), like those mentioned in Gen. 10. Here is Yahwehʼs programmatic statement. Sinister nations and people of the earth, such as we read about in chs. 3-11, are to be blessed through Abram.13

Claus Westermann, Emeritus Professor of Old Testament at Heidelberg

University, sums up this tension when he states that “the blessing of God announced in the promises to Abraham does not achieve its purpose until it encompasses all the families of the earth.”14 This is the second key point in the passage. There is a universal purpose to God selecting Abram and promising to make him into a great nation that far surpasses Godʼs desire to bless Abram and create a special nation from Abramʼs descendants. That purpose is to bring blessing to the whole world. All peoples will be blessed through Abram. Kaiser captures the importance of this passage.

It is our hope that the formative theology of Genesis 12:3 may once again be seen for what it is and has always been in the discussion of mission: a divine program to glorify himself by bringing salvation to all on planet earth. Indeed, here is where mission really begins. Here is the ﬁrst Great Commission mandate of the Bible. It is this thesis that dominates the strategy, theology, and mission of the Old Testament.15

13 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-17 (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990), 374.

14 Claus Westermann, Genesis: A Practical Commentary (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), 99.

15 Kaiser, Mission in the Old Testament, 13. 11

Any understanding of evangelism must be placed in the context of three foundational truths from the early chapters of Genesis. First, there is one God who is the creator of the universe and who is sovereign over all the earth. The story of the Jewish people throughout the Old Testament is the story of their constant battle to accept or reject this truth. On the one hand, they faced the constant temptation to worship the gods of the other nations around them. On the other hand, they were constantly being called back to covenant loyalty to the one true God who called Abram and promised to bless the world through him. House points out that acceptance of the truth of one God and only one God makes mission a natural responsibility for Godʼs people to assume.16

Second, sin is a reality in the world, a reality that touches every single person and powerfully impacts society. The story of the Old Testament is the story of the impact of that sin and the incredible damage that it has done.

Finally, God has a plan for dealing with the impact of sin. His plan involves the creation of a special people but their purpose is to bring blessing to the whole world. Christopher Wright points out that these two themes - universal sinfulness and Godʼs mission to bring blessing - run parallel to each other throughout the entire Bible.

When we combine the dark picture of Genesis 3-11 with the promise of blessing in chapter 12, we can anticipate that the story to follow will involve both realities. We know that we will be watching two scenarios unfolding together - just as Jesus said in his parable of the wheat and the weeds growing in the same ﬁeld. On the one hand, we know that history will be the arena of human sin getting even worse. But on the other hand, we will now be watching for the footprints of Godʼs blessing for all nations through the nation

16 Paul R. House, Old Testament Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 294. 12

to emerge from the loins of Abraham. Blessing will take on a historical dimension injecting hope and faith into an otherwise dark and depressing narrative.17

In the New Testament, in the person and work of Jesus, this promise made to Abraham centuries before is fulﬁlled. Jesus is Godʼs answer to sin. In

Jesusʼ death and resurrection, God dealt with the issue of sin once and for all.

Jesus, himself, pointed this out to his disciples after his resurrection. In Luke

24:44, Jesus states that all of the Old Testament scriptures pointed to this. He encompasses all of the Old Testament by including the major divisions in the

Jewish scriptures - the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms.

In Luke 24:46-47, Luke lists the events to which the Old Testament

Scriptures point. First, “the Christ will suffer”. Second, “He will rise from the dead on the third day”. Third, “repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem”. The ﬁrst two are the heart of the gospel. The third is essential if the blessing is going to extend beyond the narrow geographical and cultural conﬁnes in which Jesus lived his life here on earth.

That Easter night, privately locked up with the Eleven, Jesus grounded gospel and mission in the Old Testament Scriptures. He showed that the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms all taught his suffering, all taught his death, all taught his resurrection, all taught mission to the world beginning with Jerusalem, the very heartland of the Jewish faith, the place where the incarnate Son suffered, died and rose again.18

The Old Testament Scriptures point to the fact that mission is at the heart of Godʼs purpose for his world. It is not enough just to read the Old Testament

17 Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of Godʼs People: A Biblical Theology of the Churchʼs Mission (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 68.

18 R. Kent Hughes, Luke: That You May Know the Truth, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998), 420. 13 christological understanding. When a church or an individual becomes involved in the mission of taking the news about Jesus Christ to the world, whether that is to another country or to the person next door, that individual becomes part of fulﬁlling the mission of God. He or she becomes part of extending the blessing talked about in Genesis 12:3 to all peoples. Our understanding of evangelism must be grounded in an understanding of Godʼs desire to bless the whole world.

Wright puts our understanding of mission into proper perspective.

It is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission - Godʼs mission.19

If evangelism is separated from this over-arching purpose of God we run the risk of it becoming only an obligation that must be performed out of a sense of duty. We lose sight of the fact that when we are involved in sharing our faith, we are part of a grand story that began with creation, climaxed with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and will culminate in his glorious return.

The Centrality of the Kingdom of God in the Ministry of Jesus

Christianity is Christ. The person and work of Christ are the rock upon which the Christian religion is built. If he is not who he said he was, and if he did not do what he said he had come to do, the foundation is undermined and the whole superstructure will collapse. Take Christ from Christianity and you disembowel it; there is practically nothing left. Christ is the centre of Christianity; all else is circumference.20

If John Stott, Rector Emeritus of All Souls Church, Langham Place, is right about the centrality of Jesus in the Christian faith and almost all biblical scholars

19 Wright, The Mission of Godʼs People, 24.

20 John r.w. Stott, Basic Christianity, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1971), 21. 14 would agree with him, then every component of our faith must be deﬁned by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Everything that Christians do must be determined by the teaching and ministry of Jesus when he was here on earth. If believers are to do this, they need to understand the central message of Jesus and then build their lives as Christians around that central message.

The central core of Jesusʼ message was the Kingdom of God. This can be seen throughout the life and ministry of Jesus. Mark summarizes the preaching of Jesus as a call to repentance because the Kingdom of God is near (Mark

1:15). Jesus described his ministry as “preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God” (Luke 4:43). Many of the parables that he taught were parables about the Kingdom (Matthew 13:11, 24, 31, 44, 47). The power encounters that Jesus had with the demonic world are described in Kingdom terms (Matthew 12:25-28).

People are exhorted to seek Godʼs Kingdom (Matthew 5:33). Jesus talked about the requirements and the challenges of entry into the Kingdom (Matthew 18:3;

19:23-24). He talked about the necessity of the new birth if one was going to see the Kingdom (John 3:3). The subject of the Kingdom was the focus of his post- resurrection teaching (Acts 1:3). These are but a few examples of what was the core of Jesusʼ whole ministry. George Eldon Ladd, formally Professor of New

Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, captures something of the wonder of this message that Jesus proclaimed.

Here is an amazing claim. John had announced an imminent visitation of God which would mean the fulﬁllment of the eschatological hope and the coming of the messianic age. Jesus proclaimed that this promise was actually being fulﬁlled. This is not an apocalyptic Kingdom but a present salvation. Jesus did not promise his hearers a better future or assure them that they would soon enter the Kingdom. The presence of the Kingdom was “a 15

happening, an event, the gracious action of God.” The promise was fulﬁlled in the action of Jesus: in his proclamation of good news to the poor, release to captives, restoring sight to the blind, freeing those who were oppressed. This was no new theology or new idea or new promise; it was a new event in history.21

Ladd notes one other important point about the Kingdom.

The Kingdom is Godʼs Kingdom, not manʼs: basileia tou theou. The emphasis falls on the second word, not the ﬁrst; it is the Kingdom of God. “The fact with which we have to reckon at all times is that in the teaching of Jesus his conception of God determines everything, including the conceptions of the Kingdom and the Messiah.” If the Kingdom is the rule of God, then every aspect of the Kingdom must be derived from the character and action of God. The presence of the Kingdom is to be understood from the nature of Godʼs present activity; and the future of the Kingdom is the redemptive manifestation of his kingly rule at the end of the age.22

The Kingdom is Godʼs. This adds an important note of seriousness for every congregation as they attempt to understand what it means to work as part of the Kingdom. The decisions that are made by church leaders need to reﬂect the leading and the character of God. There is no more important role for leaders to play in a church setting than to discern the leading of God in the issues, including evangelism, that they face. They are part of his Kingdom and the decisions that they make need to reﬂect that fact.

One of the tensions in Christian living is that the Kingdom is both present and future. This understanding of the Kingdom, as both present and future, captures an essential biblical truth.

This brings us to our central thesis; that before the eschatological appearing of Godʼs Kingdom at the end of the age, Godʼs Kingdom has become dynamically active among men in Jesusʼ person and mission. The Kingdom in

21 George Eldon Ladd, The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1974), 111-112.

22 Ibid., 171. 16

this age is not merely the abstract concept of Godʼs universal rule to which men must submit; it is rather a dynamic power at work among men. This is not only the element which sets our Lordʼs teaching most distinctively apart from Judaism; it is the heart of his proclamation and the key to his entire mission. Before the apocalyptic coming of Godʼs Kingdom and the ﬁnal manifestation of his rule to bring in the new age, God has manifested his rule, his Kingdom, to bring to men in advance of the eschatological era the blessings of his redemptive reign.23

The Kingdom of God is central to the teaching and ministry of Jesus. It is dynamically active in the lives of Godʼs people both individually and collectively in the church today. It needs to be at the heart of everything that we do within the church. Therefore it needs to be at the very heart of our understanding of evangelism. William Abraham strongly makes this point

Any considered attempt to develop a coherent concept of evangelism that will be serviceable in the present must begin with eschatology. Whatever evangelism may be, it is at least intimately related to the gospel of the reign of God that was inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Any vision of evangelism that ignores the kingdom of God, or relegates it to a position of secondary importance, or fails to wrestle thoroughly with its content is destined at the outset to fail. This is so because the kingdom of God is absolutely central to the ministry of Jesus and to the mission of the disciples that launched the Christian movement into history.24

As Rodney Clapp, associate editor for Christianity Today, points out

“evangelism needs to be understood not simply as declaring a message to someone but as initiation into the world-changing kingdom of God.”25 In evangelism we are inviting people not only to make a decision for Christ but to become part of the Kingdom of God. Clapp hits the nail on the head when he suggests that “not everything the church does is evangelism but everything the

23 Ibid., 139.

24 Abraham, The Logic of Evangelism, 13.

25 Rodney Clapp, A Pecular People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 167. 17 church does relates to evangelism.”26 Too often evangelism has been separated from the church and entrusted to individuals or para-church organizations. In too many cases churches have been reluctant to become involved in evangelism.

Behind this lies a very narrow view of what constitutes evangelism. Evangelism is seen as one activity of the church rather than something that is integrated into every facet of church life.

William Abraham also understands evangelism “as primarily initiation into the kingdom of God.”27 This carries with it a much broader understanding of what evangelism involves. Rather than simply inviting people to make a decision for

Christ, we are inviting them into a whole new way of living that is deﬁned by the reign of God over their lives.

For a long time, the relationship between evangelism and social action has been the subject of theological debate. If the life and ministry of Jesus is our guiding principle, it is hard to understand how this tension ever developed in the

ﬁrst place. One cannot read the gospels without being struck by the fact that

Jesus was deeply involved in both evangelism and social action. He spent a signiﬁcant amount of his time teaching his followers what it meant to be part of

Godʼs Kingdom. Verbal proclamation was an important part of his ministry.

He also spent considerable time meeting the needs of people. He healed the sick, raised the dead, restored sight to the blind, and fed the hungry. What is signiﬁcant in all of this is the natural way in which he integrated the two. This may

26 Ibid., 167.

27 Abraham, Logic of Evangelism, 13. 18 be no more evident than in his quotation from Isaiah 61 when he preached in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:14-19). The passage that he quoted contains proclamation of good news, the healing of physical needs, and concern for the oppressed. All of these were a natural part of Jesusʼ ministry and all need to be part of the churchʼs ministry as we act as “agents of transformation of the kingdom, having the responsibility to make the kingdom visible.”28

The hope of the church and the incentive for the church to be involved in evangelism is the fact that the Kingdom of God is not a hoped for possibility but a present reality. As believers we are part of Godʼs Kingdom and we have the privilege of inviting others to also become a part of that Kingdom. David Bosch, previously the Head of the Department of Missiology at the University of South

Africa, points this out.

In terms of the New Testament the exaltation of Jesus is the sign of the victory Jesus has already won over the evil one. Mission means the proclamation and manifestation of Jesusʼ all-embracing reign, which is not yet recognized and acknowledged by all but is nevertheless already a reality. So the churchʼs mission will not inaugurate Godʼs reign, but neither will the possibility of failure of that mission thwart it. The reign of God is not a program but a reality, ushered in by the Easter event.29

A biblical understanding of evangelism must be grounded in the reality of the Kingdom of God. This reality was at the heart of Jesusʼ ministry and must deﬁne our understanding of evangelism.

28 Bertil Ekstrom, “The Kingdom of God and the church today,” Evangelical Review of Theology 27, no. 4 (2003) : 301.

29 David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 40. 19

The Place of Discipleship in the Great Commission

Evangelism must be grounded in the overall mission of God. It must be built on the reality of the Kingdom of God as the central focus of Jesusʼ ministry.

It must also be shaped by the Great Commission as the ﬁnal mandate given by

Jesus to his followers. David Bosch gives an important note of warning for anyone studying this passage.

All this means that the way the “Great Commission” has traditionally been utilized in providing a biblical basis for missions has to be challenged or at least modiﬁed. It is inadmissible to lift these words out of Matthewʼs gospel, as it were, allow them a life of their own, and understand them without reference to the context in which they ﬁrst appeared. Where this happens the “Great Commission” is easily degraded to mere slogan, or used as a pretext for what we have in advance decided, perhaps unconsciously, it should mean. We then, however, run the risk of doing violence to the text and its intention.30

This has been done far too often by people with a desire to promote missions.31 The Great Commission must not be dealt with as its own small entity but rather as the ﬁnal pericope of Matthewʼs Gospel. Matthew had a reason for placing it at the end of his work and this must be explored.

While recognizing that the commission is not unique to Matthew this study will restrict itself to that one account. Bosch does point out, however, one signiﬁcant difference between Matthewʼs account and the other accounts as they appear in the other Gospels and Acts.

30 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 57.

31 Many sermons deal only with the actual commission found in the final three verses of Matthew without placing it in the context of what immediately precedes it: the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. The commission is only truly significant in the fact that it is the resurrected Lord who delivers it. The act of worship, found in verse seventeen, is the link between the resurrection outlined in the earlier part of the chapter and the commission in the final three verses. 20

The ﬁrst point that strikes the careful reader is that none of the passages which are usually referred to as parallels to the Matthew Great Commission (Luke 24:45-49; John 20:21; Acts 1:8) contain a command to do mission work. As a matter of fact, the Great Commission does not function anywhere in the New Testament. It is never referred to or appealed to by the early church. It is therefore quite clear that the early church did not embark on a mission to Jews and Gentiles simply because it had been told to do so. This would have placed mission in the context of legalism. Mission would then have been depersonalized. The “command” develops a “weight” of its own; it leads a life of its own. It becomes a marching order of a Christian militia, engaged in a holy war.32

Bosch makes a valid point. There is no imperative in the parallel passages. They are simple indicative statements of what will be rather than commands. When we come to Matthewʼs Gospel, however, there is a command and the indicatives in the other accounts do not negate the imperative in

Matthewʼs account. The concern that Bosch expresses is that mission will become an obligation rather than a natural outﬂow of the Christian life. This is a valid point but what makes the difference is the fact that the one giving the command in Matthew is the Risen Christ. Just prior to Jesus speaking, the disciples had responded to his appearance by worshipping him (v. 17). This is not just another command added to the multitude of commands that had been part of their Jewish upbringing. This was the ﬁnal command given by their Risen Lord.

Their response would not have been one of obligation but of love and a desire to serve the One who did so much for them.

The actual commission is enclosed by the statement of Jesusʼ authority at the beginning and the promise of his presence at the end. The disciples are not

32 David J. Bosch, The Study of Evangelism: Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church, ed. Paul W. Chilcote and Laceye C. Warner (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing House, 2008), 75. 21 to be sent out to do a task for which they are not equipped. They will go out under the authority of Jesus and will carry out the task with his constant presence as their source of strength.

The statement of authority, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (v. 18), is a Kingdom statement. The theme of the Kingdom of God has been central in Matthewʼs presentation of the life of Jesus and now at the very end of his time on earth we have this statement of total authority. R. T.

France, formally Principal of Wycliffe College, Oxford, notes that this statement is the culmination of a theme of kingship that runs through the Gospel.

Here at the end of the gospel then, we ﬁnd the culmination of the theme of kingship which was introduced by the Davidic genealogy (1:1-17), developed in the magiʼs search for the “king of the Jews” and the political threat to Herod in ch. 2, adumbrated in the developing language of Messiahship, and dramatically enacted in Jesusʻ royal ride to Jerusalem (21:1-11); since then Jesusʻ alleged claim to kingship has been a matter of accusation and mockery (27:11, 29, 37, 42), but now the true nature of that kingship is revealed. It is the universal kingship of the Son of Man which has emerged as a distinctive feature of Matthewʼs presentation of Jesus.33

There is an interesting contrast between this statement by Jesus at the end of his earthly ministry and the temptation at the beginning. In the temptation, as recorded in Matthew 4, the devil offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if

Jesus will just bow down and worship him (vv. 8-9). Jesus refuses and now at the end of his time on earth he is given all authority not only over the kingdoms of the earth but over everything in heaven as well. Satan offered a shortcut but Jesus receives more than Satan could offer by being obedient to the Fatherʼs plan.

33 R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007), 1113. 22

The promise at the end of the commission draws its meaning from the statement at the beginning. The One who promises to be with his disciples to the end of the age is the One to whom all authority has been given. Donald Hagner,

Senior Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, calls these two statements that frame the Great Commission “priceless treasures of the

Christian church that continue to equip the church for its mission.”34 They continue to be the foundation upon which the mission of the church is built.

The commission proper consists of one main verb “make disciples” and three subordinate participles: “going,” “baptizing,” and “teaching.” There is considerable debate over the exact relationship between the main verb and the

ﬁrst of these three participles, the verb “to go”. Hagner suggests that “when linked with the imperative verb the participles take on imperatival force and function as imperatives.”35 Craig Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New

Testament at Denver Seminary, describes it as an “introductory circumstantial participle that is rightly translated as coordinate to the main verb.”36 Christopher

Wright uses very similar language in describing it as a participle of attendant circumstances. He goes on to explain the signiﬁcance of this.

Jesus did not primarily command his disciples to go; he commanded them to make disciples of the nations (having previously restricted their mission to the

34 Donald A. Hagner, Word Biblical Commentary: Matthew 14-28, (Dallas: Word Books, Publisher, 1995), 889.

35 Ibid., 882.

36 Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture NIV Text (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992), 431. 23

borders of Israel during his earthly lifetime), they will have to go to the nations as a necessary condition of obeying the primary command.37

Whether this participle is translated as an imperative or as a participle of attendant circumstances, it draws its signiﬁcance from the main verb. The two are inseparably linked. The thrust of the passage is that the disciples are to go and make disciples. They are not just to go into some nebulous mission that has not been clearly deﬁned. On the other hand they canʼt make disciples unless they go.

We now come to the main focus of the commission. The disciples are to

“make disciples.” Jesus gives this command to people who had been his disciples for the previous three years. They had lived with Jesus. They had learned from him. They had listened to his teaching. They had invested their lives in learning to be like him as he invested his life in them. Dallas Willard, Professor in the School of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, has a very simple deﬁnition of what it means to be a disciple. He deﬁnes discipleship as “a life of learning from Jesus Christ how to live in the Kingdom of God now, as he himself did.”38 He goes on to suggest that the greatest issue facing the church today is our response to this command to make disciples.

So the greatest issue facing the world today, with its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identiﬁed as “Christians” will become disciples - students, apprentices, practitioners - of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.39

37 Wright, Mission of God, 35.

38 Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesusʼ Essential Teachings on Discipleship (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 62-63.

39 Willard, Introduction to The Great Omission, xv. 24

The importance of this truth cannot be stressed enough. The call to “make disciples” is the answer to what Willard calls “vampire Christians.”

This “heresy” has created the impression that it is quite reasonable to be a “vampire Christian.” One in effect says to Jesus, “Iʼd like a little of your blood, please. But I donʼt care to be your student or have your character. In fact, wonʼt you just excuse me while I get on with my life, and Iʼll see you in heaven.”40

This is not the kind of commitment to which Jesus calls his followers. An introduction into the Kingdom of God is a call to discipleship. The most important challenge facing every church is the challenge of deﬁning what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. If the Great Commission is a call to make disciples, then the church must deﬁne what a disciple is if it is going to carry out the mandate that has been given to it by Jesus. For too long in their evangelistic efforts churches have called people to simple decisions with no cost involved. The Great

Commission is a call for all churches to evaluate their understanding of evangelism in terms of discipleship rather than decisions. Church leaders need to run every aspect of church life through the grid of discipleship. Without such an evaluation churches are in danger of preaching the kind of “cheap grace” that

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, formerly Lecturer in Systematic Theology at the University of

Berlin, warned the church about prior to the Second World War.41

The Commission states two essential aspects of discipleship. As is true in many of the lists found in scripture, discipleship cannot be limited only to these

40 Ibid., 14.

41 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 2nd ed., (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1959), 47. 25 two aspects but each of them is an essential part of discipleship that canʼt be missed. The ﬁrst is baptism. Obviously the need to baptize people involves much more than simply a need to get them wet. The limitations of this chapter do not allow an in-depth study of baptism, but at the very least it is an initiation into the church body. Discipleship is not an individual pursuit. God knows that people cannot make it on their own and has designed the church in such a way that its members are to build into each otherʼs lives. If church members are going to become disciples, they need the input of other people into their lives.

The second essential ingredient in discipleship is teaching. It is not just teaching but “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (v. 20).

Becoming a disciple involves the full scope of Jesusʼ teaching. Set in the Gospel of Matthew, it certainly needs to include kingdom ethics as taught in the Sermon on the Mount (chs. 5-7), the cost of discipleship (8:18-22; 16:24-28; 19:16-30), the nature of the kingdom (ch. 13), and the events surrounding the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus (chs. 26-28). Teaching within the church needs to include more than just the contents of the Gospel of Matthew, but the Gospel does contain what Matthew believed were essential components of Jesusʼ teaching. It is important to note that the teaching must include more than just content. It must include a call to obedience. France sums this up very well.

The commission is expressed not in terms of the means, to proclaim the good news, but of the end, to “make disciples.” It is not enough that the nations hear the message; they must also respond with the same wholehearted commitment which was required of those who became disciples of Jesus during his ministry.42

42 France, The Gospel of Matthew, 1115. 26

Thus a biblical understanding of evangelism must be shaped by the call to make disciples found in the Great Commission. At the heart of every churchʼs understanding of evangelism must be the realization that each member is called to the life-long process of transforming people into fully-committed followers of

Jesus Christ. Greg Ogden, formerly Academic Director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary, describes the present state of discipleship in the church as “superﬁcial.”43 If Ogden is correct, that is a diagnosis of the state of the church that must not be passed over lightly. Discipleship is the heart of the commission that Jesus left with his church and the challenge for every, local church is to give it the importance that it demands.

The Danger of Deﬁning Conversion Too Narrowly

I have been interested in conversion for as long as I can remember. Part of that interest has been professional in orientation. My ministry has focused on evangelism for nearly forty years, and the experience of conversion lies at the heart of evangelism. In order to be effective in evangelism, it is necessary to have a clear and nuanced understanding of the nature of conversion.44

As Richard Peace, Associate Professor of Evangelism and Media at

Gordon-Conwell Seminary, states, a clear understanding of conversion is absolutely essential to evangelism. Without such an understanding people are on a journey through dense bush without a compass. They may be making excellent time but without some knowledge of where they are going, they will probably arrive at the wrong destination. Too often people are pressured into making

43 Greg Ogden, Transforming Discipleship: Making Disciples a Few at a Time (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 22.

44 Richard V. Peace, Conversion in the New Testament: Paul and the Twelve (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), 1. 27 decisions without any clear understanding of their destination. Paul Helm, J. I.

Packer Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Regent College, emphasizes the problem with this lack of direction.

Even within evangelical religion, where, in the past, these matters have been understood and emphasized, there is now a lack of definiteness. Terms such as ʻregenerationʼ, ʻconversionʼ, and ʻeffectual callingʼ, with precise meanings and clear biblical support have been eclipsed by ʻTake Jesus into your lifeʼ, ʻKnow Jesus as your own personal Saviourʼ, ʻGive your heart to Jesusʼ. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this change is not merely verbal and therefore of no real importance. Such is the close relationship between language, thought, and experience that vague and indefinite language is invariably accompanied by vague and indefinite experience.45

In attempting to deﬁne the elements of the conversion experience, scholars disagree on the number and nature of the elements. Peace suggests three elements: insight, turning and transformation.46 Helm also lists three elements: saving faith, conviction of sin and true repentance.47 Gordon T. Smith, formally Vice-President and Academic Dean at Regent College, lists seven elements: belief in Jesus, repentance, trust in Christ Jesus, transfer of allegiance, baptism, reception of the gift of the Spirit and incorporation into congregational life.48 While these scholars may not agree on the number and nature of the elements, they are in total agreement that conversion is more than a simple decision with few implications for life thereafter. At a minimum Peaceʼs three elements must be part of the conversion experience.

45 Paul Helm, The Beginnings: Word & Spirit in Conversion (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1986), 10.

46 Peace, Conversion in the New Testament, 37.

47 Helm, The Beginnings, 69-70.

48 Gordon T. Smith, Beginning Well: Christian Conversion & Authentic Transformation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 125. 28

At the core of the concept of conversion is the idea of turning. On one side of that turning are the conditions that facilitate or enable the turning to take place (insight). On the other side of the turning is the outcome or result of the turning.49

Paul is very clear that the essential element in conversion is faith (Romans

1:16-17; Galatians 3:11; Ephesians 2:8-9). For faith to be meaningful there must be something concrete that is believed. As Peace states, there must be insight that encompasses the content of the gospel if conversion is going to take place.

Otherwise faith is meaningless.

Thus it is clear: conversion begins with insight. When people are confronted with the reality of their salvation before God, the option is presented to them to correct their errant ways. They now see, and in seeing it becomes possible for them to say no to the old way while embracing a new way. Without such insight of their true states before God, there would be no reason to embrace a new way. Without insight there cannot be conversion.50

Too often people are presented with a canned approach to evangelism and then asked to accept Jesus into their lives without any understanding of the full scope of the gospel message. People cannot respond in faith without a clear understanding of what they are being asked to believe. Recognizing that there is the huge theological question surrounding the part God plays and the part people play in this saving faith, it is clear that whatever the origin of that faith, there must be content for it to be effective.

It is at this point that many Christians have a faulty understanding of evangelism. When the focus is on decisions, too often the challenge is to get someone to pray a prayer. This prayer then becomes the indication that a

49 Peace, Conversions in the New Testament, 37.

50 Ibid., 49-50. 29 decision has been made. In too many evangelical churches, the sinnerʼs prayer has become the key ingredient in the conversion process. Churches have substituted a prayer for faith. They can clearly know when a prayer has been prayed and that allows them to keep their statistics by which they measure the success or failure of their evangelistic endeavors. Humans cannot measure faith.

Faith is something that is inward, something that only God knows for sure whether it is truly there. When people try to determine the genuineness of conversion they are trying to put themselves in Godʼs place. Their responsibility is to share the content of the gospel in a faithful and persuasive way under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

The second element in Peaceʼs understanding of conversion is the action of turning.

So there was a turning on Paulʼs part - from the law to Christ, from persecution to apostleship, from killing Jews who had become Christians to calling Gentiles to become Christians. This is what lies at the heart of the word “conversion” - the image of turning. There are a from and a to. The old is renounced (turned from) and the new is embraced (turned to).51

Without turning there is no conversion. The idea that someone can claim to have experienced conversion and continue on as if nothing had changed is contrary to the very meaning of the word. Something must change. This turning is often at the heart of the conversion stories that everyone likes to hear. God comes into a life and totally changes that person into something completely new.

As Peace has pointed out, the Apostle Paul is perhaps the most radical example of this kind of change in the New Testament.

51 Ibid., 85. 30

The ﬁnal element in Peaceʼs understanding of conversion is transformation. Peace sees transformation as that which distinguishes between a numinous experience and true conversion.52 Paul describes the transformation that takes place as being an entirely new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). Jesus described it as a new birth (John 3:3). Paul also describes it as being given new life when we were dead in sin (Eph. 2:4-5). These are but three of many ways in which the

New Testament describes the transformation that takes place when a person experiences true conversion.

Too often all of the focus is on the initial faith experience of trusting in the saving work of Jesus. Smith points out the problems in this.

The evangelical tradition had made the opposite mistake: it has affirmed justification but ironically, as an end rather than as a good beginning. Evangelicals have denied - explicitly or implicitly - the need for genuine transformation. In contrast to both traditions (the Roman Catholic and the Evangelical traditions), salvation is both justification and sanctification. Christian believers in all traditions have recognized that we cannot be transformed unless we know we are loved and accepted in Christ; but just as surely, they have also known and affirmed that this initial saving work of Christ is merely that - a good beginning that can and must eventually lead to maturity in Christ.53

The question of transformation reflects the Great Commissionʼs call to make disciples. It reflects the understanding of evangelism as inviting people to become part of Godʼs Kingdom here on earth. Ultimately it reflects the foundational truth that God has a plan for his world and the people in it that goes beyond simply the experience of having their sins forgiven so that they can go to heaven. Godʼs plan is that people might experience blessing through Jesus

52 Ibid., 88.

53 Smith, Beginning Well, 23. 31

Christ; they might become part of that group of people who are living under his divine reign; they might grow into the kind of disciples who go out to invite others into that Kingdom; they might become equipped to be part of all this as they experience the transformation that conversion brings to their lives.

Smith raises one more point that comes out of a proper understanding of conversion and that has serious implications for the practice of evangelism.

Taking experience seriously means we take ourselves seriously. Of course, an authentic study of conversion above all emphasizes the priority of Godʼs initiative and unilateral character of Godʼs salvation. However, we cannot examine religious experience adequately without acknowledging the uniqueness of each person and the distinctive character of each personʼs experience.54

Having grown up in a setting in which conversion was measured by very narrow parameters, I identify with what Smith is saying. Those parameters were so narrow that the conversion experience of John Wesley was even called into question. His famous testimony of what he experienced on May 24,1738 in the meeting at Aldersgate Street, London, was not tied to a speciﬁc verse of scripture and therefore questionable. An understanding of conversion must be broad enough to accommodate a wide variety of experiences.

We take experience seriously when we recognize its complexity. Conversion is a complex experience. We are complex beings, women and men of heart, mind, will, and strength. While the language used by many Christian communities implies that conversion is simple, punctiliar and deﬁnitive, in actual fact conversion is usually drawn out over many years. This means that when we speak of Christian conversion, we are serious about it only when we allow for the complexity of the actual experience.55

54 Ibid., 17.

55 Ibid., 18. 32

Conclusion

This chapter began with the illustration of someone standing on the beach by the ocean with a pail trying to empty the ocean of its contents. That remains an apt illustration as this chapter comes to a close. A few pails have been removed from the overwhelming amount of material written on the subject of evangelism and the large number of issues that this topic raises. While much remains not discussed, the four issues that have been identiﬁed are extremely important. Taken together they offer a framework for developing a solid biblical foundation for the subject of evangelism.

Evangelism must be grounded in the overall mission of God. It must be built on the reality of the Kingdom of God. It must be shaped by the Great

Commission and its call to make disciples. Finally it must be developed around an adequate understanding of the conversion experience. If churches spent time working through these four foundational issues rather than jumping on whatever bandwagon happens to be the fad of the day, they would be far more effective in evangelism than they are. 33

CHAPTER 3

THE THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATION

If attempting to develop a biblical foundation for evangelism can be compared to attempting to empty the ocean with a pail, attempting to do an historical survey on the subject carries with it the same element of impossibility.

This thesis will focus on ﬁve periods in history: the ﬁrst three centuries, the

Reformation, the eighteenth century with an emphasis on John Wesley and

Jonathan Edwards, the nineteenth century with an emphasis on Charles Finney and the twentieth century with an emphasis on the Lausanne Movement and

John Stott as representative of that movement. Even in limiting the study to these

ﬁve periods, the task of trying to cover all that these periods contributed to a theological understanding of evangelism is beyond the scope of this chapter.

Therefore, each section will concentrate on just one contribution to the study of evangelism that came out of the historical era discussed.

The First Three Centuries

From its very beginning on the Day of Pentecost, the early church was driven by a need to evangelize. In the opening verses of the Book of Acts, Luke stresses the fact that the church will be a witnessing church. The commission in verse 8 is not an imperative telling the church what they needed to do. It is an indicative describing what the church will do. The impact of the Holy Spirit coming with power meant that they would be witnesses. John Stott captures this reality in the early church. 34

Although they were not to know the times or dates, what they should know was that they would receive power so that between the Spiritʼs coming and the Sonʼs coming again, they were to be his witnesses in ever-widening circles. In fact, the whole interim period between Pentecost and the Parousia (however long or short) is to be ﬁlled with the world-wide mission of the church in the power of the Spirit.56

This emphasis on evangelism, however, was balanced by an equal emphasis on growth into maturity. This is demonstrated in the life of Paul. The last half of the Book of Acts provides an account of Paulʼs evangelistic efforts throughout the Roman Empire but his letters demonstrate his commitment to the continued growth of those who came to Christ through his ministry. Paul saw evangelism as much more than bringing people to a point of simple decision that was designed to insure them a place in heaven. His desire was to bring converts to a point of maturity as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Michael Green, Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, points out that this emphasis on evangelism was not simply a phenomenon of the ﬁrst century.

In these first two centuries or so of the Churchʼs existence we find many faults, much that dishonours the name they professed. But we also find an evangelistic zeal and effort, exerted by the whole broad spectrum of the Christian community to bring other people to the feet of their ascended Lord and into the fellowship of his willing servants. This is a permanent reminder of the Churchʼs first priority. Evangelism was the very life blood of the early Christians.57

56 John R.W. Stott, The Message of Acts (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1990), 44.

57 Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), 280. 35

Robert E. Webber, formerly Myers Professor of Ministry at Northern

Seminary, suggests that in the early centuries of the church the balance between evangelism and discipleship that characterized Paulʼs ministry continued.

This brief summary points to an intentional process of evangelism, discipleship and Christian formation. The process of formation was not left to mere hope that the new convert would mature. Instead, the churchʼs approach to new converts was to take them by the hand and walk them through an intentional, life-giving process of formation that assured they believed the faith handed down by the apostolic community, that they learned how to believe like a Christian, and that they became active participants in the new community to which they now belonged.58

That balance is seen in the writings of St. Hippolytus of Rome in the third century. He outlines four steps or stages through which new converts must pass.

There is an initial examination to determine the reality of a personʼs faith.59 This was followed by a three-year period in which the person was instructed as a catechumen.60 After an examination to determine whether the personʼs life was worthy, the catechumen received baptism.61 Finally after baptism the Bishop laid hands on the person and he or she received conﬁrmation.62

While the process might be different from what many churches would practice today, the fact that there was a process is what is important. Conversion was not seen as a one-time decision with very few implications for future living.

58 Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Evangelism: Making Your Church a Faith-Forming Community (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 24.

59 St. Hippolytus of Rome, The Treatise on the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome, ed. Gregory Dix and Henry Chadwick, new and rev. ed. (London: The Alban Press, 1992), 23.

60 Ibid., 28.

61 Ibid., 30-31.

62 Ibid., 38. 36

The process of bringing a person to maturity within the framework of the church was an essential part of the conversion experience.

It is time to recapture the balance between evangelism and discipleship, that was an important part of church life in the ﬁrst three centuries. It is not enough simply to produce decisions that too often have no lasting impact on the convertʼs life. The challenge must be to grow disciples who become active members of the church into which they are incorporated at the moment of conversion.

The Reformation Period

A study of evangelism during the Reformation period is not so much a study of method as it is a study of message. When Martin Luther posted his ninety-ﬁve theses on the church door in Wittenberg63 on October 31, 1517, he did so in what has been described as “the most churchly of the European lands.”64

While there was wide acceptance of the fact that the church needed to be reformed, there was almost no acceptance of the idea that people needed to be evangelized in the sense that churches tend to think of it today. As Webber points out, Luther worked out of a “Christianized-society mind-set in which evangelism was attached to infant baptism.”65 The church was at the heart of society and almost everyone was part of the church. In fact, when the Anabaptists called for a

63 The question of whether Luther actually posted his theses on the church door is a matter of some academic debate. It is, however, widely accepted as popular fact.

64 Williston Walker et al., A History of the Christian Church, 4th ed. (New York: Charles Scribnerʼs Sons, 1970), 419.

65 Webber, Ancient-Future Evangelism, 30. 37

“personal, radical choice to follow Jesus demonstrated by adult baptism,”66 they were persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike.

The primary contribution of the Reformation to evangelism lies in the message that Luther and other reformers proclaimed. Through his studies in the period leading up to the posting of the ninety-ﬁve theses, Luther slowly came to an understanding of the truth of justiﬁcation by faith alone. It did not come to him as a sudden insight or blinding revelation but little by little through his studies of the Bible and of Augustine.67 This understanding of the gospel is clearly expressed in his commentary on Romans.

Godʼs righteousness is that by which we become worthy of His great salvation, or through which alone we are (accounted) righteous before Him. Human teachers set forth and inculcate the righteousness of men, that is, who is righteous, or how a person becomes righteous, both in his own eyes and those of others. Only the Gospel reveals the righteousness of God, that is, who is righteous or how a person becomes righteous before God, namely, alone by faith, which trusts the Word of God. Thus we read in Mark 16:16: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” The righteousness of God is the cause of our salvation. This righteousness, however, is not that according to which God Himself is righteous as God, but that by which we are justiﬁed by Him through faith in the Gospel.68

There is no more important issue that anyone can contemplate than the question of how a person comes into relationship with God. This was the issue that divided the European world in Lutherʼs day. R. C. Sproul, President of

Ligonier Ministries, captures the importance of this issue.

66 Ibid., 30.

67 Owen Chadwick, The Reformation (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1972), 45.

68 Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, tr. J. Theodore Mueller (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1954), 24-25. 38

It is no accident that the greatest controversy in the history of the Christian church centered on the question of justiﬁcation. Because of this issue the church of Christ fragmented into thousands of individual pieces. Theologians have fussed and debated over a host of lesser issues, but the protest of the Protestant Reformation was not over triﬂes. The issue was worthy of great controversy because it had eternal consequences. The issue of the Reformation was how is a person redeemed?69

That issue is still as important today as it was in Lutherʼs time. Lutherʼs answer that a person is justiﬁed before God on the basis of faith alone in Jesus

Christ must still be the central message of our evangelism.

The Eighteenth Century

The eighteenth century, both in Great Britain and in America, experienced powerful revivals that not only transformed individuals but nations as well. God worked powerfully through the ministry of a number of men.

In Wales, Howel Harris (1714-1773) and Daniel Rowlands (1713-1790) were leaders in a revival that broke out in the mid-1730s. But only with the emergence of its three great leaders - John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield - did the evangelical revival swell into a mighty tide. For four decades, it advanced in three identifiable but closely related strands, all related to the established Church of England: the Methodist societies under the Wesleys, the Calvinistic Methodists under Whitefield, and the Anglican Evangelicals, who operated along more traditional parish lines.70

God was also at work in America in a very powerful way.

The most far-reaching and transforming movement in the eighteenth century religious life of America was the Great Awakening, a revival that had many phases and lasted for over half a century. Coming at a time when the familiar patterns of Christian outreach were not proving very effective, and at a time of spreading rationalism and cultural confusion, the awakening not only led to tremendous quickening of the Christian life, but also changed the

69 R.C. Sproul, One Holy Passion: The consuming thirst to know God (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1987), 117.

70 Walker, A History of the Christian Church, 598. 39

conceptions of entrance upon that life in a way that profoundly affected the majority of American churches.71

While numerous men and women were used by God as part of these spiritual movements, this study will focus on two - John Wesley as a leader in the revival in Britain and Jonathan Edwards as a key ﬁgure in the Great Awakening in America. While these two men were radically different in many ways, they did share some important characteristics as pointed out by J. I. Packer, formerly

Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology at Regent College.

They were both spiritually alive in Christ in a quite breathtaking way; they were both wonderfully single-minded, and magnificently firm and courageous in the face of criticism and opposition; and overall, according to their own lights, they both were utterly selfless in the service of their God and Savior, just as they were both truly wise in dealing with the upheavals of revival.72

John Wesley

In the evening I went very unwilling to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Lutherʼs preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine.73

With those famous words Wesley described his own conversion experience, an experience that became the driving force behind his ministry. It is significant that this event took place in a meeting of a society rather than in a church building. It is also significant that one of the most critical influences in his

71 Ibid., 606.

72 J.I. Packer, A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John Piper & Justin Taylor (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 86.

73 John Wesley, The Journal of John Wesley, ed. Percy Livingstone Parker (Chicago: Moody Press, n.d.), 64. 40 life before his conversion was the impact of a group of Moravian Christians who challenged him concerning his understanding of the gospel. This is signiﬁcant because one of the tensions that characterized Wesleyʼs life was that of a strong loyalty to the church of England on the one hand and a ministry that constantly challenged the church on the other.

Wesleyʼs loyalty to the Church was not without its difﬁculties. He found a spiritual connection with the Moravians and could easily have joined them if not for the loyalty that kept him connected to the Church of England. He wrote, “I had a long conversation with Peter Bohler. I marvel how I refrain from joining these men. I scarcely ever see any of them but my heart burns within me. I long to be with them, and yet I am kept from them.”74

Yet Wesley remained loyal to the Church in which he had spent his life and which had ordained him to the Christian ministry. He refused to be bound by the restrictions that the Church tried to place on him but at the same time he refused to leave the church. He took the radical step of preaching in the open air in spite of the fact that it was completely contrary to normal Anglican practice. He refused to be bound by normal parish life and saw the whole world as his parish.

I look upon all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation. This is the work which I know God has called me to; and sure I am that His blessing attends it. Great encouragement have I, therefore, to be faithful in fulﬁlling the work He hath given me to do.75

74 Ibid., 89.

75 Ibid., 74. 41

In commenting on the place that music played in the revival, John Pollock, author of numerous biographies of Christian leaders, illustrates the impact of this tension in the ministry of Wesley.

The hymns would change English worship, yet for most of Wesleyʼs lifetime they were seldom heard in parish churches. Men and women in the thousands sang them in the market squares and on the hillsides and in the Methodist preaching houses. The revival spread by song.76

The songs of the revival were sung everywhere but in the churches because many of the churches were closed to the Wesley brothers. John Wesley preached in the open air even though he described it in the early years as “being more vile”77 when he ventured outside the church and into the open ﬁelds. He did so because often the churches were denied to him. Yet Wesley refused to leave the Church of England. At a conference of Methodist leaders, Wesley, along with his brother Charles, reiterated his loyalty to the church by proposing a “solemn declaration of purpose never to separate from the church.”78 During his lifetime

Wesley remained faithful to that declaration.

Evangelism should never be separated from the church. While there will be opportunities outside of the formal conﬁnes of church life to share the gospel, the goal of all evangelism should be to bring people into the fellowship of a local church. It is within the church that people should be brought to maturity in their

Christian walk. Wesleyʼs commitment to the church, while often ﬁlled with obstacles, was nonetheless biblical. Wesley provides us with a powerful reminder

76 John Pollock, John Wesley (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1989), 164.

77 Wesley, The Journal of John Wesley, 68.

78 Ibid., 218. 42 that opposition within the church is never a valid reason to eliminate the church from any strategy for evangelism.

Jonathan Edwards

One of the paradoxes in the ministry of Jonathan Edwards lay in the contrast between his intellectual capacity and his strong Calvinistic beliefs on the one hand and the emotional and physical manifestations of the Great Awakening on the other. One does not read Edwards without being impressed by his intellectual abilities. In his writings he emphasized the sovereignty of God as the foundation for everything else that he taught.

And whatever minister has a like occasion to deal with souls, in a ﬂock under such circumstances, I cannot but think he will soon ﬁnd himself under necessity, greatly to insist upon it with them that God is under no obligation to show mercy to any natural man whose heart is not turned to God. It appears to me that if I had taught those that came to me under trouble any other doctrine, I should have taken a most direct course utterly to have undone them. I think that I have found no discourses more remarkably blessed than those in which the doctrine of Godʼs absolute sovereignty with regard to the salvation of sinners, and his just liberty with regard to answering the prayers or succeeding the pains of mere natural men, have been insisted on.79

This combination of an intellectual approach to ministry and a strong

Calvinistic theology is not what one normally associates with strong physical and emotional manifestations in the church. Yet these were very much a part of the response to the Spiritʼs moving in the revival in New England.

The months of August and September were the most remarkable of any this year for appearances of the conviction and conversion of sinners, and

79 Jonathan Edwards, “A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton and the Neighboring Towns and Villages in a Letter to the Reverend Dr. Benjamin Colman of Boston, pastor of the Brattle Street Church,” Jonathan Edwards on Evangelism, ed. Carl J. C. Wolfe (Grand Rapids: Williams B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1958), 25-26. 43

great reviving, quickening, and comforts of professors, and for extraordinary external effects of these things. It was a very frequent thing to see a house full of outcries, faintings, convulsions, and such like, both with distress, and also with admiration and joy. It was not the manner here to hold meetings all night, as in some places, nor was it common to continue them till very late in the night; but it was pretty often so, that there were some that were so affected and their bodies so overcome, that they could not go home, but were obliged to stay all night where they were.80

When confronted with these “extraordinary external effects” Edwards refused to put God in a box and dictate to God how he had to work. He was open and in fact expected God to work in unusual ways since God was doing something which had not been experienced before.

From hence it follows, that in gracious affections there are new perceptions and sensations entirely in their nature and kind from any thing experienced by the saints before they were sanctiﬁed. For God by his gracious inﬂuence, produces something that is new, not only in degree and circumstances, but in the whole of its nature, and that which could be produced by no exaltation or composition of what was possessed before, or by the addition of any thing of the same kind - if God produces something thus new in the mind, then doubtless something entirely new is felt, or perceived, or thought; or, which is the same thing, there is some perception or sensation of the mind of an entirely new description.81

On the other hand, Edwards recognized the danger inherent in such behaviour. He was aware that such behaviour could easily be the result of an inﬂuence other than the Holy Spirit working on a personʼs life.

On the other hand, a natural man may have religious apprehensions and affections which in many respects, are quite new to him; and yet what he experiences may not be the exercise of a new principle, not the sensations of a new spiritual apprehension. His affections may be quite new, through the

80 Jonathan Edwards, “An Account of the Revival of Religion in Northampton in 1740-1742, as Communicated in a Letter to a Minister in Boston,” Jonathan Edwards on Revival (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth, 1999), 151.

81 Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise on Religious Affections (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1982), 141. 44

inﬂuence of natural principles, arising from some powerful inﬂuence of Satan, or some kind of strong delusion.82

Edwards recognized that while such physical or emotional behaviour could be the result of the work of the Holy Spirit, they could not be taken as absolute proof that such a work was happening in a personʼs life. Only fruit displayed over time could provide evidence that such a work of God had really taken place.

The effects and consequences of things among us plainly show the following things, viz. That the degree of grace is by no means to be judged by the degree of joy, or the degree of zeal; and that indeed we cannot at all determine by these things who are gracious and who are not; and that it is not the degree of religious affections but the nature of them that is chieﬂy to be looked at. Some that have had very great raptures of joy, and have been extraordinarily ﬁlled (as the vulgar phrase is), and have had their bodies overcome, and that very often, have manifested far less of the temper of Christians in their conduct since than some others that have been still and have made no great outward show. But then again, there are many others that have had extraordinary joys and emotions of mind with frequent great effects upon their bodies, that behave themselves steadfastly, as humble, amiable, eminent Christians.83

Whatever the immediate signs might be, Edwards recognized that it was the long-term fruit that evidenced true conversion. Rather than being caught up in the immediate results of the revival as wonderful as those were, Edwards recognized that time was required to evaluate what had taken place.

It is with professors of religion, especially with those who become such at a time of great outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as it is with blossoms in the spring: there are vast numbers of them on the trees, all of which look fair and promising, but yet very many of which come to nothing. Many of them soon wither and drop off, though for a while they looked as beautiful and smelled as sweetly as those that remain; so that we cannot by our senses ascertain with certainty those blossoms which have in them the secret virtue which will

82 Ibid., 144.

83 Edwards, Jonathan Edwards on Revival, 159. 45

afterwards appear in the fruit. We must judge not by the beautiful colors and the pleasant smell of the blossom, but by the matured fruit.84

Edwards strikes an important balance in his understanding of what constitutes acceptable evangelistic practice. On the one hand he is open to the fact that a sovereign God is going to work in different ways in different situations and that those ways might be out of the normally accepted practices in any given church setting. On the other hand those unusual manifestations in a revival setting need to be judged carefully since people can be deluded into thinking that what is from Satan is really from the Spirit. The reality of any conversion experience must be judged by the long-term fruit that is produced.

Edwards has been quoted by people who would advocate extreme behaviour in revival settings. He has also been quoted by those who would disapprove of any extreme physical and emotional behaviour. Edwards encourages people on both sides to live with the tension that is evident in his writings. God can work in unexpected ways but not everything is from God. That is still a balance that is needed today.

The Nineteenth Century

Charles Finney

Just as the story of nineteenth-century Protestantism in Great Britain and on the Continent began with the evangelical awakening, so too did the story of religion in the United States in the same period. In America, the pietistic, evangelistic, low-church current of revival became largely dominant in church life. Although there were some evidences suggestive of the other aspects of the British and Continent revival, and although some communions resisted the revivalist tide, on the whole an evangelical conception of Christian faith

84 Edwards, A Treatise on Religious Affections, 118. 46

with characteristic attention to the winning of souls set the pace in American Protestantism.85

At the beginning of the new century, a revival swept across the United

Sates impacting churches everywhere it spread. One of the products of this new awakening was a young lawyer in upstate New York who was destined to become the outstanding revivalist in the ﬁrst half of the century. Charles

Grandison Finney not only had a huge impact in his own day but has inﬂuenced evangelistic practice ever since. As Charles Hambrick-Stowe, formerly Dean at

Northern Seminary, points out, Finney, himself, may have exaggerated his impact on the revival in his Memoirs in that he was not the author of the revival86 but he did have a profound impact in his day and over the years since.

Perhaps Finneyʼs greatest contribution came out of what came to be known as “new measures.” These were new approaches that Finney introduced that, while they may not seem revolutionary to people today, were new and in many cases controversial. These grew out of several basic beliefs that helped to shape Finneyʼs approach. The ﬁrst was that while Christ certainly commissioned his followers to make disciples, he didnʼt spell out the means by which this should be done.

Their commission was: “Go and preach the Gospel, and disciple all nations.” It did not prescribe any forms. It did not admit any. No person can pretend to get any set of forms or particular directions as to measures, out of this commission. Do it - the best way you can; ask wisdom from God; use the faculties He has given you; seek the direction of the Holy Ghost; go forward and do it. This was their commission. And their object was to make known the

85 Walker, A History of the Christian Church, 652.

86 Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing House, 1966), 9. 47

Gospel in the most effectual way, to make the truth stand out strikingly, so as to obtain the attention and secure the obedience of the greatest number possible. No person can ﬁnd any form of doing this laid down in the Bible. It is preaching the Gospel which there stands out prominently as the great thing. The form is left out of the question.87

A more controversial position in terms of his approach to revivals was the fact that he believed that a revival could be brought about by the “right use of the appropriate means.”88 In an environment still greatly inﬂuenced by a strong

Calvinistic theology, this was quite radical. While Finney still believed that a revival could not take place without the blessing of God, he held a strong belief in the role that people played.

Revivals were formally regarded as miracles, and have been so thought of by some even in our day. Others, again, have ideas on the subject so unsatisfactory, that if they would only think, they would see their absurdity. For a long time it was supposed by the Church that a revival was a miracle, an interposition of Divine power, with which they had nothing to do, and which they had no more agency in producing than they had in producing thunder, or a storm of hail, or an earthquake. It is only within a few years that ministers generally have supposed revivals were to be promoted, by the use of means designed and adapted to that object.89

Finney also saw these new measures as essential if he was going to relate to people in an environment which was often indifferent to the message that he was proclaiming.

87 Charles Grandison Finney, Revivals of Religion: Lectures by Charles Grandison Finney with the Authorʼs Final Additions and Corrections, ed. William Henry Harding (London: Morgan and Scott Ltd., 1910), 281.

88 Ibid., 5.

89 Ibid., 12-13. 48

so many that cry “Lo here!” and “Lo there!” that the Church cannot maintain her ground without sufﬁcient novelty in measures, to get the public ear.90

These three values formed the foundation for Finneyʼs innovation. He did not see anything in scripture that prevented the use of innovative practices. He believed that the proper use of these practices would result in revival taking place. Finally he believed that if he was going to be relevant to his listeners he needed to introduce new methods. As Lewis Drummond, formerly President of

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, points out, Finney was innovative.

Above all, Charles G. Finney will be remembered as the great revivalistic evangelist. The use and popularizing of prayer meetings for revivals, the call to public response to receive Christ, the personalizing of the message of salvation, the counseling of inquirers, the protracted, structured and organized meeting, using any kind of building or hall in which to preach the Gospel, and many other revolutionary methodologies - these are the greatest contributions. Of course, the “new measures” are no longer “new” today: part of the programmes of evangelists like D.L. Moody, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham and a host of others. All these owe so much to this man.91

While most of these measures do not seem innovative to people today, they were in Finneyʼs era. Prayer meetings were the foundation upon which

Finneyʼs revivals were built. What was perhaps most shocking was that in a male-dominated church culture, women were often encouraged to pray. The anxious seat, which was introduced during the Rochester revival, became the forerunner of the public altar call. If people were serious about their desire to follow Christ, they were invited to sit in the anxious seat. The anxious meeting became the forerunner of the counseling of seekers at evangelistic meetings.

90 Ibid., 309.

91 Lewis A. Drummond, Charles Grandison Finney and the Birth of Modern Evangelism (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1983), 259. 49

Finney would often spend long periods of time after meetings, giving personal counsel to those who were present. Organized prayer meetings, a public call to personal commitment, and a structure for giving counsel to new converts seem common place today but they have their origin in the ministry of Charles Finney.

Finney did not make these changes simply for the sake of change. He believed that they were needed if God was going to work in peopleʼs lives in the powerful way that Finney believed God wanted to work.

Finney was sure the traditional doctrines of the “old school” would lead revivals into a cul-de-sac. His entire theological quest was something of a battle to wrest revivalism from its hyper-Calvinistic grasp. The preacher was not to be a mere proclaimer of the Gospel, he was also to be a persuader of the people. Finney stands signiﬁcantly as the watershed between revivalists like Jonathan Edwards and mass evangelists like D.L. Moody, Billy Sunday and Billy Graham.92

Much of Finneyʼs innovation came out of a desire to communicate to the people of his day. As Drummond has said, he did not believe that the approach to evangelism that had been the staple approach would be effective in the context that he was preaching. A new era called for new methods. Rodney Clapp points out that the methods used by Finney were appropriate to that time.

Revivalism as an evangelistic strategy made some sense as long as the nation was markedly inﬂuenced by Protestant Christianity. Then revivalistic evangelists could with notable success appeal to Protestant - and highly individualistic - formulations of the faith. But revivalism makes little sense outside a Protestant individualistic setting. . . Evangelism in the revivalistic cast was not (and is not) a call to become a part of a new people, a “holy nation,” a contrasting community. It presumed not initiation into the transnational church but a reawakening of faith in the individual American - who, exactly as an American, was supposedly already something of a (Protestant) Christian. Revivalistic evangelism was not so much the presentation and unpacking of the faith of the uninitiated as it was an appeal to understandings and desires that supposedly already existed but were

92 Ibid., 221. 50

latent. They only needed to be reminded of what they already knew, it was assumed, simply by virtue of being human and an American citizen.93

As Clapp points out, the methods which Finney used in the nineteenth century were relevant to that period of time. Many of the “new measures” which he introduced have influenced the practice of evangelism ever since. We live in a very different world today at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century.

The need to evaluate our approach to evangelism is an ongoing need that is just as relevant today as it was in Finneyʼs day. Churches need to be asking what are the “new measures” that need to be put into practice today if we are going to be relevant to this generation. Finney introduced his “new measures” over the opposition of much of the church and many of the leaders who opposed them, partly on theological grounds, but partly simply because they were new. Finney was used by God to impact powerfully the world of his day and to lay a groundwork that would continue to impact future generations. The challenge facing every church in every generation is to make sure that they come along side the Holy Spirit and the leaders through whom He is working to impact their generation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Twentieth Century

The Lausanne Movement

The International Congress on World Evangelization was held in 1974 in

Lausanne, Switzerland with more than 2300 people from 150 countries in attendance. Two signiﬁcant developments came out of that initial congress. The

93 Clapp, A Pecular People, 163. 51

Lausanne Continuation Committee, which became the Lausanne Committee for

World Evangelization in 1976, was established to continue to move towards the fulﬁllment of the goals of the Congress. Also the Lausanne Covenant was drawn up and signed by those attending the Congress. Tom Houston, formerly

Lausanne International Director, suggests that the signing of the covenant was a miracle.

That the Lausanne Covenant was agreed upon by 2,300 people from 150 nations from all branches of the Christian church in the space of ten days is one of the miracles of contemporary church history. Some say that if we attempted it now, it would not be possible.94

In 1989 a second congress was held in Manila, Philippines with 4300 people from 173 countries in attendance. This congress produced the Manila

Manifesto.

In 2010 a third congress was held in Cape Town, South Africa with more than 4,000 people from 198 countries attending. In addition to those who gathered in Cape Town, modern technology enabled thousands of others around the world to participate in the conference. This congress produced the Cape

Town Commitment.

In addition to these three large congresses, the Lausanne Committee has held numerous smaller meetings which have produced Occasional Papers on a number of different topics. This study will focus on only one of those topics, the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility. Before discussing that

94 Rev. Tom Houston, “The Story of the Lausanne Covenant: Case Study in Cooperation,” (The Lausanne Movement, accessed 3 February 2011), available from www.lausanne.org/ lausanne-1974/story-of-the-covenant.html. 52 subject, however, there are two beneﬁts that have come out of the Lausanne

Movement that are worth noting.

The ﬁrst is that the Lausanne Movement has produced a level of unity around a common purpose that is signiﬁcant. The Lausanne Covenant closed with a call to work together in the cause of evangelism.

Therefore, in the light of this our faith and our resolve, we enter into a solemn covenant with God and with each other, to pray and to work together for the evangelization of the whole world. We call upon others to join us. May God help us by his grace and for his glory to be faithful to this our covenant.95

Tom Houston offers this call to unity as an ongoing challenge to Christians around the world.

Clearly, the Lausanne Covenant gave evangelicals a bigger worldview within which they could work together in the work of evangelization. Cooperation requires that people operate from within compatible worldviews and that the obstacles to effective cooperation can arise from a clash of worldviews. The challenge is to be ready, in the cause of cooperation, to compare, reconsider and perhaps amend or expand our worldviews. If our mission is to mobilize the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world, then surely such a radical approach is justiﬁed.96

Cape Town showed that thousands of leaders from around the world have risen to the challenge and demonstrated a desire to unite around the cause of evangelism.

The second theme that should be noted is the centrality of the church in fulﬁlling the task of evangelism. This is stated very clearly in the Lausanne

Covenant.

95 Stott, John, The Lausanne Covenant: An Exposition and Commentary by John Stott (Minneapolis: World Wide Publications, 1975), 36.

96 Houston, The Story of the Lausanne Covenant. 53

World evangelization requires the whole Church to take the whole gospel to the whole world. The Church is at the very centre of Godʼs cosmic purpose and is his appointed means of spreading the gospel.97

This emphasis on the church was reiterated both in Manila and Cape

Town.

Sadly, in the history of the Church, a divide was drawn between evangelism and social responsibility with the evangelical church focusing primarily on evangelism and those holding to a more liberal theological perspective focusing on social responsibility. One of the issues that the Lausanne

Movement has wrestled with has been the relationship between these two responsibilities within the church and the individual Christian life. In his address to the Lausanne Congress in 1974, Billy Graham stated this as one of the goals of the Congress. One of the important accomplishments of the Congress was that the Lausanne Covenant contained a very clear statement concerning the relationship of these two parts of Christian responsibility.

Although reconciliation with man is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation, nevertheless we afﬁrm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of God and man, our love for our neighbour and our obedience to Jesus Christ.98

While emphasizing the importance of both evangelism and social responsibility, the Covenant stated that evangelism was primary. The Covenant did not expand on exactly what this meant.

97 Stott, The Lausanne Covenant, 18.

98 Ibid., 15. 54

In 1982, a group of ﬁfty leaders from twenty-seven countries met in Grand

Rapids, Michigan to discuss this issue. They produced the Grand Rapids Report on Evangelism and Social Responsibility in which they expanded on the relationship between these two responsibilities by clearly distinguishing between the two but yet linking them together as being indispensable to each other.

It has been said, therefore, that evangelism, even when it does not have a primarily social intention, nevertheless has a social dimension, while social responsibility, even when it does not have a primarily evangelistic intention, nevertheless, has an evangelistic dimension. Thus, evangelism and social responsibility, while distinct from one another, are integrally related in our proclamation of and obedience to the Gospel. The partnership is, in reality, a marriage.99

While stressing the integral relationship between the two, this report still endorsed the primacy of evangelism. Having agreed with Lausanne, however, the report stressed that the choice is largely conceptual.

The choice, we believe, is largely conceptual. In practice, as in the public ministry of Jesus, the two are inseparable, at least in open societies. Rather than competing with each other, they mutually support and strengthen each other in an upward spiral of increased concern for both.100

The Manila Manifesto endorsed this position both in terms of stating the importance of both evangelism and social responsibility and also in giving to evangelism the primacy.

Evangelism is primary because our chief concern is with the gospel, that all people may have the opportunity to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Yet Jesus not only proclaimed the Kingdom of God, he also demonstrated its arrival by works of mercy and power. We are called today to a similar integration of words and deeds. In a spirit of humility we are to preach and teach, minister to the sick, feed the hungry, care for prisoners, help the

99 Consultation on the Relationship between Evangelism and Social Responsibility, Drafting Committee, Evangelism and Social Responsibility: An Evangelical Commitment, (Exeter, UK: The Paternoster Press, 1982), 24.

100 Ibid., 25. 55

disadvantaged and handicapped, and deliver the oppressed. While we acknowledge the diversity of spiritual gifts, callings and contexts, we also afﬁrm that good news and good works are inseparable.101

The Cape Town Commitment reiterates this relationship between evangelism and social responsibility but without acknowledging the primacy of evangelism. It treats them more as two parts of the same task.

Integral mission is the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other. Rather, in integral mission our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life. And our social involvement has evangelistic consequences as we bear witness to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. If we ignore the world, we betray the Word of God which sends us out to serve the world. If we ignore the Word of God, we have nothing to bring to the world.102

The Cape Town Commitment goes to great length to deﬁne exactly what it means to live out our social responsibility in many different areas such as pluralism, emerging technologies, slavery and human trafﬁcking to name just a few. The issue is no longer a theoretical discussion but now has a very practical dimension that spells out what that responsibility involves.

The discussion concerning the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility has been an important one for Christian leaders to have. The temptation is to err on one side or the other. For many years in evangelical churches, people have erred on the side of evangelism only. Concern for social responsibility was seen as an indication that someone was becoming liberal in

101 The Manila Manifesto: an elaboration of The Lausanne Covenant ﬁfteen years later (Pasadena, Calif.: Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, 1989), 15.

102 The Lausanne Movement, “The Cape Town Commitment, Part I We Love The Mission of God”, accessed 3 February 2011, available from www. Lausanne.org/ctcommitment. 56 his or her theology. This in spite of the clear teaching in scripture that Jesus spent much of his time meeting the social needs of his day.

On the other hand, there is a danger that as the church rediscovers its biblical mandate to be involved in meeting the social needs of society, the verbal witness to the gospel could be lost. Jesus also spent much of this time teaching about the Kingdom of God and the need to be born again into that Kingdom.

For much of its history the Lausanne Movement has talked about the primacy of evangelism over social responsibility. This has been an awkward distinction by their own admission. While they have given evangelism the priority, they have recognized that this is more of a theoretical distinction than a practical one. In the working out of these two responsibilities, the Movement has recognized that they are inseparable partners. Christopher Wright has described the relationship as one of ultimacy rather than primacy which provides a much better distinction.

This is why I speak of ultimacy rather than primacy. Mission may not always begin with evangelism. But mission that does not ultimately include the Word and the name of Christ, the call to repentance, and faith and obedience has not completed its task. It is defective mission, not holistic mission.103

Conclusion

One of the beneﬁts of history should be to teach us the lessons that people need to be more effective in the present and the future. This brief survey of evangelism throughout the history of the church reveals some of those lessons. In the ﬁrst three centuries there was an emphasis on bringing new

103 Wright, The Mission of God, 319. 57 converts to maturity in their faith. The church is called to make disciples and this is an emphasis that it loses at its peril.

The Reformation Period focused on the message. Martin Luther rediscovered the heart of the gospel, justiﬁcation by faith alone. However the methods might change with the changing culture, the message must not be lost.

If it is, there is nothing left to proclaim.

John Wesley demonstrated a tremendous loyalty to the church to which he belonged. Against all odds he remained a member of the Church of England even when the Church largely rejected him and his ministry. The Church must be at the heart of all that is done in evangelism. The Church is Godʼs means by which he is impacting His world.

Jonathan Edwards sought a balance between Godʼs sovereign right to work in ways different from what Edwards might have imagined and the very real danger that all that happened might not be of God. Edwards stressed that it is only by their long-term fruit that true converts might be known. This is a balance that is still needed today.

Charles Finney brought innovative methods into his evangelistic efforts in an attempt to reach the people of his day. Against opposition, he refused to be bound by the past. While the message remains the same, every generation calls for new, innovative approaches if the church is going to be effective in its efforts to reach its generation for Christ.

Over the past thirty-six years the Lausanne Movement has wrestled with the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility. These two must 58 never be separated since they are two indispensable parts of the gospel. While fulﬁlling its Christ-given responsibility to be involved in the social needs of its culture, the Church must strive for the “ultimacy” of evangelism in all that it does.

These six lessons from history are still important today. Evangelism should not be carried out in an historical vacuum as if we had nothing to learn from the past. While our methods need to be adapted to the culture of the twenty-ﬁrst century, those methods need to be shaped and sharpened by lessons learned from the men and women whom God has used to impact his world throughout the centuries. 59

CHAPTER 4

THE SMALL CHURCH

While mega-churches and their leaders have received most of the attention over the past few decades, numerically the small church still dominates the ecclesiastical landscape in Canada and the United States. While there may be differences as to the exact percentage of churches that fall into the small- church category, there is wide spread agreement that the majority of churches are small.

A survey conducted by Outreach Canada determined that in 2003 seventy-seven percent of Protestant churches and seventy-three percent of evangelical churches in Canada averaged less than one hundred and ﬁfty in

Sunday morning attendance.104 Lyle Schaller, formerly Parish Consultant with the

Yokefellow Institute, states that more than seventy-three percent of churches in

North America have fewer than one hundred and seventy-ﬁve in attendance.105

Ron Crandall, McCreless Professor of Evangelism in the E. Stanley Jones

School of World Mission and Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary, states that “roughly two-thirds of all congregations average one hundred or fewer

Sunday morning worshippers.” 106

104”Church Size, Attendance and Membership” at Outreach Canada, accessed 21 March 2011, available from http://en.outreach.ca/ServingYou/tabid/2237/Articled/916/Church-Size-Attendance- and-Membership.aspx.

105 Lyle E. Schaller, Looking in the Mirror: Self-Appraisal in the Local Church (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), 15-23.

106 Ron Crandall, Turn Around Strategies for the Small Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 7. 60

Regardless of the exact percentage of small churches, the fact remains that there are more small churches than all other size churches put together. The fact that there are so many small churches should make the study of these churches a priority.

Not only is the small church the norm from a numerical perspective. It is also the norm from an historical perspective. Lyle Schaller states that “for nearly four centuries, the small church has been the dominant institutional expression of

Protestant Christianity on the North American continent.”107 While there have always been large churches dating back to the church in Jerusalem, which after

Peterʼs Pentecost sermon numbered more than three thousand attendees (Acts

2:41), such large churches have always been the exception. The small church has been the historical norm.

This chapter attempts to deﬁne the small church; focus on the characteristics of the small church; look at the various types of small churches; and ﬁnally look at the small church from a biblical perspective.

Deﬁning the Small Church

Any attempt to find agreement on a definition of the small church on the basis of numbers will fail. Different authors choose different numerical parameters by which to define what constitutes a small church but any attempt to provide a numerical definition is arbitrary. Why does a church suddenly cease to be a small church simply because it passes a certain numerical standard? The

107 Lyle E. Schaller, The Small Membership Church: Scenarios For Tomorrow (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 12. 61 numerical deﬁnition of a small church for the purpose of this study will be under one hundred and ﬁfty in Sunday morning attendance but, as noted above, the selection of that number is arbitrary.

The small church is deﬁned more by what it is than by the number of people who attend. Those who have studied the small church have used a variety of analogies in an attempt to capture something of what is at the heart of the small church.

Steve Burt, Chair of the Troy Conference Small Membership Church

Committee, compares the small church to an extended family.108 In doing so he puts the emphasis on the importance of relationships within the church.

Carl S. Dudley, Professor of Church and Community and Co-director of the Center for Social and Religious Research at Hartford Seminary, uses the sociological concept of the primary group to describe the small church.

In a primary group, members are united by common interests, beliefs, tasks and territory. They are not self-conscious about their relationships and are bound together more by sentimental ties than by contractual agreements. They have a solidarity, a feeling of belonging, nourished by experiences of intimacy and personal need. The primary group is a folk society in the midst of the urban culture. When so many other contacts are temporary and impersonal, the primary group provides the atmosphere of an extended family.109

Dudley expands on this comparison.

The small congregation is the appropriate size for only one purpose: the members can know one another personally. Not all the members can know all the others on a continuing face-to-face basis, but they can all know about one another. They expect to be able to “place” everyone physically and

108 Steve Burt, Activating Leadership in the Small Church: Clergy and Laity Working Together (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1988), 38.

109 Carl S. Dudley, Making The Small Church Effective (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978), 32. 62

socially in the fabric of the congregation. The caring cell church can be deﬁned as a primary group in which the members expect to know, or know about, all other members.110

Once again the emphasis in this analogy is on relationship. Both Burt and

Dudley use the picture of an extended family.

Anthony G. Pappas, Area Minister for the American Baptist Churches in

Massachusetts, compares small churches to a folk society.

What I am saying is that to understand how we can encourage our small churches to be all that God intended them to be, we need to understand how the small church thinks, how it perceives its world, and how it normally acts within that world. The thought/action system of the small church varies signiﬁcantly from that of other institutions. We might call the thought patterns of small-church people a “folk mentality.” For it is closer to the thinking of people in folk society than to the thinking of people in complex, bureaucratic and abstract organizations as we shall see.111

He goes on to expand on what this means in the small-church setting.

The significant reality in small-church society, the reality that motivates behavior and organizes life, as profit is to business and knowledge is to science, is not things or ideas. It is not even people per se. It is the relationships between people. Of course, individual people are necessary if interpersonal relationships are to occur, but individualism is not the significant reality of the small church. How we are connected and placed in a personal world, the movements within our social world, how we are rooted and placed among those whom we think of as “us” - this is the focus of small-church concern. This is the small church world.112

The common element in all three of these analogies that attempt to deﬁne the small church is relationship. Without an appreciation that relationship is absolutely essential to our understanding of the small church, any deﬁnition

110 Ibid., 35.

111 Anthony G. Pappas, Entering The World of the Small Church (Alban Institute, 2000), 26.

112 Ibid., 40. 63 that we might develop for the small church will be incomplete. Steve Burt captures this so well.

To outsiders the term “small church” is quantitative and focuses on the word “small,” while to insiders the term is qualitative and focuses on the word “church.” It implies intimacy, unity, and relationships among people who know one another.113

One fact which almost everyone who has studied small churches can agree is that they are different from the medium-sized or large church. David R.

Ray, Pastor of First Congregational Church in San Rafael, California, makes this point.

I have two fundamental convictions about small churches. First, they are the right size to be all that God calls a church to be. They are not premature, illegitimate, malnourished, or incomplete versions of “real” churches. Second, they are a different breed of church. A small church is as different from a large church as a Pekingese is from a Saint Bernard. They look, feel, think, and act differently. Differences in size yield crucial differences in form and function. Ministry, not in tune with and tailored to these churchesʼ differences in size, is doomed to failure.114

Steve Burt concurs.

Why is it important to grasp how size affects the church? Simply this: Congregations that vary in size function differently. I see the small church as an organism and the large church as an organization. As a result, participantsʼ behavior is relative to and appropriate for the size of the organism or organization. There are distinct ways of making decisions ranging from consensus to participatory democracy, and as numbers increase, to representative democracy. Imagine making decisions around the family table, then trying to apply that method to a country of 240 million.115

Lyle E. Schaller makes the same point in a more descriptive way.

113 Burt, Activating Leaders in the Small Church, 14.

114 David R. Ray, preface to The Big Small Church Book (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 1992), viii.

115 Steve E. Burt & Hazel Ann Roper, The Little Church That Could: Raising Small Church Esteem (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2000), 18. 64

To switch analogies, the congregation averaging less than 35 or 40 at worship can be represented by an acorn squash, the church averaging 125 at worship can be depicted by a pumpkin, the congregation averaging 200 at worship might be portrayed by a horse, and the huge church averaging 500 or 600 or more at worship can be symbolized by a ﬁfteen-room house. They are not simply different size specimens from the same genus or species. They are almost as different from one another as a village is unlike a large central city. It is impossible to produce a pumpkin by combining three acorn squashes. The person who is very competent in raising pumpkins may not be an expert at caring for horses. The ﬁfteen-room house requires maintenance and a different kind of care than the garden in which one raises squash or pumpkins. A different perspective and a different set of criteria should be used in grading squash or pumpkins than would be used in judging a horse or appraising a large house.116

While the small church is different from middle-sized or large churches, there is a striking similarity between small churches regardless of location. David

R. Ray describes the close similarity between small churches whatever the geographical and denominational differences might be.

Iʼve come to believe size is the most important variable in determining the nature of any organization. As Iʼve traveled speaking and consulting about small church issues, Iʼve discovered more similarity between small UCC churches in New England, small Southern Baptist churches in Alabama and small Wesleyan Methodist churches in Canada, than I ﬁnd between small churches and large churches of the same denomination in the same region.117

These two elements in our understanding of the small church, the importance of relationships and the uniqueness of the small church as compared to large churches, should help to shape the churchʼs thinking in very practical terms. The importance of relationships means that all of the programs within a small church must be relational. When the small church attempts to build on any other foundation, it builds on its weaknesses rather than its strengths. The

116 Lyle E. Schaller, The Small Church Is Different (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1982), 12-13.

117 Ray, The Big Small Church Book, 27-28. 65 temptation for small-church leaders is to try to build on a mega-church foundation, which as Steve Bierly, Pastor of Cobblestone Church in Schenectady,

New York, points out, borders on insanity.

One deﬁnition of insanity is “to do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way over and over again while each time expecting to get a different result.” Many small-churchaholics move from small congregation to small congregation trying to implement megachurch strategies and always being shocked and saddened that their ministries fall apart. Whatʼs that say about our sanity? Weʼve got to start implementing strategies that are designed with the small church in mind.118

The need to develop strategies for small churches applies to every area of church life but in no area is this needed more than evangelism. As small churches plan to reach out to their communities, they need to have a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses as small churches. As Ron

Crandall points out, if relationships are at the heart of a small churchʼs strengths, then their evangelism strategy must be built around those relationships.

Small-church approaches to evangelism need to be person centered. This is the pattern and strength of the small church. Super churches attract people through their winsome pulpiteer and their glamorous programs. The small church attracts through the contacts people have with its members.119

When the small church focuses on relationships there is an inherent danger of becoming ingrown. Gary L. McIntosh, Professor of Christian Ministry and Leadership at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, points this out.

Many, not all, small churches ﬁnd it difﬁcult to win people to Christ. Low self- esteem causes them to withdraw rather than reach out intentionally to lost people with the love of Christ. This results in small churches evangelizing only their immediate families and a few people whom they “adopt” into the family

118 Steve R. Bierly, How To Thrive As A Small-Church Pastor (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), 63.

119 Crandall, Turn Around Strategies, 83. 66

or relying solely on the pastor to reach new people for Christ. None of these approaches to evangelism is effective over the long haul. It is not unkind to say that the ingrownness of many congregations is the antithesis of the Great Commission to make disciples.120

The key is for small churches to discover how they can use this strength of relationships to reach beyond the narrow conﬁnes of their own church community into the broader community of which they are a part. People are looking for community and should be able to ﬁnd it within the small church.

Characteristics of the Small Church

While there is general agreement that the small church is uniquely different from larger churches, there is very little agreement regarding the qualities that deﬁne that uniqueness. Steve Burt gives ten characteristics of a small church.121 David Ray outlines twenty-six characteristics.122 Glenn Daman,

Director of Small Church Health at Western Seminary, lists ﬁfteen qualities that characterize the small church.123 Realizing the impossibility of developing the deﬁnitive list of small-church characteristics, this thesis will consider three characteristics that have particular application to evangelism in the small church.124

120 Gary L. McIntosh, One Size Doesnʼt Fit All (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1999), 132.

121 Burt, Activating Leadership, 20-26.

122 Ray, The Big Small Church Book, 35-41.

123 Glenn Daman, Shepherding the Small Church (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2002), 43-51.

124 While there are different characteristics mentioned in each list, there are some characteristics, that appear on multiple lists. 67

The small church is relational. This has already been emphasized but it needs to be noted again because it is the most important characteristic of the small church. Max De Pree, Chairman Emeritus for Herman Miller Inc., illustrates the potential for relational ministry within the context of a small church.

My wife and I recently attended an evening service at a mega-church. They were receiving into membership more than a hundred people. There was a crowd there, and the event was led by three pastors - very efﬁcient. Some time later we had several people join our own church: the teenage son of our senior pastor, two people who had just returned from lifelong missionary service in Japan, two widows aged seventy-plus who had recently moved into town, and a family from Kenya. Our pastor introduced each person - including his son - talked about each oneʼs family background, and helped us to get to know all of them.125

The kind of personal touch that De Pree describes needs to be recognized as the primary strength of the small church. In the mega-church setting with a hundred people being brought into membership, the logistics of the service necessitates an impersonal approach to the service. In a small church, in which everyone knows everyone in attendance, a relational approach can help to make special events into memories for both the individuals involved and the church as a whole.

This kind of personal touch needs to be at the heart of small church evangelism. As Gary McIntosh points out, this personal touch enables small churches to be extremely effective in reaching out to the community around them.

Small churches are often victims of a bigger is better mentality, which lead them to believe they are less capable of evangelizing their unchurched

125 Max De Pree, Renewing Your Church Through Vision and Planning: 30 Strategies to Transform Your Ministry, ed. Marshall Shelley (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1997), 30. 68

community. The truth is actually the opposite. Small churches can be extremely effective in outreach. Surveys among non-Christians reveal that they tend to have relational concerns. Are the people friendly? Will I be accepted if I donʼt dress up? Will I meet people who are like me and who will like me? Will I feel guilty or put down or bored or out of place? The relational orientation of the small church makes it a prime place for non-Christians to ﬁnd Christ.126

A second characteristic of the small church is that it is intergenerational.

There arenʼt enough people attending the church to provide appropriate age- related programs for every group in the church. As a result most of the activities are open to every age group. Adults may know the name of every child in the church. Seniors may speak with teenagers. Social activities may include all age groups so that young parents may mingle with older adults who have experienced the challenges of parenthood and survived. Anthony Pappas stresses the importance of the personal nature of the small church.

Small churches have a future. The personal nature of the small church is its divine gift to humanity. In the small church each person is important, each person can make a difference to someone else, each person can experience unconditional love, each person is called to live up to his or her potential, each person is of inﬁnite worth. The people-oriented qualities of small-church life make it necessary to each generation.127

The kind of interpersonal connections within the small church that Pappas describes as its greatest strength becomes even more significant when applied to the intergenerational aspect of the church. The pastor may be on a first name basis with the teenagers. The leadership team should be able to call each child by his or her first name.

126 McIntosh, One Size Doesnʼt Fit All, 132.

127 Pappas, Entering The World, 139. 69

The challenge of the Great Commission is to make disciples. Two aspects of the intergenerational nature of the small church that contribute signiﬁcantly to this process of developing young people into fully functioning disciples of Jesus

Christ are example and involvement. Both of these should be the natural outﬂow of life in the small church. Because so many of the activities of the small church are designed to be intergenerational, the potential for exposing children and teenagers to the example of older, mature Christians is greater. This could easily be taken even a step further if more thought were put into how the generations can work together in the church context.

There is certainly more opportunity for involvement on the part of younger people in a small church setting. Young people are more likely to participate in worship, Sunday school, youth leadership and other activities in a small-church setting in which the expectation for excellence is lower. They can attempt things knowing that there will be a higher level of forgiveness for mistakes. Discipleship necessitates participation and requires the involvement in ministry even for teenagers. Loren B. Mead, Founder and President Emeritus of the Alban

Institute, notes that this higher level of participation results in leadership development. Many of the people currently serving in leadership in all sizes of churches come out of smaller churches.

One of the greatest gifts that small congregations have to give is effective Christians. Many of the denominational bodies, as well as the city and suburban churches, are deeply indebted to the leadership they have received from members whose early nurture in the faith was carried out in small congregations. Everywhere I go across the country, I ﬁnd leadership in larger congregations disproportionately borne by those who were nurtured in small congregations. Frequently the smaller-membership congregation is not even aware of the power of this exporting of resources, and almost never is the 70

larger church aware of it. The fact remains, however, that smaller congregations produce a larger share of the key lay persons and members that have in several generations produced ﬁve to eight young people who grew up, left home and became key ﬁgures in churches elsewhere, not always of the same denomination. These are extraordinary gifts.128

A third characteristic of the small church is a distinctive relationship between the pastor and the members of the church. Carl Dudley has captured the essence of what most small churches are looking for in a pastor.

The small church cannot afford a specialist and is not primarily interested in measuring success based on program activity. The small church is built around the relationships of people to people. They want to know the pastor as a person ﬁrst. Only second are they interested in the pastorʼs skills. Members of the small church want from their pastor what they ﬁnd most satisfying in belonging to the small church; they are not primarily interested in the specialist or the generalist. The small church wants a lover.129

By contrast Peter Wagner, formerly Professor of Church Growth at Fuller

Theological Seminary School of World Mission, describes the type of pastor who proves to be a hindrance to church growth.

In this context , however, I am using the term pastor in a more literal sense. I am referring to the one-on-one relationship that a pastor has with each parishioner. It is a very traditional model of a pastor, expected by many congregations of the person they hire. If you have the heart of a pastor or a shepherd you have a need to know the names of all your church members and their families, visit each home x number of times per year, make an extra call or two to everyone who is sick, do all the counseling, perform all the baptisms, weddings, and funerals, lend a hand in personal problems, and enjoy a type of family relationship with one and all.130

For Wagner, this kind of pastor that he describes is a hindrance to growth.

His ideal is the person who made it very clear from the beginning of his pastorate

128 Loren B. Mead, Inside the Small Church, ed. Anthony G. Papas (Alban Institute, 2002), 96.

129 Dudley, Making The Small Church Effective, 72.

130 C. Peter Wagner, Leading Your Church To Growth: The Secret of Pastor/People Partnership in Dynamic Church Growth (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1984), 58. 71 that “he would not visit the homes of the members, he would not visit them in hospital, and that he would not do any one-on-one counseling.”131 This ideal is far removed from Dudleyʼs ideal in the small church of the pastor as a “good lover.” There is truth in the fact that in a larger church there are limitations on the amount of time that the pastor is able to spend with any individual member and the larger the church the smaller the amount of time. To suggest though that this should be the approach of the pastor of a small church in order to create a structure in which future growth can occur is to ignore the greatest strength of the small church. As growth occurs, a small-church pastor may have to move away from a relational style of leadership, but to employ that new style while the church is small misses the point that people often come to a small church because it is relational. By limiting the pastorʼs connection with the people, the church moves away from its greatest strength and inadvertently serves out of its weakness.

Douglas Alan Walrath, formerly Director of Field Education at Bangor

Theological Seminary, stresses the importance of a style of leadership that is based on the makeup of the congregation rather than one that is imposed on the church from the outside.

Relational administrators accept their congregationʼs potential and help them to “become all that they are able to become.” Relational administrators donʼt impose alien standards, especially not standards drawn from contexts or based on kinds or sizes of churches that represent inappropriate models. Relational administrators look ﬁrst to the congregation, not to themselves or others, to deﬁne a churchʼs potential.132

131 Ibid., 173.

132 Douglas Alan Walrath, Making It Work: Effective Administration in the Small Church (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1994), 26. 72

The need of the pastor to love the people within the church and the need to provide leadership at the same time is an extremely difﬁcult balance to achieve. The pastor who tries to impose standards of leadership that are foreign to the small church is ultimately going to fail. On the other hand the pastor who does a great job of loving the people but doesnʼt provide any direction for them is ultimately going to fail as well. Ron Crandall provides an answer to the challenge of achieving this balance.

How can skillful pastors who long for the resurrection power of God to be manifest in their churches, learn to patiently guide a congregation through all the necessary stages of change involved in turnaround? The answer is love. Love is more an art than a science. It is a matter of Spirit and not merely a matter of letter or code. It is modeled after the Master Shepherd himself, who for three years patiently walked and worked with twelve disciples who frequently struggled to understand the new message and adjust to the messenger.133

Every seminary program designed to prepare young pastors for ministry needs to include a strong emphasis on both love and patience. A full course on both might be appropriate. While it might not have the appeal of a course on the missional church or on preaching, it might prove to be more important in the success of a small-church pastor than anything else that might be covered.

If the greatest strength of a small church is the fact that it is relational, then the pastor needs to be a “good lover” if he or she is going to ﬁt well in that relational context. If evangelism in the small church needs to be relational so that it is in keeping with the churchʼs strength, then the pastorʼs ability to love needs to extend beyond the scope of the church itself. Few churches will go where leadership has not already gone. Few people within a church will become

133 Crandall, Turn Around Strategies, 26. 73 involved in evangelism if the pastor is not leading by example. The pastor needs to demonstrate what it means to build relations with people outside the context of the church.

The small church is different and as such has unique qualities that characterize it. In every aspect of church life plans must be built around these unique qualities. This is true of evangelism. The small church will fail in its evangelistic efforts if it does not take into consideration such characteristics as the relational nature of the small church, the intergenerational nature of the small church and the unique relationship between the pastor and the congregation in the small church. There needs to be more attention given to the development of evangelistic approaches designed speciﬁcally with the small church in mind.

Types of Small Churches

In speaking of small churches it is important to understand that even within the broader category of the small church there is a great deal of diversity.

Lyle Schaller uses seven analogies in an attempt to describe the differences among churches as a result of size. Three of those describe churches with less than one hundred and seventy-five in Sunday attendance. He makes the point that a church with fewer than thirty-five people, which he compares to a “cat,” is quite different from a church with an attendance between thirty-five and one hundred for which he uses the analogy of a “friendly collie”. Schaller suggests that the small church with an attendance of less than thirty-five displays the same independent nature that characterizes most cats while the church with attendance between thirty-five and one hundred responds to love by loving in 74 return as a collie does. Both of those churches are different from a church with an attendance between one hundred and one hundred and seventy-five which he compares to a “garden.” He suggests that the difference at this point is so definite that he moves out of the animal world in his search for an analogy. The garden is more able to experience growth than either the cat or the collie.134

While all of these churches could be classiﬁed as small, they are very different.

Out of necessity this study will group all churches with fewer than one hundred and ﬁfty in Sunday attendance as small but in so doing recognizes the differences that do exist.

Small churches can also be classified according to their history and their mission. This thesis will consider four types of small churches but will focus on only one type. The first is the established church that was once much larger but has declined in membership. At one time this church would have been a middle- sized or perhaps even a large church but for a variety of reasons has lost members until there are now less than one hundred and fifty in attendance. This church often meets in a building that is too large for the number of people still associated with the church. In most cases the members do not think of themselves as a small church. They remember when they had more influence in the denomination and the community and they long for a return to those times.

Often they still try to act as a larger church and are frustrated when limited resources donʼt allow them to do so any longer. Because the leadership does not think of the congregations as a small church, they will not be part of this study.

134 Schaller, Looking In The Mirror, 14-24. 75

The second type of small church is at the other end of the church continuum. This is the church plant. While in the ﬁrst type of small church, history and tradition play a large part, the church plant has no history or tradition. This church may only have existed for a few weeks or a few years. In most cases the church was planted with a great deal of excitement and expectation for what God is going to do. Often the leaders of the church plant have carefully thought through the vision and mission statements of the new church so that they have a clear picture of what they hope the church will become. Church plants tend not to see themselves as small churches. They tend to see themselves as a large church in waiting. They believe that it is only a matter of time until they will grow beyond the small-church stage and become a thriving middle-sized or large church. As was true of the older church that has become small, the leadership of a church plant does not think as small church leaders tend to think.

The third type of small church is the intentional small church. This is the church that for a variety of reasons has made the strategic decision to be small.

Often the leaders in this type of church place a high value on interpersonal dynamics and feel that these can happen most effectively in a small-church setting. They may place a high value on discipleship and see the small church as the best place for this to happen. House churches would fall into this category.

Again this is a specialized grouping within the broader category of the small church and therefore does not ﬁt into the scope of this thesis.

The final type of small church is by far the largest grouping within the small-church category. This is the church that has been small throughout its 76 history and does not see that changing in the near future. This type of church sees itself as being small. It thinks in small-church terms. It has never experienced anything other than being small. This is the category into which most of the churches with an attendance under one hundred and fifty fall. This is the type of church to which this thesis will confine itself.

A Biblical Perspective

While the scope of this thesis does not allow for a complete biblical and theological study of the church, it is important to have a biblical perspective of the small church in order for its full value to be appreciated. Often, if it is not stated outright, it is certainly suggested that there is something unbiblical about a small church because it isnʼt growing as fast as other churches are growing. Peter

Wagner uses the example of the Church in Jerusalem to make this point.

A model church in the New Testament is the one in Jerusalem which was founded on the day of Pentecost. On that one day the nucleus of 120 added 3,000 new members. They were baptized, they grew in their understanding of Christian doctrine, they worshiped together regularly, they developed fellowship groups, they shared their material goods with one another, they exercised their spiritual gifts. As a result the church continued to grow and “the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). This was a healthy church. And one characteristic of healthy churches is that they grow.135

While recognizing the amazing work of God that took place on that day, one questions whether the Jerusalem church is the most appropriate example for all other churches throughout the centuries. After all, were there not unique factors at play on that particular day, factors that cannot be duplicated in any other setting? Jesus had just died. Some of the people listening to Peter on that

135 Wagner, Leading Your Church, 21-22. 77 day were eye witnesses to his death. There were rumours of Jesusʼ resurrection circulating around Jerusalem. Even if the crowds had not witnessed his death, many had witnessed some aspect of his three-year ministry. The leaders of the church were a group of men who had just spent three years with Jesus. These are all historic factors that will never be repeated in any other setting. It is not right to hold every other church in history to the same standard as that of the

Jerusalem church. The growth in that church came out of a very unique set of circumstances.

Also while recognizing the importance of the Jerusalem church one must ask why that church should be chosen as opposed to the other churches described in the Book of Acts. Why is the Jerusalem church the example rather than the Antioch church or the Colossian church?136 These other churches were not simply replicas of the Jerusalem church. There was great diversity among churches in the ﬁrst century. When Paul left cities such as Thessalonica and

Philippi, the churches were quite small. We donʼt have any knowledge of their future growth. To suggest that growth is a necessary indicator of church health because the church in Jerusalem grew can only be done on the basis of some questionable exegesis. The diversity of churches in the New Testament suggests that there is no one “right” size of church.

136 The temptation to hold up one church in the first century as the example that all churches should follow is not limited to the Jerusalem church. Ray S. Anderson, Senior Professor of Theology and Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary, suggests that the church in Antioch is an example of a first-century emerging church. Whether it is the church in Jerusalem or Antioch or any other first century location, each church was the product of a unique cultural, geographical, and historical setting that cannot be replicated in our present age. Ray S. Anderson, An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006), 13. 78

The New Testament authors used a number of different pictures to describe the church. Each one adds something to our understanding of what the church is supposed to be. Paul compares the church to the human body (1

Corinthians 12). He also uses the picture of a building with each member being a building block (Ephesians 2:20-22). Paul compares the church to a bride for whom Christ sacriﬁcially gave his life (Ephesians 5:25-33). Peter describes the church as the people of God (1 Peter 2:9). None of these pictures have anything to do with size. What matters is not how large a church might be but the relationship between the members of the body and the head, between the building blocks and the cornerstone, between the groom and his bride, between the people and the One to whom they belong. Glenn Daman stresses this.

The vitality of a congregation is not found in its size or in its program or budget. Vitality of a congregation is found in its fulfillment of Godʼs purpose for the church. A church that has five thousand members and is growing may be just as unhealthy and ineffective as a church that has only fifty members and is declining. Conversely, a church with fifty members who are fulfilling Godʼs mission can be as healthy and dynamic as a church with thousands of members. Churches do not close because they lack members and financial resources. Churches close when they are no longer being effective in fulfilling Godʼs purpose for them.137

Ultimately the church derives its value not from the number of people that attend on a Sunday morning but from the relationship that the church has with the One who is the center of all that the church is and does. E. Stanley Jones,

Methodist Missionary to India, expresses this so powerfully.

137 Daman, Shepherding the Small Church, 16. 79

inscriptions, its outworn shape, its unmodern appearance, but rather look at what it holds. It holds the person of Jesus Christ. As long as it holds him, it holds the most precious, the most potent, and the most present value that this universe holds, barring none.138

There is so much truth in what E. Stanley Jones says. The value is not found in the vessel. It is found in the One whom the vessel holds. Whether that vessel is a mega-church with thousands of people attending or a small church with only a handful of members, the value does not come from the vessel. The value comes from the One within the vessel, Jesus Christ.

Small churches struggle with a shortage of resources - lack of workers,

ﬁnances, space, gifted people - all realities which make life in the small church difﬁcult. If the congregants only look at the externals they can become overwhelmed by what they donʼt have. They need to be encouraged to focus on what they do have and at the very top of that list of blessings is the constant presence of Jesus Christ in his church.

John R.W. Stott talks about the “double identity” within the church.

By its “double identity” I mean that the church is a people who have been called out of the world to worship God and sent back into the world to witness and serve. These are, in fact, two of the classical “marks” of the church. According to the ﬁrst, the church is “holy,” called out to belong to God and to worship him. According to the second, the church is “apostolic,” sent out into the world on its mission.139

Again these two “marks” of the church do not depend on size. The small church is “called out to belong to God” and “sent out into the world” just as surely as the large church. These two “marks” do not depend on size or any of the

138 E. Stanley Jones, The Reconstruction of the Church - on what pattern? (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970), 9.

139 John R.W. Stott, The Living Church (Downers Grove, Il.: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 52. 80 things that size brings such as nicer buildings, more programs, or higher levels of excellence in worship or preaching. In fact there are some aspects of church life that are more effectively carried out in a smaller church. John Stott notes this in regard to fellowship but it could just as easily apply to other aspects of the church.

But this basic, biblically recognized need is not completely met by Sunday churchgoing, or even the larger midweek meetings of the church. There is always something unnatural and subhuman about large crowds. They tend to be aggregations rather than congregations - aggregations of unrelated persons. The larger they become, the less the individuals who compose them know and care about each other. Indeed, crowds can actually perpetuate aloneness, instead of curing it.140

In looking at the small church from a biblical perspective, Jesus himself put the value of the small church in perspective when he said, “Where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20). The presence of Jesus whenever and wherever his people gather is what ultimately gives meaning to the church. Jesus did not say that he was only present when two or three hundred gathered much less two or three thousand. He is present even when there are only two or three people who meet in his name. Nothing could give greater value to the small church than that promise.

Conclusion

One of the most serious problems in any church is a lack of self-esteem on the part of the people who attend. David Ray makes this point.

The dominating and most debilitating problem in a high percentage of small churches is low self-esteem, resulting in low morale. Comments like “Weʼre just a little church,” “Iʼm just a small church pastor,” “We only have thirty in

140 Ibid., 87. 81

worship and twenty in Sunday school,” and “We donʼt do as much as the big church on the corner,” are common and difﬁcult to eradicate as dandelions. Low self-esteem is a cancer that kills small churches. It reduces the amount of available money, results in poor building upkeep, repels new members, discourages leaders, erodes organizational effectiveness, changes communication from positive to negative, causes church ﬁghts, undermines planning and limits relationships with those outside. In short, it undermines the ministry and mission of the church.141

Low self-esteem is overcome when the small church understands its own unique value. The small church needs to understand that it is different but not of less value. The small church needs to understand its unique qualities that characterize it and give it the potential to be a force for good in the world. Finally, the small church needs to have a correct biblical understanding of the church.

Carl Dudley captures the true value of the small church in todayʼs world.

In a big world, the small church has remained intimate. In a fast world, the small church has been steady. In an expensive world, the small church has remained plain. In a complex world, the small church has remained simple. In a rational world, the small church has kept feelings. In a mobile world, the small church has been an anchor. In an anonymous world, the small church calls us by name - by nickname. As a result, small churches have survived where others have failed.142

When small churches truly recognize their value, they are able to become what Brandon J. OʼBrien, Editor-at-large for Leadership Journal, describes as a strategically small church.

A strategically small church is one that has become comfortable being small, because it has learned to recognize the unique advantages of its size. A strategically small church realizes it can accomplish things that larger churches cannot. This doesnʼt make it better or godlier. But it means it can proceed in ministry not from a sense of its deﬁciencies, but from conﬁdence in its strengths. Strategically small churches are strategic for the kingdom of

141 Ray, The Big Small Church Book, 141-142.

142 Dudley, Making The Small Church Effective, 176. 82

God, because when they embrace their identity, they make an enormous impact.143

This needs to be the goal for every small church.

143 Brandon J. OʼBrien, The Strategically Small Church (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2010), 15. 83

CHAPTER 5

The Theoretical Foundation for the Original Research

The purpose of this thesis is to examine evangelism in small churches with a view to determining what is effective in a small church setting. The original research for the study is obtained through a qualitative approach consisting of multiple case studies that look at evangelism in six small churches. To set the theoretical foundation for this thesis it is necessary to consider the nature of qualitative research, the reasons for using a case study approach, and the framework for the case studies selected.

Qualitative Research

A qualitative approach to the thesis of evangelism best suits the context of this thesis. Norman K. Denzin, Distinguished Professor of Communications,

College of Communications, Sociology and Humanities at the University of

Illinois, and Yvonna S. Lincoln, Professor of Higher Education at Texan A&M

University, explain the framework in which qualitative research best ﬁts.

The word qualitative implies an emphasis on the qualities of entities and on processes and meanings that are not experimentally examined or measured (if measured at all) in terms of quantity, amount, intensity, or frequency. Qualitative researchers stress the socially constructed nature of reality, the intimate relationship between the researcher and what is studied and the situational constraints that shape inquiry. Such researchers emphasize the value-laden nature of inquiry. They seek answers to questions that stress how social experience is created and given meaning.144

144 Norman K. Denzin & Yvonne S. Lincoln, Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2003), 13. 84

While numbers within an evangelistic program might be best measured by a quantitative approach, the actual experience of evangelism and the factors involved in someone becoming a Christian are best examined through a qualitative approach. As Denzin and Lincoln note, this approach looks at the social experience and the factors that provide meaning to that experience. That can only be done in a face-to-face encounter with the people who have actually participated in the conversion experience. While there might be value in looking at the broad picture that numbers might provide, the focus of this study is not how many people are being reached through evangelism but rather on the impact that evangelism has had on those that are being reached.

This kind of research can best happen in the context in which the experience takes place. As John W. Creswell, formerly Adjunct Professor of

Family Medicine at the University of Michigan, points out, this is an important feature of qualitative research.

Qualitative researchers tend to collect data in the ﬁeld at the site where participants experience the issue or problem under study. They do not bring individuals into a lab (a contrived situation), nor do they typically send out instruments for individuals to complete. This up-close information gathered by actually talking directly to people and seeing them behave and act within their context is a major characteristic of qualitative research.145

The interviews, both with leaders and individuals who have experienced conversion, took place either in the churches or the homes of the people involved. It is important, on the part of the interviewer, to go into the setting in which those being interviewed are most comfortable and in which the

145 John W. Creswell, Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2007), 37. 85 experiences have taken place. There is simply not the same level of naturalness in a contrived setting because it is a change of context for those interviewed.

Creswell stresses the importance of this.

We also conduct qualitative research because we need a complex, detailed understanding of the issue. This detail can only be established by talking directly with people, going to their homes or places of work, and allowing them to tell the stories unencumbered by what we expect to ﬁnd or what we have read in the literature.146

Not only is it important to conduct the interviews in the homes or churches of the people involved, it is also important to understand, as much as possible, the context in which the experiences took place. Michael Quinn Patton, member of the National Faculty of Union Graduate School, Union Institute, makes this point.

Evaluators using qualitative methods strive to understand a phenomenon or program as a whole. The evaluator searches for the totality - the unifying nature of particular settings. This holistic approach assumes that the whole is understood as a complex system that is greater than the sum of its parts. It also assumes that a description and understanding of a personʼs social environment or an organizationʼs political context is essential for overall understanding of what is observed.147

In an attempt to better understand each church setting involved in this study, the researcher relied on a variety of sources. In addition to the interviews, which will be explained later in this chapter, the researcher also obtained histories, vision and missions statements, outlines of evangelism programs and whatever other documentation might aid in developing an understanding of the

146 Ibid., 40.

147 Michael Quinn Patton, Qualitative Evaluation And Research Methods, 2nd ed. (Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications, 1990), 49. 86 churches involved. The greater the understanding of each church, the greater the potential for effectively analyzing the data that is obtained through the interviews.

Each church and each story is uniquely different and it is within that unique setting that the stories are best understood. The advantage of qualitative study is that it allows for that uniqueness. The purpose of the study is not to develop rules or generalizations that apply to all churches in all settings at all times. The objective of the study is to determine what happened in speciﬁc settings at a speciﬁc time and then from those unique experiences to draw some broad principles that may be helpful to other small churches. A qualitative approach to the research allows for this.

A Case Study Approach

The qualitative research in this study will take a multiple case study approach. Robert K. Yin, Distinguished Scholar-in-residence at American

Universityʼs School of International Service, points out the importance of a multiple case study approach.

The ﬁrst word of advice is that although all designs can lead to successful case studies, when you have the choice (and resources), multiple-case- designs may be preferred over single-case-designs. Even if you can only do a “two-case” case study, your chances of doing a good case study will be better than using a single-case design. Single-case designs are vulnerable if only because you will have put “all your eggs in one basket.” More important, the analytic beneﬁts from having two (or more) cases may be substantial.148

There is an important balance to be maintained between the limitations of a single-case design which Yin has pointed out and the danger of attempting too

148 Robert K. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2003), 53. 87 many cases with the ensuing ﬂood of data obtained and the pressures on time and resources that multiple cases would involve. With the need for this balance in mind, this thesis will look at six small churches as case studies.

While the approach will be that of multiple case studies, the actual churches are not the central focus of the study. The churches are a means by which the issue of evangelism in small churches can be studied. This type of case study in which the case itself is not the primary focus has been labeled as an instrumental case study by Robert E. Stake, Professor of Education and

Director of the Center for Instructional Research and Curriculum Evaluation at the University of Illinois.

I call it instrumental case study if a particular case is examined mainly to provide insight into an issue or to redraw a generalization. The case is of secondary interest, it plays a supportive role, and it facilitates our understanding of something else. The case is still looked at in depth, its contexts scrutinized, its ordinary activities detailed, but all because this helps the researcher to pursue the external interest.149

Thus the kind of case study that will be carried out will be a multiple-case, instrumental case study.

Yin stresses that one of the key elements in determining whether a case study approach should be used is the degree of control that the person doing the study has over the events involved.150 In this study the person has no control whatsoever over the events being studied. The conversion experiences being studied are in the past both for the church leaders involved and the person who

149 Robert E. Stake, Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry, ed. Norman K. Denzin & Yvonne S. Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2003), 137.

150 Yin, Case Study Research, 7. 88 actually experienced the conversion. Thus they cannot be inﬂuenced by the person doing the study. While the conversion experiences are in the past, the interviews with church leaders will move beyond the past experiences to the churchʼs current perspective on evangelism. For this reason a case study makes more sense than a simple history.

The case study relies on many of the same techniques as a history, but adds two sources of evidence not usually included in the historianʼs repertoire: direct observation of the events being studied and interviews of the persons involved in the events. Again, although case studies and histories can overlap, the case studyʼs unique strength is its ability to deal with a full variety of evidence - documents, artifacts, interviews, and observations - beyond what might be available in a conventional historical study.151

Patton provides a reminder of the limitation of case studies when he says,

“the depth and detail of qualitative methods typically derive from a small number of case studies, too small for confident generalizations.”152 The researcher must be careful that he or she does not try to draw more out of the case studies than they are capable of providing. Certainly a single case does not provide a sufficient base for making any kind of definitive generalization about the subject.

Even six cases, such as in this study, do not provide a broad enough base. Yin points out the proper use of the material drawn from case studies.

A fatal ﬂaw in doing case studies is to conceive of statistical generalizations as the method of generalizing the results of the case study. This is because your cases are not “sampling units” and should not be chosen for this reason. Rather, individual case studies are to be selected as a laboratory investigator selects the topic of a new experiment. Multiple cases, in this sense, should be considered like multiple experiments. Under the circumstances, the mode of generalization is “analytic generalization,” in which a previously developed theory is used as a template with which to compare the empirical results of

151 Ibid., 7-8.

152 Patton, Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods, 53. 89

the case study. If two or more cases are shown to support the same theory, replication may be claimed.153

Yin states that it is the development of a preliminary theory that sets case studies apart from other methods of qualitative study such as ethnography and

“grounded theory.”154 He goes on to show the importance of developing theoretical propositions.

Rather, the simple goal is to have a sufﬁcient blueprint for your study, and this requires theoretical propositions. Then, the complete research design will provide surprisingly strong guidance in determining what data to collect and the strategies for analyzing the data. For this reason, theory development prior to the collection of any case study is an essential step in doing case studies.155

Drawing from the analysis of the small church in the previous chapter, there are two theoretical propositions that defined the focus of this thesis. As noted, at the heart of small church life is an emphasis on relationships. This relational element defines what it means to be a small church in every facet of a small churchʼs existence. Thus one of the theoretical propositions that will define this study is that successful evangelism in small churches results from relationships that people within the church build with outsiders.

The second trait of small churches that was noted in the previous chapter is that they are different from medium or large churches. There is something uniquely different about small churches that sets them apart from churches that are larger in size. To think about small churches in the same way as one thinks about larger churches is to think about the local small-town council in the same

153 Yin, Case Study Research, 32-33.

154 Ibid., 28.

155 Ibid., 29. 90 way that one might think about the federal government. It isnʼt just that the one is larger than the other. They are completely different entities. The small church is not just a smaller version of the large church. It is uniquely different. With this in mind, the second theoretical proposition that will deﬁne this study is that evangelistic approaches designed by large churches for large church use will not work effectively in small churches.

Creswell deﬁnes case study research as “research that involves the study of an issue explored through one or more cases within a bounded system (i.e., a setting, a context).”156 The issue that this study explores is that of evangelism in small churches with a view to determining what is effective in a small church setting. The bounded system is the six case studies that explore what has worked within the context of six speciﬁc small churches. The details of these six case studies is outlined in the next chapter.

Creswell suggests a format that is effectively used with a multiple case studies approach.

When multiple cases are chosen, a typical format is to ﬁrst provide a detailed description of each case and themes within the case, called a within-case analysis, followed by a thematic analysis across the cases, called a cross- case analysis, as well as assertions or an interpretation of the meaning of the case.157

This is the format used in this study. Each of the six churches will be examined separately, using the two theoretical propositions outlined above as a

156 Creswell, Qualitative Inquiry, 73.

157 Ibid., 75. 91 framework for examining the data. Then the six cases will be examined for common themes that appear in more than one of the cases.

The Framework for the Case Studies

The research for this study will consist of interviews with people in six small churches located in Southern Ontario. The churches are located across a wide demographical range with two churches in urban centers, two in towns, and two in rural settings. The churches are chosen from three different denominational groups. Finally the study is limited to evangelical churches.

Within each of the churches there must be someone who has come to faith in Jesus Christ through the efforts of the church and who has remained as part of the church. In each church the interviews are limited to one person or one couple, if both husband and wife came to faith at approximately the same time.

The interviews with the new Christians are primarily an opportunity for them to tell their stories with an emphasis on the inﬂuences that brought them to the point of decision. In each church there will also be a group interview with two or three leaders. These interviews will focus on three primary areas.

- How have they as a church been involved in evangelism over the previous ﬁve years? - How have they been inﬂuenced by outside forces in their approach to evangelism? - What conversion stories do they have to share and what have been crucial factors in the personʼs conversion experience?

Creswell stresses the importance of multiple sources of information158 in doing case studies; therefore the study will rely on a variety of other

158 Creswell, Qualitative Inquiry, 73. 92 documentation such as ﬁeld notes, documents, and reports in addition to the interviews.

The Selection Process

In order to avoid arbitrary choices on the part of the researcher, denominational leaders were consulted in the selection of the churches. The researcher chose from a selection of small churches provided by the denominational leader. He also deliberately did not choose churches with which he was previously connected in order to avoid bringing past experiences into the analysis of the data.

The leadership in the individual churches was approached by the researcher about participating in the study. When they agreed, the local church leadership was asked to select the individual who would be interviewed. That person was approached by the local church leadership and asked if he or she was willing to participate.

Participating churches were not given any deﬁnition of evangelism or conversion so that the researcher would not inﬂuence their understanding of these two crucial elements. Part of the research was to determine how each church understands these two theological terms and to understand the conversion experience within the context of the theological understanding of the individual churches. 93

Evangelical Churches

Since this thesis has been limited to evangelical churches, it is important to understand what is meant by that term. Perhaps the simplest definition comes from the Greek work for “Gospel” and therefore evangelical churches are churches that are defined by the gospel. However, this does not provide a very extensive definition. D. W. Bebbington, Professor of History at the University of

Stirling in Scotland, suggests four characteristics that deﬁne evangelicals. The

ﬁrst is conversionism, a call for people to turn from their sins in repentance and to

Christ in faith. The second is activism, a call to witness so that others will also respond to Christ in faith. The third is biblicism, a commitment to the Bible as the

ﬁnal authority. The last is crucicentrism, a commitment to the centrality of the cross.159

G.A. Rawlyk, formerly Professor of History at Queenʼs University, uses

Bebbingtonʼs four-fold description, calling it the Evangelical Quadrilateral.160

Stanley J. Grenz, formerly Pioneer McDonnald Professor of Baptist Heritage,

Theology and Ethics at Carey Theological College and Regent College, suggests a much broader deﬁnition that encompasses much more than what evangelicals believe.

I would suggest that central to evangelicalism is a common vision of the faith that arises out of a common religious experience couched within a common interpretive framework consisting in theological beliefs we gain from the Scriptures. As evangelicals we are persons who sense that we have encountered the living God through the gospel message of Jesus Christ. We

159 D. W. Bibbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1992), 5-14.

160 G.A. Rawlyk, Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour?: In Search of Canadian Evangelicalism in the 1990ʼs (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queenʼs University Press, 1996), 118. 94

describe this encounter by means of a set of theological categories derived from the Bible. These categories which form the cradle for this experience, in turn, constitute the grid by which we now interpret all of life.161

Derek Tidball, formerly Principal of London School of Theology, captures something of the danger of trying to deﬁne exactly who ﬁts into this group called evangelicals.

Attempts at precise definitions are rather like attempts to pick up a slippery bar of soap with wet hands. Some are too narrow and exclude those who should be included. Such definitions often consist of a long doctrinal check- list. Some are so broad that they include those who patently should not be included, if the definition is to have any meaning.162

Recognizing the impossibility of developing a definition that would suit everyone, for the purpose of this study evangelical is defined by affiliation with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. The churches studied are drawn from denominations that are affiliated with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.

Participating Denominations

The churches chosen for this study come from three denominations. The

ﬁrst group are Brethren Churches associated with Vision Ministries Canada.

While this group does not classify itself as a denomination, it has Brethren roots and the churches are interconnected through their involvement with Vision

Ministries. The author of this study has spent his adult life in Brethren circles and is thus most familiar with this group of churches.

161 Stanley J. Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Thought (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 34.

162 Derek Tidball, Who Are The Evangelicals? (London: Marshall Pickering, 1984), 12. 95

The second denomination is the Baptist Convention of Ontario and

Quebec. This denomination was chosen because of the denominational afﬁliation with Acadia Divinity College.

The ﬁnal denomination is the Associated Gospel Churches of Canada.

This denomination was chosen because there are a number of smaller churches within the denomination.

All of the churches chosen are located within a two-hour drive of the City of Waterloo in Southern Ontario. As has been mentioned, there are two churches from each of these denominations with two being located in an urban setting, two in a town setting and two in a rural setting. This provides a broad demographic perspective to the study.

In each denomination, permission was asked of the denominational leaders. The denomination provided a selection of possible churches and the

ﬁnal choices came from those churches that were suggested.

Conclusion

The theoretical framework for this study will be an instrumental, multiple case study in which interviews will be conducted in six small churches located within a two hour drive of the City of Waterloo in Southern Ontario. In each church a group interview will be conducted with two or three leaders and an individual interview with someone who has come to faith in Jesus Christ over the past ﬁve years.

The purpose of the study is to examine evangelism in small churches with a view to determining what is effective in a small church setting. At the heart of 96 this study is a commitment to the idea that small churches are uniquely different from churches of any other size and as such need to have an approach to evangelism that is uniquely designed for them as small churches. It is this belief that adds importance to this study. 97

CHAPTER 6

THE RESEARCH PROJECT

The six churches involved in this study are spread over a wide range of the evangelical spectrum. They come from three different denominations,

Plymouth Brethren churches that are associated with Vision Ministries Canada, the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec, and the Associated Gospel

Churches of Canada. Two of the churches are located in urban areas with one right in the heart of Toronto. Two are located in small towns. The ﬁnal two are in rural settings. One is surrounded by open ﬁelds with hardly any houses in sight.

Theologically, one of the churches deﬁnes itself as being very conservative while the others see themselves as more progressive in their theological understanding. The makeup of the congregations ranges from a church with a primarily older congregation to a church whose primary focus is on families with small children. In terms of their history, they range from a church with a history that goes back one hundred and ﬁfty-nine years to a church that was designated by the denomination as a re-start only a couple of years ago.

With all of the diversity demonstrated by these six churches, they all have one thing in common. They are all small churches with an average Sunday morning attendance of less than one hundred and ﬁfty people. Whatever differences small churches might have geographically, theologically, denominationally, and historically, there are common elements that they share that give them a common focus. This is true of the churches that took part in this study. 98

Pinewoods Gospel Chapel

The Church

Pinewoods Gospel Chapel was established in 1961 in the town of Angus, a small town on the edge of the Camp Borden military base. Angus is a small town of about six thousand people but the leadership of the church does not consider Angus to be a small town. They are quite emphatic that the town is

“highly urbanized” because of the presence nearby of the army base.163 The

Pinewoods Gospel Chapel Constitution gives a brief description of the church.

Pinewoods was established in 1961 in the tradition of the Christian Brethren movement (also know as Plymouth Brethren). In keeping with this tradition, Pinewoods is an independent, autonomous congregation with no obligation to any other governing ecclesiastical authority. Pinewoods maintains networks of fellowship and co-operation with many other like-minded assemblies. However the assembly is open to any people who seek to follow and serve the Lord God through Jesus Christ his Son, regardless of their denominational background. In fact, most of the people attending and becoming members do come from other backgrounds. In light of this, Pinewoods has in reality become a Christian community church where believers from the wider circle of the evangelical faith feel comfortable to worship. While so-called “Brethren distinctives” have primarily shaped this church, we will continue to develop a style of ministry that is relevant to contemporary society and faithful to a growing understanding and respect for scriptural guidelines.164

The current pastor came to Pinewoods in 2007. Since his arrival, the church has gone through a major transition in their understanding of and their approach to evangelism. One of the leaders described it as being “more welcoming of people who are not traditionally from a church background, people who donʼt talk quite the same and donʼt act quite the same as Christian

163 Leadership at Pinewoods Gospel Chapel, interview by author, transcript of audio recording, Angus, Ontario 14 July 2011, 8.

164 Pinewoods Gospel Chapel Constitution, May 1999, 2. 99 people.”165 Partly as a result of these changes, they have lost a signiﬁcant number of members over the past few years. At the moment, however, there is a strong unity among the leadership within the church, something that they would describe as being of extreme importance.

I think the success of any church big or small has to be the closeness, the openness, the honesty that the leaders have with each other. That we can disagree and give each other a hug at the end and agree on the fact that God wants us to lead this church. To give a message to any church anywhere that has to be it.166

At the heart of the changes that the church has made is this commitment to unity within the leadership.

The Leadership

Three people participated in the interview with the leadership, the pastor and two of the elders. All have been involved in leadership throughout this period of transition. When asked if the church has a plan for evangelism, they responded that there is no written plan but there is an unwritten plan that involves a very high level of involvement in the community. The leadership would deﬁne evangelism as being “all about being the hands and feet of Jesus in the community and as building relationships as part of that.”167 The need to build relationships was a theme that kept coming up again and again throughout the interview.

165 Leadership at Pinewoods, 18.

166 Ibid., 24.

167 Ibid., 4. 100

One of the difﬁculties faced by people within the church as they try to build relationships with people in the community is the problem of time. In response to this problem, there is an emphasis at the church that evangelism canʼt be separated from life.

I donʼt want to sound like Iʼm saying that people arenʼt that busy but we need to stop separating church from our life. Every person has a life outside of the church whether itʼs playing sports or going swimming or doing something. They are always having interaction with people. You need, when you have those conversations with people, you need to learn to think: “How can I be the church scattered?” How can I be a blessing to this person Iʼm talking to?” And a lot of the church doesnʼt think like that. We think about me, what I need to do. We arenʼt thinking about how I can minister to people.168

This emphasis on doing evangelism in the midst of life is at the core of the churchʼs whole approach. One interesting part of this approach is the fact that they see crises as “ripe apples for the gospel.”169 Crises are seen as powerful opportunities to become involved in peopleʼs lives. It is during times of crises that the church is able to show people love and because they are in need, people are more open to receive that love.

Involvement in peopleʼs lives in this way means becoming involved in the messiness of those lives. In doing so, the church is imitating Jesus.

I think you need to realize that if you are going to be a Christian that that is where Jesus was. He was in the messes. He was in the life of Zacchaeus. He was in the life of other people. He was called a wine bibber and a glutton. That was where his life was.170

For a small church Pinewoods is involved in a remarkable number of community programs. They are involved with the “Youth Unlimited” outreach in

168 Ibid., 14.

169 Ibid., 17.

170 Ibid., 18. 101 the area. They run movie nights to which they invite the community. They are part of the Chamber of Commerce in town. They work with the local school in providing school supplies, food and other necessities for students. The pastor is planning to coach the high school football team next year. They are part of a community focus group trying to meet the needs of teenagers. All of this community involvement ﬁts into their unwritten plan for evangelism.

They do not see the need to “parachute anything in”171 as they consider the many evangelism programs that have been promoted in the larger evangelical world. When they consider the high level of involvement of their members, they see the introduction of an outside program as being a burden rather than a helpful tool. The churchʼs approach to evangelism is something that has been developed within the leadership and been accepted by the congregation and now is very much a part of the DNA of the church. It is the total commitment of the leadership of the church that has been crucial to the acceptance of this commitment to community involvement that is so much a part of who the church is at this time in its history.

The New Believer

At Pinewoods the interview was with a husband and wife rather than with an individual person. This was because their stories were so intertwined that it made sense to interview them together. They started to attend the church about two years ago. The husband was not raised in a home in which there was any involvement with the church. He described himself as having no faith and as not

171 Ibid., 12. 102 believing that he could come to God because of the sin in this life. His original connection with the church was the result of wanting to please his wife who had had some contact and wanted to attend on a more regular basis.

The wife grew up in a Catholic family in which the father professed a strong faith in the church but at the same time was abusing the children. When she left home to attend university she also left the church. Through a series of very difﬁcult experiences she began to renew her interest in the church. She attempted to return to the Catholic church but experienced a priest who was too busy to talk to her. Through a connection with a friend she found her way to

Pinewoods. She had several encounters with people at Pinewoods before she started attending the church with regularity. During that time, the people at

Pinewoods helped the family in very practical ways.

Both the husband and wife stressed the importance of the relational side in their coming to faith within the context of Pinewoods. The husband stressed the importance of the sense of family that he found at the church.

Again that family type atmosphere. They may seem like good friends but they seem more a part of my family. They genuinely care. When they ask you how you are doing, they really want to hear the response beyond the standard answer and that is comforting in a sense having those people around you. I have never had that.172

The wife also expressed the importance of that family feeling at

Pinewoods. When confronted with the possibility of leaving Angus, the wife stressed that the deciding factor was the place that Pinewoods had come to have in their lives.

172 New Believer at Pinewoods Gospel Chapel, interviewed by author, Angus, Ontario, transcript of audio recording, 14 July 2011, 3. 103

I said that I really liked Pinewoods. Iʼm sticking to Pinewoods. Iʼm not leaving Pinewoods. Better than the family that I have ever had because they just engulf you with love and acceptance and forgiveness.173

When asked if it was only the leadership that practiced this kind of love and acceptance of people, they said that it began with the leadership but that it was “leadership that leaked through the lines.”174 In the case of Pinewoods

Gospel Chapel that is a good description of the leadership there and its impact on the church as a whole.

Summary

At the heart of what is happening at Pinewoods is a commitment to community involvement at every level of church life. Out of that involvement comes a commitment to building relationships with those people that God brings into contact with the people who constitute the church family. There is a belief that becoming involved in the messiness of peopleʼs lives is living out the life of

Jesus in the Town of Angus. There is a commitment to seeing this not as a program but as a life style since there is a belief that this is what the Christian life is all about. This commitment to building relationships and becoming involved in peopleʼs lives allowed them to have an impact in the life of the couple who were interviewed with the result that that couple has now come to faith in Jesus Christ.

173 Ibid., 5.

174 Ibid., 8. 104

Elmvale Community Church

The Church

Elmvale Community Church was started as a traditional Brethren

Assembly but has undergone a signiﬁcant transformation over the past ﬁve or six years. In those early years in the life of the church most of the members commuted from outside the town itself. At that time there were about seventy people involved in the church but not more than half a dozen were community people. The current leadership states that when the church realized this fact, it was the spark that ignited a desire to change. The leadership realized that they were a “community church by name but no one from the community was coming out.”175 The current leadership describes that transition as being sparked by the need of the people who started attending.

They just came from a Brethren background, traditional, conservative and now had changed into something different and yet there was a remnant of some Brethren people there. Transitioning into different people from the community with a different face, some a lot more broken, some not able to put on a mask. So there were some issues that really needed to be addressed. I donʼt think that traditionalism was able to address them.176

Out of that desire to face those issues and to provide answers that could not be found in a traditional approach evolved a new direction for the church. The current leadership describes the process as more a natural evolution than a carefully thought through strategy.

I donʼt know if there was a conscious point when we said that we would move from this to this. I think that it is one of those things that just sort of evolved, a

175 Leadership at Elmvale Community Church, interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Elmvale, Ontario, 20 July 2011, 4.

176 Ibid., 5. 105

new direction for the church, a new vision for the church of being this tangible hope for the church in the community and the only way you do that I think is creating relationships however they might evolve and really equipping your people to sort of take that view point.177

Elmvale Community Church today has a deep commitment to being a community church in much more than name. It has a very real desire to make a difference in the community in which it is located and in the lives of the people who live there.

The Leadership

Two people participated in the leadership interview, the pastor and one of the elders. Both have been in leadership for the past ﬁve years. While admitting that there was no written plan for evangelism, the leadership had a clear idea of how evangelism should take place.

Our plan for evangelism, I would say, is organic. Itʼs simple. We donʼt have a strategy other than the strategy of encouraging people to love their neighbors, to connect with them, to connect in community with them where they live and to live out Christ and to shine Christ wherever they are living or working.178

In attempting to live out this approach, the church has developed a number of programs to put them in contact with the community. They operate a soccer camp in the summer in a town that offers few recreational activities for children. They operate a ball hockey program for high school age boys during the winter for those who arenʼt able to play ice hockey. They run a clothing store which is frequented by many single and lower-income women in the community.

At the heart of each of these programs is a desire to build relationships with the

177 Ibid., 3.

178 Ibid., 1. 106 people who attend them. They describe how this works in the clothing store but it applies to all of the programs that they run.

Share Wear is the name of the clothing program. It is certainly providing clothing for a number of single women. It is really built on relationships in that the people who work in it get to become quite friendly with the people who tend to be regulars who tend to come in quite often and develop a real friendship.179

This involvement in peopleʼs lives is not always easy but the leaders of the church believe that it is essential because it is what God calls Christians to do.

“God calls us to the trenches, to get down and dirty, communing with people who are broken. It is messy but itʼs needed.”180 The results of this involvement in the problems and the messiness of peopleʼs lives over time results in lasting commitments when people respond to the gospel.

If you go back and read the gospels and read what Christ did it wasnʼt necessarily surgical. He lived in the messiness of it, the grittiness of it and I think that when you are investing in people and they are investing in you when that time comes, it could be three years or whatever it happens to be, then itʼs a decision that people are making for life.181

Elmvale Community Church tried a program called “Christianity Explored.”

They rented a room in the library and ran the program for thirteen weeks with little lasting impact. Some of the church members were possibly strengthened in their faith but there was no observable evangelistic impact. Other than that one attempt they have not used any programs that didnʼt originate with them. Their commitment is to get involved in peopleʼs lives in the community and they have

179 Ibid., 2.

180 Ibid., 5.

181 Ibid., 15. 107 not found an outside program that enables them to do that more effectively than what they are already doing.

The New Believer

The new believer was a woman who grew up with only minimal church exposure. She attended a United Church a few times with her grandfather which was largely a positive experience for her. She also attended a Catholic church once with a friend which, because of the strangeness of the setting, was a very negative experience. She came out of a difficult background filled with alcoholism and abuse. After the birth of one of her children she went through a period of depression which resulted in her being hospitalized. At the most difficult point of her stay in the hospital, she cried out to God for help. She said that if God would help her, she would go to the little church up the road which was Elmvale

Community Church.

On her first Sunday out of the hospital, she, along with her husband, attended the church for the first time. The pastor and his wife invited them home for lunch and during the afternoon that they spent together she told her whole story. In describing that first meeting and its impact on her life, she said that she felt accepted by the church and particularly by the pastor and his wife. She described it as feeling like “they were friends from the beginning” and said that it

“just felt comfortable.”182 She now describes the church as her family and would considers herself closer to the people at the church than she does even to the

182 New Believer at Elmvale Community Church, interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Wyebridge, Ontario, 20 July 2011, 5. 108 members of her natural family.183 The relational aspect was very important in her journey to faith.

She is quite clear as to exactly when her commitment to faith in Christ took place but she describes it as part of a process that brought her to that point of commitment and continues on in the growth that is taking place day-by-day now that she is a Christian.

I did feel after being in hospital that something existed. I wouldnʼt have said Jesus or the gospel as I would now but there was something and every time I went I felt like I was a step closer to realizing what that was. Every time I went to a small group or attended a church function, I felt like I was going the right way. Something was pulling me that way.184

The church was willing to give her the time that she needed to be pulled by the Holy Spirit into a commitment of faith. Having just come from the hospital in her own words she was “not the most put together looking person” on her ﬁrst visit to the church185 From that very uncertain beginning she has developed into a growing, serving, giving member of the church but it has been a process.

The other important factor in her spiritual journey was the opportunity to become a member of a small group even before she became a Christian. The small groups or life groups as they would call them are part of the evangelism strategy of the church. In one of the groups more than half the members have not yet made a commitment of faith. This was certainly true in the experience of the person who was interviewed. She became part of a group which gave her a setting in which she could ask her questions and receive answers in a non-

183 Ibid., 6.

184 Ibid., 7.

185 Ibid., 5. 109 threatening environment. It also provided a setting in which she could feel loved and accepted. The leadership sees the small groups as an essential part of the discipleship process within the church.

Summary

Evangelism at Elmvale begins with involvement in the community as a means of becoming involved in peopleʼs lives. There is a recognition that people lead messy lives and a willingness to invest the time, resources and energy to help them in the midst of that messiness is necessary. There is a recognition that

God works in peopleʼs lives over time and a willingness to give people the time they require to process the gospel. Life groups are an important part of this process since it is in the context of such groups that people are able to understand the gospel and then to grow once a faith decision has been made.

This is a relatively new approach for the church but one that they believe is based on the life and ministry of Jesus. They are excited about what God is doing in peopleʼs lives. It is quite different from what they have experienced most of their lives but they describe it as being “real and explosive and gritty and aggressive and neat and peaceful and all that too.”186 Having experienced this approach they never want to go back to what for them would be described as the traditional way of doing evangelism.

186 Leadership at Elmvale, 15. 110

Bridletowne Park Church

The Church

In 1970 Bridletowne Park Church began meeting in a school in the north east corner of Toronto. It was a church plant with the Associated Gospel

Churches. Shortly after their beginning, a Christian developer donated land in a new sub-division to the church and in 1973 they moved into a new building at their present location. At the same time as they received this donation of land, they also received a generous donation of money from a church closer to the downtown part of Toronto that had closed down and sold their building. These two donations have contributed to a feeling among the people at Bridletowne that

God has placed them in their location and has a purpose for them being there.

The community around the church has radically changed in the forty years since that beginning. This part of Toronto was primarily a white Anglo-Saxon community in the earlier years of the churchʼs history. Today there is a very diverse population with the two largest groups being Chinese people from

Mainland China and Tamils from Sri Lanka. As a result of these changes, the church began to feel very disconnected from the community. With that in mind

“the past ten years have been about trying to see if God has a way forward for the church in the community. The challenge has been to see if they can be relevant to newcomers to Canada.”187 In responding to that challenge the church

187 Leadership at Bridletowne Park Church, interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Toronto, Ontario, 4 August 2011, 2. 111 is “much more culturally diverse than it was ten years ago and much more engaged with people who live in the neighborhood.”188

The Leadership

The interview with the leadership at Bridletowne Park Church was with the pastor and one of the elders. The pastor came to the church in 1992 and has been in his current position since 2000. The elder has attended the church since

2002 and has just recently moved into his role as elder. They have both been part of the transition that has taken place at Bridletowne.

While acknowledging that they did not have a written plan for evangelism, they identiﬁed several basic themes that shaped their approach. The ﬁrst is a focus on the geographical community in which they are located. This has been a

“very intentional focus to concentrate their efforts right in the community.”189 The second theme is collaboration with other evangelical organizations. They have worked quite closely with “Youth Unlimited” as an example. The third theme is best described in their own words.

I think that thereʼs an emphasis in our church of providing practical help to people who are perhaps not interested in spiritual help to begin with and in that context trying to follow the opportunities for developing genuine relationships with people where we talk about the real stuff that is going on in their lives and in those conversations we are very forthright and honest about our own faith.190

This description really capsulizes their approach to evangelism. They have developed a number of programs designed to enable them to establish

188 Ibid., 2.

189 Ibid., 3.

190 Ibid., 3. 112 relationships with the people in their community. They have been much more successful in doing this with the Chinese population than they have with the

Tamil population around their church. They have run English as a Second

Language courses. They have provided programs for children and youth. Their youth group is composed almost entirely of Tamil high school students. The program that has had the greatest impact has been an employment-mentoring program that they have called RP3. This is a fourteen week program designed to teach new Canadians such basic skills as how to prepare a resume and how to prepare for an interview. This program is run by a retired business man who has many years experience in hiring people for his company. About two hundred and sixty people have gone through the program. While most beneﬁt only from the program, a number have made professions of faith and have been incorporated into the church. As part of the program they spend one-on-one time with each person and it is in this time that they are often able to go deeper into the personʼs personal life. At the heart of this program is the desire to build relationships with the people who go through the course.

Relationships are huge. Absolutely. Virtually the RP3 program and the ESL program particularly are open to people weʼve never met before. I mean itʼs friends or associates or someone recommending them right now at the moment but we donʼt know these folks at all. So itʼs all about building relationships with these people and helping them out.191

As important as relationships are to their programs, one of the leaders made the interesting observation that while relationships are the strength of their approach to evangelism, it is also what limits them in their evangelism. He

191 Ibid., 11. 113 recognized that everything “rises and falls on whether people have friendship connections.”192 On the other hand relationships are what put limitations on their efforts.

Not many people are coming into Bridletowne these days who are coming neat and tidy. People are coming with marriages that are on the verge or they are already blown apart. They are stressed because their kids are ﬁtting into Canada in ways that they donʼt want to see them ﬁtting into Canada. They are unemployed or underemployed. Their employment situations are fragile even when they have one.193

Working with people who are going through problems consumes a lot of time and energy. No church can meet all of the needs that come itʼs way and yet the leaders at Bridletowne describe this as one of the most difﬁcult things that they face. “The thing that we could beat ourselves up for the most is we are letting people slip through the cracks and weʼre not doing enough to really meet their needs and we arenʼt there for them.194 Even though there is the feeling that at times they arenʼt doing enough, there is a deep commitment on the part of the leadership to be reaching out with the love of God to the community in which God has placed them as a church. It is in this experience of reaching out to people that the church gets its sense of purpose.

We feel like often we should or could be doing a better job but at the same time one of the most positive feelings is that we are very junior partners in something that God is doing and weʼre just kind of fumbling along. Thatʼs maybe the nut shell statement about our church and evangelism. I think itʼs the most fun thing, the most rewarding thing, the most vital thing that we do as a church. It is our ministry that connects people who donʼt know Jesus yet. Iʼm not sure that there would be much of a Bridletowne if there wasnʼt that. If

192 Ibid., 12.

193 Ibid., 12.

194 Ibid., 12-13. 114

you took that out, a whole lot of things would just sort of lose their sense of purpose and vitality.195

The church has run Alpha courses for the past ten years but they see it as one aspect of a series of programs that they use to reach out to people. The fact that Alpha is highly relational, includes hospitality, and allows people to ask any question makes it ﬁt into the overall approach that Bridletowne uses. They use

Mandarin subtitles to make it more appealing to the Chinese community.

The New Believer

As would be expected at Bridletowne Park Church, the believer is a fairly new immigrant to Canada. She is a young mother who came to Canada from

China in 2005. When she came to Canada, she had no understanding of the

Christian faith whatsoever. Shortly after she arrived in Canada she met a woman whom she had known in China. This friend invited her and her husband to a

Mandarin speaking church in Toronto. For a period of about three years she attended sporadically always at the invitation of her friend. In 2008 she became pregnant and the realization that she was carrying a new life inside her greatly increased her interest in God. She began attending with much greater regularity.

During this period she made the decision to become a Christian. Very shortly after she had made that decision another friend invited her to attend Bridletowne.

In inviting her to come to Bridletowne, her friend described the church as “being very nice, very warm, like a family.”196 The easy going, accepting style of service

195 Ibid., 15.

196 New believer at Bridletowne Park Church, interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Toronto, Ontario, 4 August 2011, 1. 115 was very important to her as she began to ﬁt into the church. If she had been pressured in any way she would have found that difﬁcult.197 She also enjoys the multi-cultural nature of the church.

Here people are different. I like this difference. God is bringing people from all the nations, from different parts of the world together. Heʼs going to surprise me with so many different people in the church. And it is very interesting to see all the different peopleʼs reaction in the church. They wear different dress. Everything is different and I like to see that.198

Both the person interviewed and her husband attended the RP3 program which helped both of them ﬁnd jobs. As part of the presentation in that program, the leader said that part of the reason for the program was to show Godʼs love to the people who were there. That had a very profound impact on her in that she felt that this was different than anything that she had experienced.199

While the interview was only with the wife, she made it very clear that her husband was the leader in this spiritual journey. She mentioned that even as a child back in China he had had an interest in God. She was grateful that her husband was very much a part of this process of coming to faith in Christ.

Summary

Bridletowne Park Church was unique among the churches that were interviewed in that it was the only one located right in the middle of a very multi- cultural community. Rather than allow this to become a hindrance to evangelism, the people of the church have embraced the cultural differences in the

197 Ibid., 4.

198 Ibid., 5.

199 Ibid., 7. 116 community and developed programs to minister to the people who live in the community around the church. Even though these programs have been the doorway into the church for many people, they recognize that relationships are still the key to all that they do in the area of evangelism. Often these relationships are messy and time consuming. As such they can limit the breadth of the evangelism in which they are engaged. While they have run the Alpha program, they see it as an aid to their evangelism rather than as the primary means of evangelism.

The Rock Community Church

The Church

The Rock Community Church is part of the Associated Gospel Churches of Canada. It is located in Woodstock, Ontario, a city of about thirty-ﬁve thousand people. It began as a house church and over its history went through several church splits which seriously affected its growth. Along with those splits came several name changes.

In 1992, the church carried out a building program and was able to erect a building that was much larger than their immediate needs. The building was built in a new subdivision with the hope that the building would attract people to the church. It didnʼt. Shortly after the new building was ﬁnished there was a major split which reduced numbers even more. According to the current leadership team member who went through that period, the problem lay in the fact that while 117 they built the church with the hope of attracting new people, they refused to change the mindset that had failed to attract people in the past.200

After a period of struggling along on their own, the denomination stepped in and offered help. Two years ago they designated the church as a restart and gave it almost the same status as a church plant. This has meant that even though they have a history, much of their time and energy over the past couple of years have been devoted to building up an operational structure. They have only had an established eldersʼ board for the past ﬁve months. Attendance ranges between sixty and eighty people on a normal Sunday.

The Leadership

There were three men who participated in the interview with the leadership team, the pastor, a relatively new elder with just two years history with the church and an elder with nineteen years history with the church.

As part of the restructuring of the church, the leadership has put together a mission statement, a vision statement and a set of values. An important part of those statements is a commitment to evangelism. While they have identified evangelism as an important value of the church, they have not defined how this will work out in actual practice. One thing that they have identified though is that as they flesh this out their evangelistic efforts will not “be isolated from what is

200 Leadership at The Rock Community Church, interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Paris, Ontario, 2 August 2011, 5. 118 happening in Woodstock but built around being active participants and servants in the community.”201

While the leaders recognized the importance of equipping people to be involved in evangelism, they acknowledge that simply equipping people isnʼt enough. Their vision is for it to be part of the heartbeat of the church, their reason for existence. They also recognize that that vision needs to be created by the leadership. People wonʼt effectively become involved unless they are seeing it lived out by the leadership.202

While the leadership of the church recognizes that they still have a long way to go in developing an effective evangelistic approach, they recognize the need to be intentional in what they do.

I think we all have a desire to have something that we can wrap ourselves around and wave a ﬂag in some way. I donʼt use the word evangelism so much as engaging the pagan world, the community, in some way because you have to have some sort of formal effort or philosophy. Otherwise it might happen. It might not. I guess the word intentional, intentional connection with people.203

All of the leaders agree that evangelism will only take place when there is an intentional plan put in place. There is a level of excitement in that they feel that unlike the experience of the church when the building was built they now are open to making whatever changes they need to make in order to reach out effectively into their community. While they may not know exactly what form it will take, they are anticipating that God will work.

201 Ibid., 6.

202 Ibid., 11.

203 Ibid., 17. 119

I am just really excited. This has always been the Lordʼs building. This has always been the Lordʼs kingdom work there and he is going to see something happen there, something positive. I think that we are doing it right here to get there. How we are going to impact that community, I am anxious to see but I am trusting the Lord for that.204

At this point in their history much of their efforts in evangelism have been built around partnerships with existing outreach efforts. They have become involved in the Door, a Youth Unlimited evangelism ministry to secondary school students. They have been involved in an outreach to men involving several other churches in Woodstock. This has enabled them to have some involvement while they are in the process of designing their own program.

They have used Mark Mittelbergʼs course, “Becoming A Contagious

Christian” but with limited results at this point. They have not used other resources that were developed outside their own church.

The New Believer

The new believer who was interviewed from The Rock is a man in his mid- thirties who lives just outside Woodstock. He and his signiﬁcant other came to

The Rock without any previous contact with the church or anyone afﬁliated with the church. He grew up in a Catholic family in London and like many young people became involved in the party scene in high school. This continued on after he left home until alcohol and drugs were controlling his life. In his own words “there was no further that he could go down in life other than death.”205

204 Ibid., 17.

205 New Believer at the Rock Community Church, interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Woodstock, Ontario, 12 August 2011, 2. 120

Realizing this he moved back to London and began to get his life in order. He met his girl friend who had been raised in a family with a strong Christian commitment. After moving to Woodstock, she decided that she wanted to go back to church and he was willing to accompany her.

The preaching has had a very powerful impact on the person interviewed.

From his ﬁrst Sunday at The Rock he felt that the preaching was aimed directly at him, so much so that he felt that his girl friend was passing on information to the pastor. He feels that this has to be God speaking into his life since it has happened too often to be coincidence.206

He has been impacted by the kindness and love of the people in the church. He recently broke his wrist and was unable to keep up with the work on his horse farm. At the same time his girl friend was trampled by one of the horses and as a result broke her back so that she also was unable to work. Very quickly they began to fall behind in the upkeep of the farm. A group of twelve people showed up at the farm one Saturday morning asking what they could do to help this couple out. They spent the entire day there and by the end of the day almost everything was done that needed to be done. The couple had never experienced anything like this before and were amazed that people would do that.

I come from a background where you can live right beside somebody, neighbors and never say hello. You donʼt even know who they are, ﬁrst or last names, and you could live there for ﬁve years. People can just go to a building, a church, and have a strong belief and theyʼre over at my place pulling weeds when theyʼve only met me once or they havenʼt met me. Thatʼs a pretty amazing thing in human nature. When acts like that can be achieved

206 Ibid., 6. 121

you got to say thereʼs more to this because people just live on their own and this isnʼt going on.207

While he may not be able to express what has happened in his life in clear theological language, he was able to give a fairly clear expression of what it means to put his faith in Jesus Christ.

From going from where I went through and ending up where I am now, I got a pretty good idea that I am meant for something a little more than where I was headed. I think someone kind of put his hand on me and turned me around and said youʼre going the wrong way stupid.208

He is still very young in his faith but there is no question that the Holy

Spirit has done a transforming work in his life. He described the people at The

Rock as his family, a family that has taken him in and embraced him209

Summary

The Rock can be described as a church plant with a history. In many ways it functions as a brand new church and yet it has a history that dates back several decades and a building that came out of that history. The leadership has a strong commitment to evangelism but no clearly deﬁned plan of action as they move into the future. They are, however, committed to discovering what that plan should look like. They are committed to involvement in the community and to building relationships with those whom God brings into their sphere of inﬂuence.

This has been practically demonstrated when twelve people gave a day to help the young couple who attend the church. They have a clear understanding of

207 Ibid., 7.

208 Ibid., 5.

209 Ibid., 7. 122 what doesnʼt work from the experience of the church in its earlier history but they are still in the process of ﬁnding out what does work.

While they have connected with other evangelistic efforts in the area, they see that only as one aspect of their future evangelistic approach. Outside programs have had very little impact on the church and the leadership sees the need of building their own approach that is unique to Woodstock rather than importing something from outside.

Glenelg Centre Baptist Church

The Church

Glenelg Centre Baptist Church is located in a rural setting a few kilometers from the Town of Durham, Ontario. This is the most rural of the churches that took part in this study. The area around the church is mostly open ﬁelds. The church is a part of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec. Glenelg can trace its origins back to meetings held in membersʼ homes as far back as 1860.

A building to house the Glenelg Centre Union Church was built in 1893 and three years later a motion was passed that stated that the Union Church would become a Baptist Church.210 This marked the ofﬁcial beginning of Glenelg Centre as a Baptist Church.

Today the church averages between eighty and one hundred people in

Sunday morning attendance. The demographic of the congregation includes larger families, a few singles, plenty of children and mostly people who have

210 Katie Cleland, Glenelg Centre Baptist Churchʼs Foundation of a Family-based Ministry, Research Paper, 1-2. 123 been raised in Christian homes.211 The leaders of the church would describe it as being very conservative in both its theology and ecclesiology. They place a very high value on membership with more than eighty per cent of the adults who attend the church accepted as members who have an active role in the church.

The Leadership

Three people participated in the interview as part of the leadership at

Glenelg, the pastor, an older man who was the churchʼs representative to

General Conference, and a young man in his twenties who was planning on becoming involved with the leadership of the youth. The pastor has been at the church for thirteen years which is the second longest period of time of any pastor in that association. There was greater diversity among the leaders in their approach to evangelism than any group of leaders in the six churches in the study.

The older leader was quite concerned that in every situation the gospel be verbally shared. Most of his input into the conversation focused on the need to present the gospel before becoming involved in helping people with material needs.

And we have to be so very careful about this social gospel. The social gospel comes after the gospel. Paul talked about bottom line, Christ and him cruciﬁed. You go out and be a good person after you understand about the reality of Jesus Christ and why he had to come.212

211 Leadership at Glenelg Centre Baptist Church, interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Glenelg, Ontario, 3 August 2011, 2.

212 Ibid., 10. 124

In his mind the key to every encounter was to place the gospel “front and center.”213 Anything else was not acceptable.

The young leader took a very different approach. While he agreed that it was important to present the gospel, he also saw the building of relationships with people as a bridge to bring someone to Christ. He saw evangelism not as a conversion to religion but as an invitation to experience Godʼs love and relationships as being an important part of that process.214

The pastor combined both of these perspectives. He stressed the need of sharing the gospel with people but also shared experiences in which the church demonstrated the love of God in peopleʼs lives. He was willing to drive forty kilometers round trip to bring a young teenage girl to youth group because she was living in a difﬁcult home environment in which the parents were not willing to drive her. This young woman was suffering from anorexia and through the love and support of the church she was able to overcome that illness. She made a profession of faith and eventually her mother and younger sisters became part of the church. In a very practical way, the church built a relationship and used that relationship to reach out to people. The verbal presentation of the gospel came over time. For the pastor this example deﬁnes evangelism in Glenelg.

So for me that is a picture of our evangelism style. Itʼs the Lord using people; us obeying his command to be open and available but treating each one individually where their need is.215

213 Ibid., 14.

214 Ibid., 12.

215 Ibid., 16. 125

The church has used Mark Mittelbergʼs book “Becoming A Contagious

Christian” as a foundation for some of their thinking about evangelism. The primary principle that they have gleaned from that book has been the idea that not all evangelism has to be confrontational. They can reach out to people through gifts of mercy, teaching or whatever a personʼs gift may be.

The New Believer

At Glenelg the interview was with a young adult who has just graduated from high school. He is part of one of the leadership families at the church and as such has spent his whole life at Glenelg. He went through a period of rebellion when he was in high school during which he didnʼt totally reject the gospel but questioned whether it had any relevance to his life at that time. One of the problems that he faced during his early high school years was a lack of friends.

He was the only male in the church youth group and did not relate well to the females who were there. One of the major inﬂuences on his life at that time was music.

In grade eleven, at the invitation of a friend, he began to attend a different youth group where he was able to meet other young men with whom he was able to establish a friendship. One of them introduced him to Christian hip hop music.

He began to question the moral value of the secular music that he was listening to and asked God to give him a sign if he was to stop listening to the music. At that time he had about one thousand songs on his computer. Only a small number of those songs were Christian. When he went to listen to his music one day, all of the secular songs were wiped off his computer while the Christian 126 songs were still there. This experience had a signiﬁcant impact on him and was instrumental in bringing him to a point at which he recommitted his life to Christ.

While this experience was the key event in his spiritual journey back to

Christ, two relationships also played an important part. The ﬁrst was his relationship with his parents. Throughout all of this period of searching he was constantly bringing his questions to his father. The second relationship was with the friends at the youth group at the other church. They were the ones who were able to come around him and support him during a time in which he was in need of Christian friendship. He had lots of friends at school who were not Christians but none who could ﬁll the spiritual need in his life.216

Summary

The leadership at Glenelg stressed the importance of a verbal witness as part of any evangelistic approach. They are the most conservative in their approach. All three people who were interviewed would agree with this approach.

On the other hand they told stories of becoming deeply involved in peopleʼs lives as part of the process of bringing those people to faith. Relationships have formed an important part of the practical outworking of their evangelistic attempts. In this sense there is some disconnect between what they teach about evangelism and how they actually attempt to share their faith.

While they have been inﬂuenced by Mark Mittelbergʼs book, that inﬂuence has been minimal. For the most part there has not been any program that has

216 New Believer at Glenelg Centre Baptist Church, interview by author, Glenelg, Ontario, transcript of audio recording, 7 August 2011, 2. 127 originated outside of their church that has made any signiﬁcant impact on the church.

New Dundee Baptist Church

The Church

The New Dundee Baptist Church is associated with the Baptist

Convention of Ontario and Quebec. The church was founded in 1852. Originally it was one of ﬁve preaching centers in Wilmot Township but eventually developed into an autonomous church in its own right. In the early years it was a German- speaking congregation but in 1911 it became an English speaking church. In the

1940s the church peaked at about eighty people but has never approached that size again. One of the interesting facts about this church is that in the past forty years it has only had four different pastors with the current pastor having served for thirteen years. The Town of New Dundee has about one thousand, one hundred residents and is located in a rural setting even though it is not far from the City of Kitchener.

The current pastor graduated from McMaster Divinity College, having majored in small congregation studies there. He is committed to working with small churches throughout his pastoral career.

Unlike other churches in this study, New Dundee has run the Alpha program for several years and has found it to be an integral part of their evangelistic approach. They have held it outside of the church setting in one of the homes in New Dundee and have found this to be an important factor in its 128 success. The leaders see Alpha as being positive both for the church and for the participants.

We began to do it on a Sunday evening and it was really a beautiful experience for the church because the church really rallied around. The people got involved bringing in the supper. We did it on Sunday nights. We got together and we had the Alpha supper and the Alpha program afterwards and it really became a really, really good venture for both the participants and for the church itself. I think everybody from both Alpha groups that we ran has ended up being a part of the church with the exception of one fellow.217

The pastor had been involved in running an Alpha program in a medium- sized church before holding the program at New Dundee. When asked to compare the two experiences he responded that he had “loved the smaller church setting a heck of a lot better.”218 The reason for this was the higher level of commitment to the program on the part of the smaller church.

The Leadership

The interview took place with the pastor who has ﬁlled that role for thirteen years and the chair of the deaconsʼ board who has been part of the church for

ﬁfty-eight years.

The leadership places a very high value on community involvement as a means both of making an impact on the community and of connecting with people with whom relationships can be built. The chair of the deaconsʼ board is also a member of the Board of Trade in New Dundee. Members of the church are

217 Leadership at New Dundee Baptist Church, interview by author, transcript of audio recording, Kitchener, Ontario, 17 August 2011, 3.

218 Ibid., 4. 129 also in the Optimists Club, the Ladiesʼ Institute, and other community groups.

The pastor challenges the people to become involved in this way.

Go. Go with my blessing and remember that you are like Christ out there in the community. Spread the ﬂame and the taste of Christ out to the community so that they know who you are and that Christ is a real Saviour and alive and well. That rolls out my understanding of friendship evangelism where you really are out there being a person with people.219

There is a strong emphasis on friendship evangelism at New Dundee

Baptist Church. The leadership stresses this whenever possible.

Certainly in my preaching I try to bring out principles of friendship evangelism where you befriend people. I dare say, what was it, a couple of weeks ago or just before I went on vacation I told them that sometimes the priority of being with a person could prevent someone from coming to church or if I knew that on a Sunday morning everyone in this congregation would go out and spend time with neighbors who were not Christians, I would gladly cancel church, go your way and come the next week and tell me about it.220

Another emphasis at New Dundee is on the importance of making people feel accepted when they come for the ﬁrst time. It is something that the leaders claim has always been there but something that is very important nonetheless.

Recently a young woman began to attend the church, came to faith in Christ and was baptized last June. One of the key elements in her journey to faith at the church was the fact that “she was overwhelmed by the sense of community and the sense of being able to belong.”221 While this is not unique to a small church, it is more easily achieved within a small church setting.

Another important evangelistic effort that has a community impact is a garage sale that the church holds every year. With the proceeds from that sale

219 Ibid., 5.

220 Ibid., 8.

221 Ibid., 11. 130 they send community children to camp. Last year they sent twelve children, only two of which came from the church. They have not seen any families come into the church as a result of this effort but they have had contact with those families, a number of which view New Dundee Baptist as their church even though they never attend. To see the full impact of this program the results will need to be observed over time.

One ﬁnal effort is worth noting. For several years they provided seed money just before Christmas for their childrenʼs and youth programs. They then told the children and youth that they were to use that money to make an impact in peopleʼs lives. Just before Christmas they gave the children and youth the opportunity to share during the Sunday morning service the story of how they had made an impact. The teenagers did a number of different things. Perhaps the involvement that had the greatest impact on the teenagers themselves was time spent at a home for unwed mothers. Some of the girls continued their involvement with the young women at the home after the program was over.

They didnʼt do this last year and they have had children and teenagers coming to them asking if they are going to do it this year. Once again it was an effort to be involved in the community. This involvement is at the heart of who they are as a church.

So from the young ages right up we try. I donʼt know if we always succeed. I donʼt know if we always necessarily do a good job but we try to do our best and let the Lord do the rest. We canʼt convince. Itʼs the Holy Spirit that challenges a person. Not me. But we are the tools that the Holy Spirit uses.222

222 Ibid., 14. 131

The New Believer

At New Dundee the new believer who was interviewed is a single woman.

She had gone through a difﬁcult period in her life, having just come out of a broken relationship. During this time period she lived right across the road from the pastor of the New Dundee church and his wife. They would often meet her while on walks. Both owned dogs which gave them something in common. Over time they became friends.

One day she decided that “she didnʼt have relationships with people that are great so why not try God.”223 As a result of that decision she knocked on the pastorʼs door and asked if she could go to church with his family. They responded that they would be delighted to take her to church and she has been going with them ever since.

From the very ﬁrst Sunday she felt accepted and welcomed at the church.

I always felt very welcome here and it feels like theyʼre my second family. They always love me and even when Iʼm not here itʼs “Oh, where is she? We miss her.” Wow, they actually care that much about me. It was almost a weird feeling because I wasnʼt used to it. I mean I have loved ones and friends and family but itʼs just not the same feeling. So thatʼs pretty much how it started.224

The Alpha program had an impact on her as well. The fellowship offered by the meal and the sharing time made an impact on her life. It was a chance to

“learn more about God and have a get together, being loving with each other and just making me feel blessed being there with friends.”225

223 New Believer at New Dundee Baptist Church, interview by author, transcript of audio recording, New Dundee, Ontario, 7 August 2011, 1.

224 Ibid., 1.

225 Ibid., 3. 132

The other thing that had a profound impact on her life was the preaching at New Dundee. She was not used to hearing preaching that was practical and actually affected how she lived her life. From the ﬁrst Sunday at the church she was impacted by the preaching.

Jesus Christ has made a very powerful difference in her life as she has grown into faith over her time at the church.

It is huge and very, very good for me. I feel so much better as a person. From the personal experience I went through, from my teen years I was depressed. I really was and I never really got out of it until I met the pastorʼs wife. Now I have such a different perspective on life. . .The changes I just feel it in my heart. Iʼve changed as a person even though I still need to change but its deﬁnitely changed me.226

Summary

New Dundee Baptist Church is located in a small town setting that is greatly inﬂuenced by the rural community around it. An important value for the church in such a setting is to be very much involved in the community. Out of that involvement have come opportunities to impact people with the gospel. At the heart of what the church wants to be is a desire to take Jesus Christ into the world around it. They are doing this in a variety of different ways.

The church prides itself on being a warm, accepting place for new people to come. This was certainly a major factor in the conversion story of the person who was interviewed.

Two outside programs have had an important impact on the life of the church. They have run the Alpha program with excellent results both in the lives

226 Ibid., 3. 133 of the participants and in the life of the church. While they donʼt have a formal program, the principles of friendship evangelism have also deeply inﬂuenced their approach to evangelism. Building relationships with non-churched people is a very high priority at the church.

Observations

While recognizing that a sample group of six churches is not large enough to arrive at any deﬁnitive conclusions, there are ﬁve observations that can be drawn out of this research project.

The first observation is that the leadership members who participated in the interviews were all men. A total of fifteen people participated in the interviews with leadership and all fifteen were men. As has been stated above, the sampling is not large enough to draw any broad conclusions about the percentage of women in leadership positions in small churches but it is significant that there was not even one woman who participated in the interviews. The people who participated were chosen by the pastor in each of the six churches that took part.

The only guideline given to the pastor was that they were to be people who held a signiﬁcant leadership position in which they were impacting the churchʼs thinking on evangelism.

It is not the purpose of this thesis to deal with the issue of gender roles in churches. Gender roles in the small church would make for a very important study but it is not the focus of this one. With a subject such as evangelism, where half of the people that a church is trying to reach are female, the fact that no women were selected to participate in the study is disturbing. Small churches 134 need to be encouraged to include women in any discussions on the subject of evangelism. If they are not included, there is a very real danger that the conclusions and the approach that is presented to the church will be distorted by only having a male perspective.

The second observation is that small churches are making a difference.

Often small churches feel like nothing is really happening in small-church settings. They are overwhelmed by the stories of mega-church success and feel like there is little that they can do to impact the world around them. In these interviews there were no amazing stories of multiple conversions and major community impacts. If such stories had existed, in all probability the church would no longer be small and would not qualify for this study. There are, however, seven people whose lives have been transformed because of the impact of six small churches.

A young couple, whose lives were falling apart, found a spiritual family and new life in Christ at Pinewoods Gospel Chapel in Angus. A woman who had just gone through a time of intense stress following the birth of her child found support and new hope at Elmvale Community Church. Although he was not interviewed, her husband also came to faith in Christ through the witness of that church. A young woman from China became a Christian and is growing in her new found faith as a result of the love and care of Bridletowne Park Church in

Toronto. Her husband also became a Christian and they are now raising their young child in the context of a Christian community. A young man in his mid- thirties found an answer to his addictions to alcohol and drugs through the 135 ministry of The Rock Community Church in Woodstock. His partner also has put her faith in Jesus Christ. A teenager was brought to a point of personal commitment to Christ through the impact of two small churches, Glenelg Centre

Baptist Church and another church in whose youth group he found acceptance.

Finally a woman who had just come out of a bad relationship found what it meant to have a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ as a result of the impact of New Dundee Baptist Church on her life. They may not be the spectacular stories that are picked up by the Christian media, but in the lives of one or two people at a time, small churches are making a difference.

The third observation is that relationships were at the heart of evangelism in the small churches that were part of this study. These churches may have been among the most effective small churches in Canada. In searching for churches to take part in the study there were those that were willing to participate but had not had anything happen evangelistically in their churches for a long period of time. For that reason they didnʼt qualify to be part of the study. They were not able to think of anyone who could be interviewed as someone who had become a Christian through the efforts of the church. The churches that did take part were those that are seeing some fruit from their evangelistic efforts. In every one of those churches the building of relationships was at the heart of their approach to evangelism. In every story that the new believers shared, relationships played an important part in the person coming to faith. In almost every case the new believer described the church as his or her family and in some cases as being more important than the personʼs biological family. In the 136 one church that put the verbal sharing of faith ahead of relationships, the church still demonstrated the value of relationship in its outreach.

If relationships are one of the small churchʼs greatest strengths, then they should be part of their approach to evangelism. In all of the churches in which interviews were conducted they were.

The fourth observation is that relationships require the willingness to invest time, energy and resources into people. A common factor that came out in all of the interviews with leaders was that the people into whose lives they invested their time, energy and resources came with a great deal of messiness in their lives. That messiness took many different forms. In some cases there were marriage and family issues. In other situations there were employment and job problems. Dealing with new Canadians presented a whole different set of challenges. Whatever form the messiness took, it required a willingness on the part of the church to invest heavily in people. Relational evangelism cost these churches, but they were willing to pay the price in order to reach people with the gospel and see lives transformed by the power of God.

While none of the six churches interviewed had a written plan for evangelism, they all knew that reaching people with the gospel needed to include involvement in the community. It required the building of relationships and the willingness to live with the messiness that those relationships brought. The ﬁnal observation is that doing this, for the most part, involved programs that they had developed themselves. While some of them had used programs that were developed outside of their church setting, in only one case had it made a 137 signiﬁcant impact on their church. The leadership at New Dundee Baptist Church felt that the Alpha program had played a very important role both in the life of the church and the participants in the program. The other churches had used some outside programs but none had made much impact.

Most outside programs are developed by large-church leaders. Most of those programs come out of the unique setting in which those large churches function. Most of them were not developed with either the unique characteristics of the small church or of the unique cultural traits of the setting in mind. With that in mind it should not surprise anyone if their impact has been limited.

Theoretical Propositions

In the previous chapter there were two theoretical propositions identified as defining the focus of the study. The first was that successful evangelism in small churches comes out of relationships that people within the church build with outsiders. In the interviews that were conducted with the leadership of the churches, no theme was more prominent than the central place of relationships in the evangelism that was taking place. The leadership saw relationships as being at the center of what they were doing or hoped to do in the future.

In the interviews with the new believers the same themes occurred numerous times. The idea of the church becoming their family was mentioned.

Acts of kindness on the part of the church had an important impact on some of the people. The fact that they felt accepted by the people in the church was crucial. All of these things contributed to the building of relationships that contributed to the person eventually making a faith commitment to Christ. 138

While the study is not broad enough to draw any deﬁnitive conclusions about what works and what doesnʼt work in small churches, the evidence from this study overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that relationships play an important role in impacting people with the gospel in a small church setting.

The second theoretical proposition is that evangelistic approaches designed by large churches for large church use will not work effectively in small churches. In the six churches interviewed the only program used with any success that was not developed by the church itself was the Alpha Program. In both of the churches in which this was used effectively it supplemented their own evangelistic program more than it deﬁned what that program was. In the six churches interviewed, programs that were developed by large churches had very little impact on the life of the church. 139

CHAPTER 7

EVANGELISM IN SMALL CHURCHES SEMINAR

The challenge in this final chapter is to assemble the material covered by this paper into a seminar designed to be presented in a single day. The material will be divided into five sessions, each designed to last approximately fifty minutes, with a ten minute break between sessions. In addition to the sessions, there will be a one-hour lunch period which means that the total length of the seminar will be six hours.

Recognizing that there is more material in the thesis than can be effectively presented in ﬁve hours, each session of the seminar will provide in- depth coverage of two or three issues raised in the corresponding section of this thesis.

The ﬁrst session of the seminar will be an introductory section, establishing a foundation for the remainder of the teaching. The four issues covered in this section do not come directly out of the thesis, but are important as a framework for the sections that follow. The four topics covered in this section are the place of prayer, change, choice, and commitment in the development of an evangelistic strategy in a church.

The second session of the seminar presents the biblical foundation for evangelism. The two points covered will be “The Place of Discipleship in the

Great Commission” and a “Proper Understanding of Conversion.”

The third session considers two historic contributions to the subject of evangelism. The two contributions include the call for new measures as found in 140 the writings of Charles Finney and the balance between evangelism and social responsibility as found in the material from the Lausanne Movement.

The fourth session highlights the value of the small church. The section begins by focusing on a biblical understanding of the value of the small church. It then moves to the characteristics of the small church, examining the relational nature and the inter-generational nature of the small church.

The ﬁnal session presents three of the four observations drawn from the completed research. First, small churches are making a difference. Second, relationships are at the heart of evangelism in small-church settings. Third, relationships require a willingness to invest in the messiness of peopleʼs lives.

Each sub-section of the seminar follows the same structure. There is a quote to introduce the subject matter. This is followed by the teaching content.

Then there is an audience participation section. Finally, there is an application section in which the material is applied to the particular church setting.

The teaching content in the seminar is meant to be expanded in the actual presentation. The material that is contained in the seminar is designed only to introduce the main themes that will then be expanded on when the material is actually presented. 141

Session One

Laying A Foundation

1. Evangelism Involves Prayer

Prayer is the Christianʼs vital breath and native air. We all promote it verbally. Every new initiative is launched with the reminder: “We must bathe this ministry in prayer.” But our talk too often fails to match our walk.227 Arnold L. Cook, formerly President of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada

Teaching Content

While there has been debate over the centuries regarding the role that

God plays in the conversion experience, there is almost universal agreement among evangelical churches that God does play an important part. If this is true, then prayer needs to be an essential part of any evangelistic program. Prayer acknowledges Godʼs place in the process. Before any issues are discussed, before any plans are laid, before any programs are put into place, there needs to be a commitment on the part of everyone involved to give prayer its proper place.

Audience Participation

Recognizing the importance of prayer, begin the seminar with several people praying and asking Godʼs blessing on the day.

Application

227 Arnold L. Cook, Historical Drift: Must My Church Die? (Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications, 2000), 286. 142

What place does your church currently give to prayer? What speciﬁc step will your church take to ensure that prayer is an important part of your evangelism strategy?

2. Evangelism Involves Change

The alternative to dreams and ideals is to continue doing what we are doing now. And thatʼs a sure recipe for going down the tubes! If churches are to connect with Canadians in need of ministry, we have to pursue what can be, rather than settle for what is. (emphasis his)228 Reginald W. Bibby, Professor of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge

Teaching Content

Change is not an option. It is unavoidable. No church ever operates in an environment void of change. The issue is not whether there will be change but how a church will handle change. Many churches are reactive, responding to change that has already taken place. Churches need to be proactive, planning for change before it happens. Evangelism involves change and the church needs to be proactive in planning for that change.

Audience Participation - Groups of two participants

Divide the audience into groups of two and allow ﬁve to seven minutes for discussion on the following questions: How has your church changed over the past year? Remember that these do not have to be major changes. How have these changes affected your church?

Application

228 Reginald W. Bibby, Thereʼs Got To Be More: Connecting Churches & Canadians ( Winﬁeld, BC: Wood Lake Books Inc., 1995), 85. 143

Identify ways in which your church may have to change in order to reach out into the community around it with the gospel.

3. Evangelism Involves Choice But the Church must choose - its priorities, its strategies, its programmes, its leadership, its emphasis, its involvement, its mission. Too often, the local church is so busy debating choices of a lesser kind. . . that more signiﬁcant choices are pushed into the background.229 Andrew D. MacRae, Formerly Director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Acadia Divinity College

Teaching Content

Evangelism does not just naturally happen. Choices must be made if it is going to take place. The natural direction for a church to move is always inward.

It moves outward only when it intentionally makes the choices that force it to do so. Some of those choices may be difﬁcult to make but without facing them, evangelism will not take place.

Audience Participation - Feedback from the whole group

Ask for responses to the question: What are some of the decisions that churches have to make if they are going to make evangelism a priority?

Application

Identify three choices that your church will have to make if evangelism is going to become a priority. What are the factors that will make those choices difﬁcult to make?

4. Evangelism Involves Commitment

229 Andrew D. MacRae, Your Church Must Choose If It Wants To Grow (London: Pickering & Ingress, 1982), 1. 144

Charismatic leaders inadvertently often do more harm than good because, at best, they provide dependency. Superhuman leaders also do us another disservice: they are role models who can never be emulated by large numbers. Deep and sustained reform depends on many of us, not just on the very few who are destined to be extraordinary.230 Michael Fullan, Professor of Policy Studies at the University of Toronto

Teaching Content

Evangelism needs to be an every-member activity. It is not reserved only for those select few who have the gift of evangelism. It is certainly not reserved only for the super-star pastor for whom, too often, churches are looking. While leaders need to set the example, it should be an example that becomes contagious so that it spreads throughout the entire church family. An evangelism strategy that relies solely on the pastor or a small group of leaders is destined for failure. Evangelism involves commitment from every church member.

Audience Participation - Feedback from the whole group

Ask for reaction to Fullanʼs statement. What kind of leader is most likely to ﬁt the needs of a small church?

Application

Identify the elements in an evangelism strategy that will have to be in place for every member to be involved in evangelism.

Session Two

230 Michael Fullan, Leading In A Culture of Change (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 1. 145

Laying A Biblical Foundation

Any attempt to establish a strategy for evangelism must start with a solid biblical foundation. Such a foundation should serve as a compass for those who are trying to ﬁnd their direction through the maze of resources that is available on the subject of evangelism. Without such a compass, the temptation is to make

“results” the ultimate criteria for determining the direction that the church should take. Churches are constantly looking for something that will work, with increased attendance ﬁgures being the determining factor in decision-making. Building a solid biblical foundation should be primary with that biblical foundation ultimately determining the shape that the program will take.

In this session, two important biblical truths will be considered. While these do not cover the full scope of what should be studied as a church tries to establish that biblical foundation, they do provide a good beginning. A full biblical understanding of the topic will only come through an ongoing study as the church attempts to broaden its understanding of what the Bible says on this topic.

1. The Place of Discipleship in the Great Commission

231 Willard, Introduction to the Great Omission, xv. 146

Teaching Content

In Matthew 28:18-20, we have what has come to be known as the Great

Commission, called such because it is the ﬁnal command given by Jesus to his disciples. This commission is just as valid today as it was when it was given. If we are going to have a solid biblical understanding of evangelism, it is essential that we understand the content of this commission.

The ﬁrst thing to note is that the actual commission is enclosed by the statement of Jesusʼ authority at the beginning and the promise of his presence at the end. The disciples were sent out to do a task, but they went out as people under authority and with the promise of the constant presence of the One who sent them out.

In the actual commission there are four verbs - go, make disciples, baptize, and teach. In the original Greek text only one of these four verbs is a command. The other three are all participles and as such do not contain the main focus of the commission. The one main verb is the verb that is translated as

“make disciples.” Thus the command, given by Jesus to his disciples, is for those disciples to make other disciples. The challenge facing every church today is how does it carry out this commission by making disciples in its twenty-ﬁrst century context.

If the heart of the Great Commission is to make disciples, then there is no task more important than for a church to determine what is involved in actually making a disciple. Churches need seriously to consider what needs to happen if they are going to bring people from that ﬁrst moment of interest in the gospel to 147 the point at which they are mature disciples of Jesus Christ. That is the challenge that churches face.

Audience Participation - Brainstorming Session

Ask the participants to provide answers to the question: What are essential elements in someone moving from the place of being an unbeliever with some interest in the gospel to being a fully committed disciple of Jesus Christ? Make a list of the answers and when there are ten to fifteen elements, ask each person to identify the five most important. When they have done this, ask how many named each item in turn on their lists. Put the number beside each item on the white board. As time permits, ask people why they listed each item in their top five.

Application

Making disciples is the heart of the Great Commission. Therefore, it should be the heart of everything that the church does. Too often churches think in terms of programs. A good church is often identiﬁed as one that has a wide variety of programs. Thus, they will have a youth program, a childrenʼs program, a menʼs programs, a womenʼs program, and whatever other programs the church may feel that they need. The mission of the church is not to run programs. The mission of the church is to make disciples.

If the mission of the church is to make disciples, then everything that the church does should be designed around the fulﬁllment of that mission. The church needs to identify those factors which contribute to discipleship and then build around them. A church does not need a youth program. It needs a program for youth that contributes to those youth becoming disciples. The church does not need a childrenʼs program. It needs a program for children that contributes towards those children becoming disciples. 148

Use the brainstorming session above to identify those things that are essential in the process of turning people from seekers into disciples. What are those factors that are absolutely essential to this process? Once your church has identiﬁed those factors, begin to build your programs around them.

2. Understanding Conversion

The experience of conversion lies at the heart of evangelism. In order to be effective in evangelism, it is necessary to have a clear and nuanced understanding of the nature of conversion.232 Richard Peace, Associate Professor of Evangelism and Media at Gordon- Conwell Seminary

Teaching Content

Too often, Christians have been guilty of presenting a very simplistic version of the gospel. People have been asked to make a decision for Jesus

Christ with little understanding of the content of the gospel and no understanding of the implications of the gospel for their future. Conversion is much more than what happens in that moment of decision. The challenge of evangelism is seen as bringing people to the point at which they will pray the sinnerʼs prayer.

Churches have substituted the sinnerʼs prayer as the key ingredient in conversion rather than the biblical element of faith.

At the very least there must be three elements in conversion. First, there must be content. It is not enough simply to believe. There must be actual substance to a personʼs faith. Without that substance, faith is meaningless.

232 Peace, Conversion in the New Testament, 1. 149

Second, there must be a turning which occurs. The Bible uses the term repentance to describe this turning. The idea that a person can experience conversion and continue on as if nothing had happened is contrary to the biblical concept of conversion.

Third, there must be a transformation which takes place. The Bible describes this transformation in many different ways but transformation must take place. The idea of transformation reﬂects the Great Commissionʼs call to make disciples. The task of evangelism does not end once a person has prayed a prayer. The challenge of making disciples is ongoing.

Often evangelism is misunderstood as the process of bringing people to a one-time decision in which a person moves from being an unbeliever to becoming a believer. If conversion involves content, turning, and transformation, then it could be more accurately described as a series of decisions beginning with the initial decision to show interest in the gospel to the decision to place faith in Jesus to many decisions that affect future growth.

Audience Participation - Small group brainstorming

Divide the participants into groups of two or three people and ask them to respond to this question: Recognizing that every Christian must make a faith decision to follow Jesus Christ, what other decisions have you made throughout the course of your life that have contributed to your growth into maturity in your Christian walk? (i.e. You may have decided to join a church or have a regular devotional time)

Bring everyone back into the larger group and give them a chance to share some of those decisions. 150

Application

Identify those decisions that are crucial to peopleʼs growth into discipleship. How can the church encourage people to make those decisions and then support them in the decisions they have made? In developing an evangelism strategy, churches need to think beyond the one crucial decision to believe in Jesus Christ and begin to think in multiple decisions that will support peopleʼs growth in discipleship. 151

Session Three

Lessons From History

Throughout every period of the Churchʼs history, God has been impacting people and cultures with the gospel. In every era he has worked in unique ways as society has presented different challenges that may have belonged to that period of time but contain lessons for the Church throughout all of its history. The purpose of this section of the seminar is to consider two of those historic challenges, one from the nineteenth and one from the twentieth centuries, and to learn lessons from both.

1. The Nineteenth Century - Charles Finney

Without new measures it is impossible that the Church should succeed in gaining the attention of the world to religion. There are so many exciting subjects constantly brought before the public mind, such a running to and fro, so many the cry “lo Here!” and “Lo there!” that the Church cannot maintain her ground without sufﬁcient novelty in measures, to get the public ear.233 Charles Finney

Teaching Content

Charles Grandison Finney was one of the most powerful evangelists of the nineteenth century. Born in Upper New York State, his impact extended throughout the United States and Great Britain. Even more important, his impact is felt right down to today through the approach to evangelism that he introduced.

Finney was famous for his new measures, measures that were soundly criticized in his own day but that changed the face of evangelism in the United

233 Finney, Revivals of Religion, 281. 152

States and perhaps most of the world. These measures grew out of several beliefs that Finney held. The ﬁrst was the fact that while Christ commissioned his followers to make disciples, he did not spell out the means by which this task was to be carried out. The methods that were used had to be determined by the culture in which the gospel was preached.

A more controversial position was the belief that revivals could be brought about by the use of the appropriate means. He ministered in a culture that was largely shaped by very strong Calvinistic theology with a heavy emphasis on

Godʼs role in bringing about revival. For better or for worse, depending on a personʼs theological stance, Finney shifted that emphasis from Godʼs role in revival to the human role in revival.

As the above quote would indicate, the third position that Finney took, that was controversial in his day, was the idea that new measures were essential if he was going to be relevant to his own culture. While the message didnʼt change, the methods needed to change if he was going to reach a changing culture.

Some of the radical new methods introduced by Finney were calling for a public response to the gospel, the use of prayer meetings as a foundation for revival, the counseling of inquirers, the use of non-church buildings for meetings, and the use of a call to personal commitment. It is interesting that what was new in the nineteenth century are accepted methods today.

Audience Participation - Group Brainstorming

Ask people to respond to the following question: What are some of the changes in the Canadian culture today that may require new methods for churches looking to impact their communities? 153

Application

Identify the three most signiﬁcant changes in Canadian culture from the list generated by the brainstorming session. Discover what other churches are doing in their attempt to respond to these changes. Are there things that other churches are doing that could be applied to your church?

2. Balancing Evangelism & Social Responsibility - The Lausanne Movement

Teaching Content

The International Congress on World Evangelization was held in 1974 in

Lausanne, Switzerland, with more than 2300 people from 150 countries. At the end of the congress, the Lausanne Covenant was signed by those attending the congress. In 1989, a second congress was held in Manila, Philippines with 4300 people from 173 countries in attendance. The Manila Manifest, which came out of those meetings, reinforced the original Lausanne Covenant. In 2010 a third congress was held in Cape Town with 4,000 people from 198 countries in attendance. The Cape Town Commitment was produced by this congress. One of the primary issues considered at all three historic meetings was the question of the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility.

234 Wright, The Mission of God, 319. 154

Sadly, a divide was drawn between these areas of Christian responsibility with the evangelical church focusing primarily on evangelism and those with a more liberal theological perspective focusing on the side of social responsibility.

This has been a division that was not evident in the life of Jesus who throughout his earthly ministry both taught his followers and met the social needs that surrounded him in the ﬁrst-century cultural setting.

The Lausanne Congress dealt with this issue by stressing that both were part of a Christianʼs duty but while acknowledging the importance of both, they stated that evangelism must have the primacy. The Manila Congress reiterated this stance of the Lausanne Covenant. It did, however, make one signiﬁcant change when it acknowledged that the choice between these is largely conceptual.

In the Cape Town Commitment, the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility is stressed without acknowledging the primacy of evangelism. The Commitment also spells out, in considerable detail, what is meant by social responsibility in a number of speciﬁc areas.

As many churches move to an understanding of conversion as a process rather than a one-time event, it is important to understand the relationship between these areas of Christian responsibility. There are two dangers that must be avoided. The ﬁrst is to think that if a church shares a verbal witness, it is fulﬁlling its responsibility towards the community around it. The second is to believe that it is possible to carry out the churchʼs responsibility without any verbal witness at all. The issue for the church is not whether evangelism or social 155 responsibility should have the primacy but rather how should the church carry out its evangelism/social responsibility task.

Audience Participation - Group feedback

Ask for response to the following question: Is Christopher Wright correct in his concept of “ultimacy” for a verbal witness to the truth of the gospel?

Application

Churches in Canada seem to be moving towards a greater balance in their understanding and implementation of the two elements in this discussion. As is true in so many areas of the Christian life, a perfect balance is difﬁcult to achieve.

Examine your churchʼs involvement in both of these areas. How are you sharing the gospel in your community? How are you meeting your social responsibility in your community? Have you achieved a measure of balance? 156

Session Four

The Place of the Small Church

A majority of churches in Canada fall into the small-church category which, if for no other reason, should make them signiﬁcant in the Canadian church context. In addition to their numerical signiﬁcance, small churches also have been the norm historically. Down through the centuries, small churches have been the dominant expression of Protestant Christianity.

While most of the attention over the past few decades has been given to mega-churches and their leaders, the small church remains vitally important. The small church is unique in its own right and with that in mind, it is important that those who attend small churches should understand something of that uniqueness.

1. A Biblical Understanding of the Small Church

In the person of Jesus Christ the Christian church holds within itself a motive and power that does produce changed character. So Jesus Christ is the center of worth and hope of the Christian church. We have this treasure in an earthen vessel. Donʼt point to the earthen vessel - its cracks, its outworn inscriptions, its outworn shape. Its unmodern appearance, but rather look at what it holds. It holds the person of Jesus Christ. As long as it holds him, it holds the most precious, the most potent, and the most present value that this universe holds, barring none.235 E. Stanley Jones, Methodist Missionary to India

Teaching Content

The Jerusalem church is often held up as an example to follow by those who would suggest that all churches should either be large or in the process of

235 Stanley Jones, The Reconstruction of the Church, 9. 157 becoming large. The church in Jerusalem grew from a small group, numbering just over one hundred people, to a mega-church, numbering in the thousands.

The problem though is that the church in Jerusalem is not even indicative of what

ﬁrst-century churches were like. It was the product of a unique setting determined by unique circumstances that can never be repeated. There is no indication that churches in other settings such as Philippi or Thessalonica were ever anything other than small churches. We have no clear indication of what their size may have been. There is no biblical basis for assuming that a large church has any more value than a small one.

In looking at the different biblical pictures of the church, none of them is affected by the size of the church. The church is compared to the human body, to a building, to a marriage, and to the people of God. In each of these pictures, the key element is not the size of the church but the relationship of the church to the head, the cornerstone, the groom, and the God whose people they are. The true value of the church is always measured by its relationship to Jesus Christ.

Audience Participation - Group Brainstorming

Ask people to respond to the quote at the beginning of this section.

Application

There is nothing more important to the future life of your church than a positive appreciation of the members for the church. What is the level of your churchʼs self-esteem? In other words, how do people within your church feel about the church? How can that level be raised? 158

2. The Value of Relationships

Teaching Content

There is wide spread agreement that at the heart of what it means to be a small church is the value of relationships. The small church should have naturally what large churches have to work very hard to attain. In large churches, small group ministries often are an attempt to create the kind of relational connection that should be a normal part of small-church life.

When small churches look to mega-church leaders for help in determining the direction that their churches will take, they are in danger of moving away from their natural strengths and trying to implement a strategy that does not ﬁt who they are. Any attempt to build an evangelistic strategy, that is not built around relationships, does not make sense in a small-church setting. As small churches attempt to reach out into their communities, it is essential that they have an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and they have no greater strength than that of relationships.

Audience Participation - Individual assignment and group brainstorming

Have each participant write a list of his or her churchʼs three greatest strengths. Then have them make a list of the three greatest frustrations experienced by his

236 Pappas, Entering The World of the Small Church, 26. 159 or her church. When everyone has done this, have people share what those strengths and frustrations are.

Application

Having gone through the exercise above, identify your churchʼs greatest strengths and frustrations. Examine your churchʼs programs in light of these strengths and frustrations. How are they built around your churchʼs strengths?

How do they reﬂect your churchʼs frustrations?

2. The Inter-generational Nature of the Church

Teaching Content

In most small churches there are not enough people in the church to provide age-appropriate programs for everyone. This means that most of the activities are open to everyone who attends. Teenagers mingle with seniors, adults with children, young families with older couples whose children have left home. While this may be a perceived weakness, it can be turned into a strength.

There are two positive results that can come from this mixing of age groups. The ﬁrst is that children and teenagers are exposed to the example of older, more mature Christians. Adults should know the name of every child in the

237 Pappas, Entering The World, 139. 160 church and those children get to watch the adults, who know their names, live out the Christian life.

The second positive is that often young people get to serve in ways that they would never get to serve in a larger church. Teenagers can attempt things knowing that there will probably be a higher degree of forgiveness extended in a small-church setting. Since serving is an important element of discipleship, this can be a very important element in the growth into maturity of those young people.

Audience Participation

Ask people to share brieﬂy their stories of being involved in a small-church setting during their teenage years. In this way, participants will hear real-life stories of such involvement.

Application

Identify the areas in your church in which young people are involved. Are there other ways in which that involvement can be increased? 161

Session Five

Observations From The Research

The research project involved interviews with the leadership of six small churches across Southern Ontario. It also involved an interview with someone who had come to faith in Jesus Christ because of the ministry of those churches.

The churches involved were spread over a wide spectrum of the evangelical world. They came from three different denominations - Plymouth Brethren, the

Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec, and the Associated Gospel Churches of Canada. Geographically, these small churches were located in the City of

Toronto, in small towns and in a completely rural setting with only wide-open

ﬁelds around the church. They covered a wide theological range within the evangelical world. They ranged from relatively new to a church with a history dating back one hundred and ﬁfty-nine years.

With all of the diversity demonstrated by the churches, they had size in common. They all averaged less than one hundred and ﬁfty people in Sunday morning attendance. Whatever differences might exist between the churches, there are common elements that all small churches share. This was evident in the interviews that were conducted.

As a result of the research that was done, three observations will be shared as part of this seminar. It is important to note that these observations came out of the real-life experiences of people in small churches. 162

1. Small churches are making a difference

I did feel after being in hospital that something existed. I wouldnʼt have said Jesus or the gospel as I would now but there was something and every time I went, I felt like I was a step closer to realizing what that was. Every time I went to a small group or attended a church function, I felt like I was going the right way. Something was pulling me that way.238 New Christian at Elmvale Community Church

Teaching Content

It is easy for members of a small church to look at the impact of mega- churches and feel that they are not making a difference. In actual fact, many people are coming to faith in Jesus Christ every year through the ministry of small churches. In each of the six churches involved in the study, someone had become a Christian within the previous couple of years. Recognizing that this may not be true of every small church in Canada, the total impact of all the small churches in the country is extremely signiﬁcant.

A young woman, newly arrived from China, was invited by a friend to attend a church in Toronto. She and her husband both became Christians and now are attending Bridletowne Park Church where they are being nurtured in their Christian faith. One of the practical ways in which Bridletowne has strengthened them is through an employment-mentoring program that they run called RP3.

At Glenelg Centre Baptist Church, a young man in his teens had been raised in the church but was at a point at which he was seriously questioning his faith. Friends in a youth group used Christian music to bring him back to his roots

238 New Believer at Elmvale Community Church, 7. 163 and into a solid faith in Jesus Christ. That young man is currently considering full- time Christian ministry.

Audience Participation - Small groups of two or three people

Break everyone into their small groups again and ask them to share stories from their own church experience of people who have come to faith through the ministry of a small church.

Application

Everyone loves to celebrate. Identify ways in which you can celebrate as a church when you make a difference in peopleʼs lives. The difference may be a conversion experience but it could take many other forms as well. Does your church need to learn how to celebrate?

2. The Indispensable Element - Relationships

Again that family atmosphere. They may seem like good friends but they seem more a part of my family. They genuinely care. When they ask you how you are doing, they really want to hear the response beyond the standard answer and that is comforting in a sense having those people around you. I have never had that.239 New Believer at Pinewoods Gospel Chapel

Teaching Content

In all of the churches involved, relationships were at the very heart of their approach to the gospel. In every story that new believers shared, relationships played a crucial part. This makes sense. If relationships are the greatest strength of the small church, then they need to be at the core of any attempt to reach out into the community.

239 New Believer at Pinewoods Gospel Chapel, 3. 164

At New Dundee Baptist Church, a woman came to the church because of a relationship that she had built up over time with the pastor and his wife. She lived across the road from the pastor and had developed a friendship that had given her enough conﬁdence that she took the initiative to ask about attending the church. Once at the church, she was embraced by the members so that she felt like she had found a second family.

A woman, who had just gone through a time of intense stress following the birth of her child, came to Elmvale Community Church. On her first Sunday she was invited out for lunch. That invitation became the first step in what developed into a friendship that gave her the confidence to share her story. Through the relationships developed at the church, both she and her husband came to faith in

Jesus Christ.

Audience Participation - Individual Exercise

Ask each participant to make a list of the unchurched people who are part of their lives. These people could be family, friends, co-workers, or neighbors. When they have made the list, ask them to identify one or two people with whom they would be able most easily to develop a relationship. Give people a few minutes to pray for the people whom they have identiﬁed. Encourage each person to make a commitment to pray daily for these people.

Application

What are the entrance points in your church through which people can bring people with whom they are building relationships? Such entrance points need to be part of the planning of every church. 165

3. Becoming Involved in the Messiness

I think you need to realize that if you are going to be a Christian that that is where Jesus was. He was in the messes. He was in the life of Zacchaeus. He was in the lives of other people. He was called a wine bibber and a glutton. That was where his life was.240 Leadership Member at Pinewoods Gospel Chapel

Teaching Content

Relationships require the willingness to invest time, energy and resources into people whose lives are messy. The people who come to the church through these relationships will not necessarily have their lives all together in a very neat little package. They will come with a variety of problems that intrude into the church membersʼ lives in very inconvenient ways.

At Pinewoods Gospel Chapel, a young couple came to the chapel with

ﬁnancial and relational problems. The husband described himself as someone who could not come to God because of the amount of sin in his life. Church members became involved in their lives, offering practical help in a variety of different ways. Their lives were messy, but Pinewoods is committed to being involved in the messiness of peopleʼs lives.

At the Rock Community Church, another young couple came to the church, once again bringing with them the messiness of their lives. The husband, who was interviewed, came out of a life dominated by alcohol and drugs. One of the ways in which the church invested in this couple was to step in when both husband and wife were hurt, and spend a day working on the horse farm that they own, doing all of the work that the couple had not been able to do because

240 Leadership at Pinewoods, 18. 166 of the injuries. The members were willing to invest time and energy into this couple in spite of the messiness that they brought with them.

Audience Participation - Group Discussion

Ask for examples in which people have had to pay a price for their involvement with people because of the messiness of those peopleʼs lives.

Application

Involvement with people ultimately comes down to a willingness to commit to people regardless of the cost involved. It is impossible for a church to emphasize the importance of relationships with unbelievers and not pay a price for those relationships. As one of the ﬁrst steps in an evangelistic strategy, your church needs to commit itself to paying the price of relationships, whatever that price might be. This needs to be a commitment made by the leadership and then by the church. What form should that public commitment take in your church?

Concluding Remarks

This seminar has not been designed to provide a church with a simple one, two, three step program for evangelism. It is designed to provide a framework for future study and discussion as your church attempts to put together a carefully thought-through strategy. This seminar is the ﬁrst step in that process. It is the prayer of the presenter that you will continue to move ahead and will not rest until such a strategy is ﬁrmly in place in your church. 167

CHAPTER 8

CONCLUSION

The purpose of this thesis was to examine evangelism in the small church with a view to determining what is effective in a small-church setting. In doing so, the thesis studied the subject from a number of different perspectives providing a solid academic understanding of both evangelism and the small church. At the same time, the material provided a practical application for churches wishing to develop an evangelistic strategy designed speciﬁcally for the small church.

In the ﬁrst chapter, a biblical foundation was laid. Recognizing that the subject of evangelism is too broad to cover everything that could be said about it, the study focuses on four points. The ﬁrst point is the foundational truth that God has a mission in the world. The account of Godʼs meeting with Abraham in

Genesis 12 demonstrates this fact in that while God calls Abraham into a unique relationship with himself, there is also a universal side to that call. All the nations are to be blessed through the one nation.

Second, at the center of Jesusʼ ministry is the reality of the Kingdom of

God. Evangelism is not only the sharing of a message. It is an invitation to become part of the life-changing Kingdom of God. This reality must be part of everything that the church does.

Third, the primary challenge contained in the Great Commission is the call to make disciples. There is much more to evangelism than simply sharing a message and inviting people to pray a prayer. Evangelism must be understood in terms of life-long discipleship rather than simple decisions. 168

Fourth, a proper understanding of conversion is essential to evangelism.

While there is disagreement on exactly how many elements there are in conversion, there is widespread agreement that there is danger in having too simplistic an understanding of conversion. At a minimum, there must be content that is understood, a turning that takes place and an ongoing growth process towards maturity.

The second chapter presents a historic, theological survey of evangelism.

The chapter looks at ﬁve historic periods and draws lessons from each of these periods. In the writings of St. Hippolytus of Rome in the third century, there is a balance between evangelism and discipleship that still needs to characterize churches today.

The Reformation period laid stress on the message that was conveyed.

The important truth that salvation is by faith alone became the central message of the Reformation and that message must not be lost today.

In the eighteenth century two men were prominent. John Wesley, who ministered in Great Britain, impacted that country through his rather unorthodox methods such as preaching in the open ﬁelds rather than a church building.

Throughout his years of ministry, he received a great deal of opposition from the church and yet remained loyal to the church right to the end of his life. Jonathan

Edwards, whose ministry occurred in the United States, also greatly impacted his world. Edwards displayed an important balance between an openness for God to work in new ways on the one hand and yet an understanding that there was 169 danger inherent in the strange behaviors that some people engaged in, on the other.

In the nineteenth century, Charles Finney was used by God to greatly impact both the United States and Great Britain. Finney received criticism for introducing new measures into his work as a revivalist but he recognized that new measures were essential if he was going to impact the culture of his day.

Many of those new measures became a normal part of the ministry of future evangelists.

In the twentieth century, the Lausanne Movement has had a powerful impact on the entire world. One of the issues with which this movement has wrestled is the balance between evangelism and social responsibility. This continues to be an ongoing challenge for evangelical churches today.

The third chapter changes focus and considers the place of the small church in the evangelical church context in Canada. The majority of churches in

Canada fall into this size category and for that reason are an important part of church life.

Three characteristics that set small churches apart are considered in this chapter. The ﬁrst is the relational nature of the small church. While churches of every size strive to develop a relational side to their ministry, relationships are a natural part of small-church life. The second characteristic is that small churches tend to be intergenerational simply due to the fact that they arenʼt large enough to offer a full range of age appropriate programs. This often allows teenagers and children a greater involvement in the church and a greater exposure to the adults 170 who attend. The third characteristic is the distinct relationship between the pastor and the members. In a small church the pastor has much more exposure to all of the members which means that the ability to love each one is very important.

Contrary to what some believe, small churches have great value. There is no biblical basis for suggesting that all churches should be large or that small churches somehow have less value because of their size. The value of any church is found, not in its size, but in its relationship to Jesus Christ.

The fourth chapter establishes the theoretical foundation for the research that is part of the thesis project. The research takes the form of instrumental, multiple case studies conducted within the bounded system of six churches. In each church, interviews were conducted with members of the church leadership as well as one or two people who had come to faith in Jesus Christ through the ministry of that church. The purpose of these interviews was to examine evangelism in each of the churches with a view to determining what was most effective in a small-church setting.

The ﬁfth chapter outlines the results of the research that was conducted.

The interviews were examined and four observations were made. The ﬁrst observation is that all of the leadership members who took part in the interview were men. While being careful not to draw conclusions regarding leadership in small churches, this is signiﬁcant. When planning for evangelism it is important that both men and women are part of the planning process.

The second observation is that small churches do make a difference.

While none of the churches involved felt that they were as successful in reaching 171 out to their communities as they would like to be, the interviews with the new believers showed that people were being impacted. People were coming to faith in Christ through their connection with these churches.

The third observation is that relationships are at the heart of evangelism in these churches. In every case relationships played a large part in bringing the people involved to faith. In many cases the new believer described the people in the church as family and in some cases as being even more important in their lives than their biological family.

The fourth observation is that relationships require a willingness to invest in people who are living messy lives. The people who were reached were not living problem free lives and yet the churches were willing to invest time, energy and resources into them. There was a price that needed to be paid by the churches and these churches were willing to pay it.

In addition to these observations, two theoretical propositions are identified as defining the focus of the study. The first is that successful evangelism in small churches will come out of relationships that people within the church build with outsiders. The second is that evangelistic approaches designed by large churches for large church use will not work effectively in small churches.

The research indicates that both of these propositions are valid.

The ﬁnal chapter outlines a day-long seminar that can be taught in the small-church context. The seminar follows the structure of the thesis with a session covering each of the chapters with the exception of the chapter that outlines the theoretical structure for the research. In each subsection of the 172 seminar there are four parts - an applicable quote, a teaching component, an audience participation component, and an application.

Suggestions For Further Research

1. The relationship between evangelism and social responsibility has been an

important issue that has been debated in the larger evangelical world as

shown by the coverage of that topic by the Lausanne Movement. The research

done for this thesis project indicates that this could be an important subject for

further research in the context of the small church. Is the moulding together of

these two emphases important in the ability of a small church to reach out into

its community?

2. As shown in the ﬁrst chapter on biblical foundations, discipleship is the central

focus of the great commission. Does the small church provide a good setting in

which discipleship occurs? Are small churches including a focus on

discipleship as part of their evangelistic program?

3. The small churches interviewed for this thesis project were inﬂuenced very

little by programs created by sources outside of their church setting. Further

research on the unique needs of small churches needs to take place so that

resources can be developed that uniquely meet the needs that these churches

have.

4. Prayer needs to be at the heart of every evangelistic program. What place are

small churches giving to prayer in their evangelistic programs? 173

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abraham, William J. The Logic of Evangelism. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989.

Anderson, Ray S. An Emergent Theology For Emerging Churches. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006.

Bebbington, D.W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain. Grand Rapids: Baker House, 1992.

Bibby, Reginald W. Thereʼs Got To Be More: Connecting Churches & Canadians. Winﬁeld, BC: Wood Lake Books Inc., 1995.

Bierly, Steve R. How To Thrive As A Small-Church Pastor. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998.

Blomberg, Craig L. Matthew: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture NIV Text. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship, 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1959.

Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991.

______. The Study of Evangelism: Exploring a Missional Practice of the Church ed. Paul W. Chilcote and Laceye C. Warner. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008.

Brueggemann, Walter. Old Testament Theology: An Introduction. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008.

Burt, Steve. Activating Leadership in the Small Church: Clergy and Laity Working Together. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1988.

Burt, Steve E. & Hazel Ann Roper. The Little Church That Could: Raising Small Church Esteem. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2000.

Chadwick, Owen. The Reformation. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1972.

Church Size, Attendance and Membership. Outreach Canada. available from http://en.outreach.ca/ServingYou/tabid/2237/Articled/916/Size-Attendance- And-Membership.aspx. 174

Clapp, Rodney. A Peculiar People: The Church As Culture in a Post-Christian Society. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996.

Consultation on the Relationship between Evangelism and Social Responsibility, Drafting Committee. Evangelism and Social Responsibility: An Evangelical Commitment. Exeter, UK: The Paternoster Press, 1982.

Crandall, Ron. Turn Around Strategies for the Small Church. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.

Cleland, Katie. Glenelg Centre Baptist Churchʼs Foundation of a Family-Based Ministry. Research Paper.

Cook, Arnold L. Historical Drift: Must My Church Die?. Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications, 2000.

Creswell, John W. Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2007.

Daman, Glenn. Shepherding The Small Church. Grand Rapids: Kernel Publications, 2002.

Denzin, Norman K. & Yvonne S. Lincoln. ed. Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2003.

De Pree, Max. Renewing Your Church Through Vision and Planning: 30 Strategies To Transform Your Ministry, ed. Marshall Shelley. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1997.

Drummond, Lewis A. Charles Gradison Finney and the Birth of Modern Evangelism. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1983.

Dudley, Carl S. Making The Small Church Effective. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978.

Edwards, Jonathan. “A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton and the Neighboring Towns and Villages in a Letter to the Reverend Dr. Benjamin Colman of Boston, pastor of the Brattle Street Church,” Jonathan Edwards on Evangelism, ed. Carl J.C. Wolfe. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1958.

______. “An Account of the Revival of Religion in Northampton in 1740-1742, as Communicated in a Letter to a Minister in Boston,” Jonathan Edwards on Revival. Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth, 1999. 175

______. A Treatise on Religious Affections. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1982.

Ekstrom, Bertil. “The Kingdom of God and the church today” Evangelical Review of Theology 27, no. 4 (2003).

Finney, Charles Gradison. Revivals of Religion: Lectures by Charles Gradison Finney with the Authorʼs Additions and Corrections, ed. William Henry Harding. London: Morgan and Scott Ltd., 1910.

France, R.T. The Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007.

Fullan, Michael. Leading In A Culture Of Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.

Green, Michael. Evangelism in the Early Church. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970.

Grenz, Stanley J. Revisioning Evangelical Thought. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993.

Hagner, Donald A. Word Biblical Commentary: Matthew 14 - 28. Dallas: Word Books, Publisher, 1995.

Hambrick-Stowe, Charles E. Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism. Grand Rapids: Williams B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996.

Hamilton, Victor P. The Book of Genesis Chapters 1 - 17. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmanʼs Publishing Company, 1990.

Helm, Paul. The Beginnings: Work & Spirit in Conversion. Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth, Trust, 1986.

Holy Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.

House, Paul R. Old Testament Theology. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998.

Houston, Rev. Tom. “The Story of the Lausanne Covenant: Case Study in Cooperation,” available from www.lausanne.org/lausanne-1974/story-of-the- covenant.htmt.

Hughes, R. Kent. Luke: That You May Know The Truth, Volume Two. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998. 176

Jones, E. Stanley. The Reconstruction of the Church - on what pattern?. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970.

Kaiser, Walter C., Jr. Mission In The Old Testament: Israel As A Light To The Nations. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000.

Ladd, George Eldon. The Presence of the Future. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1974.

The Lausanne Movement. “The Cape Town Commitment, Part I We Love The Mission of God”. available from www.Lausanne.org/ctcommitment.

Leadership at Bridletowne Park Church. interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Toronto, Ontario, 4 August 2011.

Leadership at Elmvale Community Church. interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Elmvale, Ontario, 20 July 2011.

Leadership at Glenelg Centre Baptist Church. interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Glenelg, Ontario, 3 August 2011.

Leadership at New Dundee Baptist Church. interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Kitchener, Ontario, 17 August 2011.

Leadership at Pinewoods Gospel Chapel. interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Angus, Ontario, 14 July 2011.

Leadership at The Rock Community Church. interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Paris, Ontario, 2 August 2011.

Luther, Martin. Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, tr. J. Theodore Muller. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1954.

MacRae, Andrew D. Your Church Must Choose If It Wants To Grow. London: Pickering & Inglis, 1982.

The Manila Manifesto: an elaboration of The Lausanne Covenant ﬁfteen years later. Pasadena, CA: Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, 1989.

McIntosh, Gary L. One Size Doesnʼt Fit All. Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1999.

Mead, Loren B. Inside The Small Church, ed. Anthony G. Pappas. Alban Institute, 2002 177

Mittelberg, Mark. A Contagious Church: Revolutionizing The Way We View And Do Evangelism. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000.

New Believer at Bridletowne Park Church. interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Toronto, Ontario, 4 August 2011.

New Believer at Elmvale Community Church. interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Wyebridge, Ontario, 20 July 2011.

New Believer at Glenelg Centre Baptist Church. interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Glenelg, Ontario, 7 August 2011.

New Believer at New Dundee Baptist Church. interviewed by author, transcript of audio recoring, New Dundee, Ontario, 7 August 2011.

New Believer at Pinewoods Gospel Chapel. interview Ed by author, transcript of audio recording, Angus, Ontario, 14 July 2011.

New Believer at The Rock Community Church. interviewed by author, transcript of audio recording, Woodstock, Ontario, 12 August 2011.

OʼBrien, Brandon J. The Strategically Small Church. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2010.

Ogden, Greg. Transforming Discipleship: Making Disciples a Few at a Time. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003.

Packer, J.I. A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards. ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004.

Pappas, Anthony G. Entering The World of the Small Church. Alban Institute, 2000.

Patton, Michael Quinn. Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods, 2nd ed. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications, 1990.

Peace, Richard V. Conversion in the New Testament: Paul and the Twelve. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans 1999.

Pinewoods Gospel Chapel Constitution, May 1999.

Pollick, John. John Wesley. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1989. 178

Posterski, Donald C. Reinventing Evangelism: Inviting Friends on a Spiritual Journey. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1989.

Rawlyk, G.A. Is Jesus Your Personal Saviour? In Search of Canadian Evangelicalism In the 1990ʼs. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1996.

Ray, David R. The Big Small Church Book. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 1992.

Richardson, Rick. Reimagining Evangelism: Inviting Friends on a Spiritual Journey. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006.

Schaller, Lyle E. Looking In The Mirror: Self-Appraisal in the Local Church. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984.

______. The Small Church Is Different. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1982.

______. The Small Membership Church: Scenarios For Tomorrow. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994.

Smith, Gordon T. Beginning Well: Christian Conversion & Authentic Transformation. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988.

Sproul, R.C. One Holy Passion: The consuming thirst to know God. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1987.

St. Hippolytus of Rome. The Treatise of the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus Of Rome, ed. Gregory Dix and Henry Chadwick, new and rev. ed. London: The Laban Press, 1992.

Stackhouse, John G., Jr. Evangelical Landscapes: Facing Critical Issues of the Day. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002.

Stake, Robert E. Strategies of Qualitative Design, ed. Norman K. Denzin & Yvonne S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2003.

Stott, John r.w. Basic Christianity, 2nd ed. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1971.

______. The Message of Acts. Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1990.

______. The Lausanne Covenant: An Exposition and Commentary by John Stott. Minneapolis: World Wide Publications, 1975.

______. The Living Church. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007. 179

Tidball, Derek. Who Are The Evangelicals?. London: Marshall Pickering, 1994.

Wagner, C. Peter. Leading Your Church To Growth: The Secret of Pastor/People Partnership in Dynamic Church Growth. Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1984.

Walker, Williston et al. A History of the Christian Church. New York: Charles Scribnerʼs Sons, 1970.

Walrath, Douglas Alan. Making It Work: Effective Administration in the Small Church. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1994.

Webber, Robert E. Ancient-Future Evangelism: Making Your Church a Faith- Forming Community. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003.

Wesley, John. The Journal of John Wesley, ed. Percy Livingstone. Chicago: Moody Press, n.d.

Westermann, Claus. Genesis: A Practical Commentary. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987.

Willard, Dallas. The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesusʼs Essential Teachings on Discipleship. San Francisco: HarperSanFransicso, 2006.

Wright, Christopher J.H. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bibleʼs Grand Narrative. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006.

______. The Mission of Godʼs People: A Biblical Theology of the Churchʼs Mission. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010.

Yin, Robert K. Case Study Research: Designs and Methods, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2003. 180

APPENDIX

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Interview With The Leaders

1. Can you give me your leadership role in the church and how long you have been in that role?

2. Can you give me a brief history of the church?

3. Does the church have a plan for evangelism that has been endorsed by the church? If you have a plan, can you give a brief description of the key elements of that plan? Is that plan currently being implemented?

4. How recent is the plan?

5. Describe the churchʼs involvement in evangelism over the past four or ﬁve years.

6. Has the church tried to implement any evangelistic programs that have come from outside sources?

7. If it has, have there been lasting results from those programs? Why do you think that the program produced those results (negative or positive)?

8. Have you considered the use of any programs and then not used them? If you have, why did you reject them?

9. Can you share the story of the faith journey of the person from your church whom I will be interviewing?

10. What do you believe were the key elements in that person making a decision to follow Jesus Christ?

11. Are there other stories of people coming to faith that you would like to share?

12. What were the key elements in those people coming to faith in Christ?

Interviews with New Believers 181

1. Can you share the story of your faith journey and what brought you to a point of decision to become a Christian?

2. What were the key inﬂuences in bringing you to this point of decision?

The primary purpose of the interview was to hear the personʼs story. As the interview progressed, there were questions asked to bring greater clarity to the story.