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Redeemer Bible Church

Unreserved Accountability to Christ. Undeserved Acceptance from Christ.

2007: The Year of Evangelism

Selected Scriptures

Introduction
At the risk of sounding cliché, it’s hard to believe that another year has gone by.
2006 is now a thing of the past, and we gather together here on the first Lord’s Day in
January with, Lord willing, the blank slate of 2007 in front of us.

Speaking for the leadership of Redeemer, I can say that we see this as
something very exciting. The God who can do exceeding abundantly beyond all we can
ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20), the God who teaches us to pray that he would fulfill
every work of faith we perform (2 Thessalonians 1:11-12)—he is our God! He is not
interested in thwarting our expectations, but in exceeding them! That, to me, is thrilling!

But it doesn’t mean that he’ll do everything according to the plans we make. It
means something far better. It means that he has the freedom to alter our plan to
something that will be even better for us.

We exist as a local church to bring glory to God. And we exist as individual

Christians to bring glory to God as we are progressively transformed into the image of
Jesus Christ. We plan with that always firmly in our minds and hearts. And it is our
belief that the plan we have crafted for 2007 will move us further toward this Christ-
exalting and thoroughly biblical goal.

But God knows best. And this is what makes planning so exciting—not that we
will see our own dreams realized, but that we will see his purposes come to fruition in
ways that exceed and outstrip and transform our plan.

But this is no disincentive to planning. If you infer from my statements something

like this, “God is sovereign so why bother to plan,” then you have drawn the wrong
inference. Not only does God teach us the wisdom of planning, but we see some of the
godliest examples in Scripture practice the discipline of planning as well.

Proverbs 16:3 says, “Commit your works to the LORD and your plans will be
established.” And Proverbs 21:5 says, “The plans of the diligent lead surely to
advantage, but everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty.”

And the Apostle Paul at several points in his correspondence to the churches
makes and mentions his own plans. For example, Romans 15:26, 28: “For Macedonia
and Achaia have been pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in

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Jerusalem….Therefore, when I have finished this, and have put my seal on this fruit of
theirs, I will go on by way of you to Spain.” And in 1 Corinthians 4:19, Paul says he
plans to visit the Corinthians: “But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I shall
find out, not the words of those who are arrogant but their power.”

Planning is biblical. Planning honors God.

But planning honors God not because it allows us to be self-sufficient so that we
can safely extricate God from our plans, but because God has chosen to accomplish his
own purposes through the instrumentality of our planning. In other words, God has
chosen our feeble human plans to accomplish his mighty divine purposes. He has
ordained that his purposes would be accomplished as a result of a humbly executed
plan. “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that” (James 4:15).

All this is to say that we have developed a plan for 2007, which, if the Lord wills,
he will fulfill. And this plan includes a significant emphasis on evangelism. We are
declaring 2007 “The Year of Evangelism.”

Now then, let me begin by explaining why we’re not emphasizing evangelism this
year.

Why We’re Not Emphasizing Evangelism in 2007

We’re not emphasizing evangelism this year because we haven’t done any in the
past. If you are here for our mid-week prayer meeting virtually every week you will hear
praises for opportunities that the Lord has given us to share the gospel with unbelievers.
And you’ve also heard many prayer requests for opportunities to share the gospel with
friends, relatives, colleagues, fellow students, and so on.

More than that, there are even a few of us who walk around downtown
Minneapolis more or less making opportunities to share Christ with the lost. People
from our congregation are sharing the gospel. So we’re not emphasizing evangelism
this year because we haven’t done any in the past.

Nor are we emphasizing evangelism because we have failed to train you in

evangelism. Since I arrived here in 2002 we have used a thirteen-week evangelism
training course complete with on-the-job experience (so to speak) to equip our
congregation with tools to be abler gospel communicators. And through this course we
have had many opportunities to share Christ with others. So we’re not emphasizing
evangelism in 2007 because we’ve utterly neglected it as a church.

Finally, we’re not emphasizing evangelism in 2007 because we believe that you
as a congregation do not have a heart for the lost. In other words, we’re not focusing on
evangelism this year because you’ve been bad. Not at all! In fact, I can say that in my
over 12 years of local church ministry I have never seen a congregation so interested in
seeing people come to saving faith. So we’re not emphasizing evangelism in 2007
because you are heartless about the plight of the unconverted.

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So then, why are we emphasizing evangelism this year? If everything is fine,

why do we need to call attention to our evangelism in 2007?

The Last Four Years Haven’t Seen Many Conversions

Well, the first reason we believe we need to emphasize evangelism in 2007 has
to do with our church’s precipitous growth over the last four years. We have gone from
an average of 45 people on a Sunday morning to an average of 220 people—that
means that our church has nearly quintupled in size in just four years.

Now you might be wondering why this kind of growth would cause us to conclude
that we need to emphasize evangelism. Well, it has to do with the make-up of the
additions to our body over the last four years.

Our phenomenal numerical growth has been predominantly Christian; that is,
nearly all of our members were led to Christ and were even serving in other local
churches before they ever set foot in Redeemer.

This is not at all to say that it was wrong or that it is otherwise sinful for a local
church to increase its numbers by taking from other churches. If that were so, we would
not have accepted you into membership! We recognize the dearth of biblical churches
in the Twin Cities and the fact that believers at every stage of spiritual development are
by and large starving for biblical church life. Many don’t even know that they are
starving. So we are not at all against seeing Redeemer increase its number through the
“transfer” of Christians from other communities.

At the same time, however, when we see the growth of the church in Scripture,
especially in the book of Acts, we see that when people are added to the church, the
idea is that people are converted, baptized, and added to the role of their local
assembly. Let me show you two examples. cf. Acts 2:38-41; 5:14.
38
Peter said to them, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name
of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the
Holy Spirit. 39 "For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far
off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself." 40 And with many other
words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, "Be saved from
this perverse generation!" 41 So then, those who had received his word were
baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls (Acts 2:38-
41).
14
And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women, were
constantly added to their number, (Acts 5:14)

Numerical church growth, according to the book of Acts, is the addition to the
church of those who had not previously known the Lord. Properly speaking, then, the
church of Jesus Christ has not grown much numerically as a result of our church’s
growth.

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At the same time, we recognize that numerical growth isn’t the only kind of
Christian growth; just as important is the growth in grace of individual and communities
of Christians. 1 Peter 2:2 says, “Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the
word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.” And 2 Peter 3:18 says, “Grow
in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

Now when it comes to this kind of growth, it is undeniable that our church has
grown in leaps and bounds over the last four years. You can almost see stretch marks!

But when it comes to evangelism, growth is understood in terms of numbers.

The church gets larger when evangelism is fruitful. So although we have seen people
come to Christ over the last four years through this ministry, we have not seen many
(about six). In our view, this is significant especially when we compare it to our
numerical growth overall.

Now you know that we believe in the sovereignty of God in salvation, which
means that none of us can save a single soul. Only God saves people, and he does so
according to his own purpose and grace which he worked out in Christ before time
began. We cannot change God’s eternal decree. He will save only those whom he has
chosen to save. Jesus says, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one
who comes to me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37).

But at the same time, just like planning, God uses our efforts to bring those he’s
chosen to saving faith. After extolling the majesty of God and his unshakeable
purposes in election in Romans 9, the Apostle Paul asks this in Romans 10:
“‘WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.’ How then
will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him
whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?” (Romans
10:13-14).

What this means is that God has ordained that his chosen come to saving faith
through the preaching of his word. No one will call upon the name of the Lord unless
they’ve heard him through a preacher. So we must preach. Unless we preach the
gospel, no one will be saved. In other words, God has ordained that his end—the
salvation of the elect—would be achieved through the means he’s ordained—the
preaching of Christ.

So while it is right and true and I daresay essential to trust in God’s sovereignty
in salvation, we must never forget that the elect will not be saved without the preaching
of God’s word. We are responsible before God to do our duty in bringing the gospel to
the lost so that his sheep might hear the shepherd’s voice and be saved.

So when we see precipitous numerical growth with only a fraction of that growth
coming from conversions, we look to ourselves—our efforts, our methods, and our
philosophy. You would think that with such phenomenal growth overall that more of that

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growth would have been from unbelievers coming to saving faith through all of us. At
least, that’s what we’ve been thinking.

Now let me reiterate, this is not because we believe that you as a congregation
do not take evangelism seriously. Not at all! You see evangelism for what it is—our
responsibility. cf. Matthew 28:18-20.
18
And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been
given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all
the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with
you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:18-20).

Now this commission is fulfilled by the church in a variety of ways.

How we live as the church testifies to the reality of Christ—it is what we might call
deed-evangelism. And there are many examples. cf. John 13:33-35; 17:22-23;
Philippians 2:14-15; Matthew 5:13-16.
33
"Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and
as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot
come.' 34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as
I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 "By this all men will know that
you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:33-35).
22
"The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they
may be one, just as We are one; 23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be
perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them,
even as You have loved Me (John 17:22-23).
14
Do all things without grumbling or disputing; 15 so that you will prove
yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the
midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights
in the world (Philippians 2:14-15).
13
"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how
can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown
out and trampled under foot by men. 14 "You are the light of the world. A city set
on a hill cannot be hidden; 15 "nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a
basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 "Let
your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works,
and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:13-16).

We are to be a community of people who pursue holiness and who love one
another with undeniably Christ-like love. And as the community we are to go into the
world to see men and women from every tribe, nation, kingdom, and language become
committed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ that they might be saved.

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And the first place, we do our part to fulfill the commission by using our spiritual
gifts. If you have the gift of serving, then by your service you are fulfilling the Great
Commission. If you have the gift of speaking, then by your speaking you, also, are
fulfilling the Great Commission.

But in addition to this, regardless of gifting, we each have a responsibility to

speak the hope-filled words of the gospel to the unbelievers all around us. cf. 1 Peter
3:15; Colossians 4:5-6.
15
but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a
defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you,
yet with gentleness and reverence; (1 Peter 3:15)
5
Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of
the opportunity. 6 Let your speech always be with grace, as though seasoned with
salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each person. (Colossians
4:5-6).

Now, at this point I think that you all would be comfortable with this idea. We all
should be sharing our faith with the lost. I believe with all my heart that you get this.
You know that like Timothy, you, too, need to do the work of an evangelist (2 Timothy
4:5).

But there’s more to the story.

As Christians, We Don’t Know How to Relate to Unbelievers

And the rest of the story is this. There’s more to evangelism than knowing God’s
mandate and desiring to fulfill it…though these things are indispensable. Evangelism is
about relating to unbelievers. It’s about how we live our lives before them and the
words of life we proclaim to them.

Now if evangelism is about relating to unbelievers, then we have a problem: most

Christians have forgotten how to relate to unbelievers.

And maybe “forgotten” is too mild. I think that many people don’t know how to
relate, really how to relate with anyone. Have you ever heard of Social Anxiety Disorder
(SAD)? Maybe you suffer from it, or have a friend or relative who does. Well, SAD is

a common form of anxiety disorder that causes sufferers to

experience intense anxiety in some or all of the social interactions and
public events of everyday life. For instance, some sufferers have difficulty
attending parties or meetings, making a phone call, walking into a shop to
purchase goods, or asking for help from authority figures.1

1 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_anxiety_disorder

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Other situations that commonly provoke anxiety include eating or drinking in front
of others, writing or working in front of others, being the center of attention, interacting
with people, including dating, asking questions or giving reports in groups, and using
public toilets.2

Now in case you think that this disorder is uncommon, you should know that SAD
is “the most common anxiety disorder and the third most common mental disorder in the
U.S. after depression and alcohol dependence. It is estimated that anywhere from 3%-
13% of the population suffers from social anxiety disorder. In any year, at least 5.3
million Americans have social anxiety disorder.”3

So maybe we haven’t forgotten how to relate to unbelievers; maybe we don’t

know how to relate to people generally. Add to this that the gospel is an offense to the
unbeliever, that we have a responsibility before God to get the message right, and you
have a recipe for anxiety, almost insurmountable anxiety.

For the most part, we respond by keeping our mouths shut. So we feel defeated
and guilty. We’d love to share the gospel with the person in the cubicle next to ours, but
no time ever seems right. “Please pray for my boldness,” we say, and we mean it. But
our social fears and inadequacies paralyze us.

We also tend to relate to unbelievers from another sense of fear, different from
anxiety I just mentioned. We’re afraid of contamination.

I firmly believe that we have a siege mentality in the church. We build a wall of
separation between us and the world, between believers and unbelievers because we
are afraid of sinning or because we erroneously conclude that by befriending
unbelievers we have become friends of the world (and therefore enemies of God
according to James 4:4).

But we must remember the example of Jesus—he spent time with tax collectors
(crooks and turncoats) and prostitutes. And he was able to do this all without sinning.
And not because he was God incarnate; for he was tempted in all ways as we are. He
was able to do this without sinning because as a man he relied completely on the Holy
Spirit. As a man, he hated sin and wanted to see people liberated from the fingers of its
cold, dead grasp.

But in order to seek and save the lost, he had to go to Zaccheus’ house for
dinner. He had to stop by the well and speak with the promiscuous woman. He had to
eat with prostitutes and tax gatherers.

Friendship with the world is not friendship with sinners. Friendship with the world
is participation in sin. When we act rebelliously against God; when we show solidarity
with unrepentant sinners by doing what they do, then we make ourselves the enemy of

2 http://www.webmd.com/content/article/60/67144
3 Ibid.

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God. If friendship with sinners was off the menu, then our Lord Jesus sinned. May it
never be! Instead, Jesus spent time with unbelievers because he loved them. And
because he loved them, he wanted to see them delivered from the dominion of
darkness and transferred to his glorious kingdom.

Too often we are motivated by fear. Yes, friendship with the world (in the proper
sense) is a real possibility; otherwise, we would not be warned against it. But that
doesn’t mean that we should avoid unbelievers so as not to be contaminated. To the
contrary, we must be with the lost if we are going to participate in Jesus’ seek and save
operation.

Another symptom of our difficulty in relating with unbelievers is that we tend to

communicate with them according to a set of rules different from believers.

To my believing friends, to the members of my small group I share how I’m

doing, how I’m struggling as a sinner in a fallen world and how Jesus can or did rescue
me from sin this week. We strive to communicate with one another according to
Ephesians 4:29: “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a
word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give
grace to those who hear.”

We speak so as to edify our brothers and sisters in the Lord. We give grace to
them with our words. But when it comes to the unbelievers in our lives we feel like we
need to give them a lecture or instruct them or worse, debate them over social issues,
especially moral issues. Our typical mode of communication with unbelievers is
moralizing—“that is wrong, this is right”. We give grace to believers, but we give
morality to unbelievers.

And so it is hard to move to the gospel because preaching the gospel isn’t
preaching morality.

Preaching the gospel is preaching God’s glorious salvation of undeserving

sinners in Jesus Christ. And because Jesus has ushered in God’s salvation, people
should turn from their sin and trust in the savior. This is not morality; this is the gospel.
Think of it like this. If we need to give grace to our fellow Christians (people who
already know the grace of God), how much more do we need to give grace to people
who have never tasted the glories of his grace in Christ?

And I don’t need to make a logical argument only. You’re still in Colossians.
Reread verses 5-6: “Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making
the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be with grace, as though
seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should respond to each
person.” Grace is not just for the insider, the Christian; it’s for the outsider as well!

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So because we place unbelievers in a category completely different from our

own, we resort to forms of communication—even in the way we supposedly preach the
gospel to them—we resort to less than gracious forms of communication.

So then, there are two reasons why we’re focusing on evangelism this year.
First, because we haven’t seen as many conversions as we might have hoped. And
second, because we have trouble relating to unbelievers.

But there’s still another reason why our evangelism has suffered…and therefore
why we’ve planned to emphasize it this year—a reason that’s related to thinking that
gospel communication is vastly different from our communication with one another.

We Make Evangelism Formal and Programmatic

And it’s this: we tend to think of evangelism as a program or formalized activity or
department of the church. This is an institutional problem just as much as it’s an
individual one. I believe that we have given the impression, we have unconsciously
been teaching this. By offering a class for evangelism (this is where you do evangelism)
and outreach events, we have tacitly declared that evangelism is formal and
programmatic.

Instead, we need to realize that evangelism is infused into everything the church
does. The church exists to glorify God through worship, nurture, and witness, but those
categories are not discrete from on another, they are related to one another as an
organic whole.

For example, worship is witness. cf. 1 Corinthians 14:23-45.

23
Therefore if the whole church assembles together and all speak in
tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are
mad? 24 But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or an ungifted man enters, he is
convicted by all, he is called to account by all; 25 the secrets of his heart are
disclosed; and so he will fall on his face and worship God, declaring that God is
certainly among you (1 Corinthians 14:23-25).

This is not a text teaching us to have an evangelistic worship service. Rather, it

demonstrates that when God’s people worship, unbelievers, should they happen to
enter the church’s gathering for worship, may be stopped dead in their tracks and come
to worship the true and living God. The church doesn’t have separate services—one for
the seeker and one for the saint—instead, the believing community’s worship has an
evangelistic effect. Why? Because worship ushers people into the presence of God.
Preaching the gospel does the same thing. cf. 2 Corinthians 4:3-6.
3
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,
4
in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so
that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the
image of God. 5 For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and
ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus' sake. 6 For God, who said, "Light

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shall shine out of darkness," is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the
Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Corinthians
4:3-6).

We proclaim Christ; by our words the unbeliever sees God. So in this very real
sense, worship is witness. Amazing!

And as we’ve already seen, nurture is witness, too. When we love one another,
when we are unified with one another, the gospel is preached to outsiders. “By this all
men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
“They may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and
loved them, even as You have loved Me” (John 17:23).

And, of course, witness is witness—communicating the saving message of Jesus

Christ to a lost and dying world.

And we could say the same about each item. Worship is nurture. Witness is
nurture. And nurture is worship. Witness is worship.

The point here is that each aspect of the church’s mission is interpenetrating.
Witness is no different. We need to see witness as penetrating every aspect of our
existence—and live like it. Witness will be more commonplace and natural when it is
part of the very fiber of our being both individually and corporately.

Conclusion
So we’ve declared 2007 “The Year of Evangelism.” We are focusing on
evangelism this year because we need to see more conversions, because we have
trouble relating to unbelievers, and because we tend to reduce evangelism to a
program. The last two points represent what we believe are the obstacles we face to
being more effective witnesses for Christ: How we relate in evangelism and how we
conceive of evangelism.

How are we going to overcome these obstacles? Well, obviously, our answer is
“The Year of Evangelism.”

This year, beginning no later than the second quarter, I will teach a course during
the Sunday school hour that we’re calling “Sharing the Faith.” It will follow a different
format than a typical lecture series in that we will focus on material in two-week
increments. Week A will be a lecture and an evangelistic assignment. Week B will be
discussion of the assignment and Q & A. We anticipate this taking us through the end
of the year. So this won’t be a “here’s where evangelism takes place” kind of class.
Lord willing, it will be a class that propels you out into Monday with a greater sense of
love and purpose.

It is our hope and earnest prayer that this course will transform our thinking not
only about evangelism, but about what it means to be an effective and productive
Christian in this world. I am extremely excited to get things under way.

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In addition, I am inviting you to pray that the Lord would be pleased to save
twelve people this year—one a month on average. How exciting to see twelve babes in
Christ be birthed into this community! God is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond
all we can ask or imagine. Maybe he’ll do this by saving 12 or 120 or 1200; or maybe
he’ll do it by saving one. But whatever He decides we know this—we do not have,
because we do not ask.

Pray also that you would be sensitive to the opportunities all around you to live
out the implications of the gospel of grace and speak the truth in love.

And pray that we would not be lazy or fearful, but diligent and bold.

And may God bless 2007, “The Year of Evangelism.”

Redeemer Bible Church

16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Office: 952.935.2425
Fax: 952.938.8299
info@redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.solidfoodmedia

2007, The Year of Evangelism © 2007 by R W Glenn