A word from heaven.

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Stop the Street Evangelism (until....)

Before you think if i have backslided, don't worry, i have not. And before you write me off and say jie hui doesn't know what he is talk about, give me a chance to have my say 1st. You may not agree with what i want to say today but i hope you won't press the exit button on the top right hand corner straight away. Let me have me say first.

Let me define what i am against 1st. This is what they do:

1) Ask for 5 minutes of a passerby's life.
2) Explain the cross diagram.
3) Ask for conversion.
4) Say the sinners prayer

There are 2 phenomenons that you can observe through this.

Firsthy, You see, we live in a world of instant success. When leaders physc their members up to go for street evangelism, we are desperate for growth, i'm not against this. Street Evangelism is a instant, "no harm", "out of our comfort zone for God", "way of trying to ease our burden for the lost". I applaud your courage and zeal but not your method. You reap what you sow. You see a person cross the line of faith because of your constant hard work in them. This is what i know is biblical. The kind of "instant fruits mentality" that we inculcate in our people need to be re-looked at.

Secondly, street evangelism is often seen as our ultimate form of going all out for God. When we are desperate for our group to grow, we go all out. We hope to see revival happen all over the school. We paint the picture of conversion in one corner of the school and holy spirit baptism in another corner. We are all praying for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit onto the streets and in our schools/camps/workplace. When the Holy Spirit outpours onto the streets, the signs are very evident. You can plot it over months of preparation, of prayer and of fasting. What you'll see is large scale conversion and people coming to you as a result of the signs and wonders, not only you chasing them down the street. Maybe when that happens, we can add something behind the (until...)

That is not my point of this article. My point is i want to bring forward the harm that Street Evangelism brings to the kingdom of God.

I will take issue with those who think there is nothing to lose in street evangelism. Let me show you why.

1) It has been proven that the retention rate for street evangelism is around 10% to 20%. Good, you may say, 1 out of 10 gets retained. If i can get 100, i get 10 in my group. Wonderful? What about the 90 who does not??? Do you know that for every "convert" not retained in the kingdom of God, it is much more difficult to preach to them in future?

"It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace."
~ Hebrews 6:4-6 ~

In fact the bible says in this verse that the more you taste of the goodness of the word of God, the more difficult it is for you to come back to God because your heart would have been a little more harden. If you give your "street convert" a little of the goodness of the word of God, and he doesn't get retained, you are doing harm to his life! Let someone else do a proper sowing on him/her and at the end of the day, if he still does not come to know Christ, we've done our best. But street evangelizing to him is not being fair to him/her. We're like playing Russian Roulette with their eternal lives. Nothing to lose, you sure?

2) The kind of name you give Christians during street evangelism out there is not going to help the non believers see Christians in good light on a large scale. Their image of you would already have been formed before you even approach them. In future, if you want to preach properly to them, go through a proper sow process, they'll have rejected you to some extent already.

Some of you may be saying, hey jie hui, street evangelism is growing my group. It works. yeah Just like in the movie hancock, you saved one or 2 lives but in the process, you do a disservice in many many others.

Nothing to lose, you sure?

3) Why are we putting our people through these??? Is it to make us feel abit better that we serve God to the "ultimate"? To feel less guilty that we didn't hit our goal? You see, i always have advocated life evangelism. Nothing against goals, you can find an article below that i talked about goals. Do you know that Life Evangelism is so so so enjoyable? At the end of the day, it is my journey with God. Let's not preach the generic "good news" only. Preach YOUR good news. and show that in your daily life! What kind of good news are we preaching when we spend all our time on the streets before and after school doing evangelism when we are not doing our homework and flunking all our subjects? Nothing to lose, you sure?

4) Finally, as i said just now, build correct values system into our people. Don't make them become evax machines. Don't advocate instant success. You reap what you sow. Work hard and persevere. Live a life that is salt and light.

Having said that, i am not against people going onto the street to do contact collection. To build friendship with them. Invite them for MCG, for ECG, for Service. That's very good, please go ahead.

All the i have written is only pertaining to the Singapore context. I feel that the Christian saturation level in Singapore is adequate for everyone to be reached if every Christian is to be faithful with his own sphere of influence. i believe that the people you reach out to on the street would know at least one Christian in Singapore. The last thing we need is for Christians to do street evangelism and create a bad name for the kingdom on a large scale level and make friendship evangelism more difficult. There may be other context and culture where street evangelism is suitable as a form of outreach, i'm not sure and will not comment on that.

The above is one possible point of view about street evangelism. What i have written is controversial. And i am sure there are supporters of street evangelism.

Yeah, that's my purpose, to stimulate discussion and deeper thoughts in this area. At the end of the day, if we conclude that street evangelism is still ok in this context, i hope that this post will let allow supporters of street evangelism to watch out for certain pitfalls and dangers that come together with street evangelism. Please comment below, not in the tag board.

Regards,

Jie Hui

Labels: Christian Living

The kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.

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Saturday, July 26, 2008