Are city-wide crusades a thing of the past?
- No: 62%
- Yes: 38%
- No: 28%
- Yes: 61%
- IDK: 11%
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Is Mass Evangelism Dead?
That's the topic for Christianity Today's bimonthly questionnaire to their editors. Here are the two questions along with how the eds. responded:
Are city-wide crusades a thing of the past?
Are city-wide crusades a thing of the past?
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2 comments:
I'll all about mass evangelism if the full gospel is being preached (Rom. 1:16).
However, we do live in a unique day. With the constant entertainment available, people won't come out of their house to attend a "crusade" because they don't want to miss the new episode of Prison Break.
In Whitefield's day, people didn't have anything else to do. Walking a few miles to hear him preach WAS the entertainment.
Seriously, its time for the church to be the church. Its time for our "life-together" to be the reflection of the glory of God it was designed to be. People will come out of their houses in order to be a part of a genuine gospel community.
Of course, God must initiate all response to Him.
Mass evangelism is certainly a key feature of the book of Acts. Peter's sermon at Pentecost is one example. A more modern example would be the Greg Laurie harvest crusade that was recently in Raleigh.
The important thing with mass evangelism is how its done. Peter stood before the thousands and preached Christ. Then, when the people begged him about how to be saved, he told them to repent of their sins and identify themselves as followers of Christ through baptism. In our day, some evangelists are more prone to preach their own life stories rather than the Gospel of Christ, and more often than not they preach a false way of salvation. (i.e., "Let God save you tonight! All you have to do is come. Won't you come? Come and together we'll pray this simple prayer...")
The true way of salvation is through repentance and faith - and not as a one time experience - but as a way of life. We should call people to be saved not by calling them to the front, but by urging them to call on Christ. (Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.) When a person is truly trusting in Christ as their only hope of heaven, they should mark the beginning of their new life through baptism. This call - a call to a new way of life, a call to become a disciple of Christ through baptism, a call to utterly rely on Christ alone for salvation - these are what is missing from a lot of modern mass evangelism. If only God would raise up a George Whitfield for our day!!
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