Externally Focused AND Evangelistic?

By Staff

Most churches have heard about the “externally focused” emphasis that has prompted
Christians everywhere to get out of their church buildings and into their communities to serve. Meanwhile, the attractional/missional debate has also prodded the push to be about going out instead of inviting people into the church.

We talked about this trend at the annual CHRISTIAN STANDARD contributing editors retreat to explore the effect of this service emphasis on the church”s vision and mission. Can we effectively help and heal bodies AND save souls?

CHRISTIAN STANDARD editors gathered the following leaders for this discussion: Ben Cachiaras, senior pastor with Mountain Christian Church, Joppa, Maryland; Randy Gariss, preaching minister with College Heights Christian Church, Joplin, Missouri; Becky Ahlberg, executive director with My Safe Harbor, a ministry to single mothers in Anaheim, California; LeRoy Lawson, professor at Emmanuel Christian Seminary, Johnson City, Tennessee; and Luke Erickson, pastor of community impact, also with Mountain Christian Church.

 

CHRISTIAN STANDARD: Can a healthy church today balance both evangelistic outreach and an external focus?

Ben Cachiaras: I bristle at an assumption that we can”t. At Mountain Christian Church, it feels to us that for the first time we are achieving something deeper in terms of evangelistic gain precisely because of our intentional service. The question for me isn”t whether evangelism and community service can go together well. The question for me is, “How in the world did we ever allow them to be separated?”

Randy Gariss: Everything in life has a tension. Parents must demonstrate a tension between playfulness and discipline. A truth speaker must demonstrate a balance between speaking honestly and speaking gently. The question is, if you”re going to demonstrate the incarnational love of Jesus, if you”re going to reach out to people in need, will you also speak of things they need to hear?

 

The whole attractional/missional debate has pitted evangelism and service against each other. Some say the attractional model is wrong because it is too narrowly focused on evangelism. Only the missional church, they say, is out there being the hands of Jesus in the world. Where did that dichotomy come from?

Cachiaras: We didn”t understand what evangelism was in the first place. Sometime during the revivalist era we started defining evangelism as getting someone to sign a membership role or respond to an invitation hymn. Is this what we mean when we ask, “Is evangelism happening?”

Jesus came teaching, preaching, and healing the sick (Matthew 4:23). That was a holistic ministry; it involved the head, the heart, and the hand. It”s not only how we make new disciples; that”s how disciples live.

 

How can a local church be strategic about maintaining a balance? How do we make sure our good deeds are “being Jesus” to people and not just mimicking the service emphasis that is popular these days?

Becky Ahlberg: Let”s be careful that we take the long view. First of all, we have some dues to pay for the church to get back some credibility in local communities. People around us need to believe that our service is not just “here today and gone tomorrow.” And in the church, we need to teach people some things they have not experienced before. It”s sort of like rebooting a computer.

Cachiaras: The first church praised God and enjoyed “the favor of all the people” (Acts 2:47). They didn”t do evangelism the way we”ve tried to do it. Ten years ago, the community around the church I serve viewed it as “that big, rich, white church.” Nobody really knew what happened inside. But now we”re known more as a church that shows up and does good things in the community. “They bless people, they bless people, they bless people. Why would they do that?”

Finally, we”re being asked questions that Christians want to be able to answer. We”re getting invitations to step into some wonderful arenas.

All this has happened as a result of our conviction that evangelism is a continuum and that it isn”t measured just by that “step-across-the-line-of-faith” moment. Evangelism is happening long before a person ever comes to faith.

 

How can a church strategically cover that entire continuum?

Cachiaras: Don”t allow yourself to get too nervous about the metrics of evangelism. Accept that getting people across the line is not the only step that matters. Not only is it important to help a person grow after he”s taken that step; we”re realizing now that all the steps before that step of faith are also important.

So often in our culture the church is on the periphery, making such a negative impression. One thing helping our credibility in Maryland is that our people just show up and shut up. As a whole community, we do what”s needed without fanfare, precisely because Jesus tells us to. Consistent effort “earns the right to be heard.” It represents the gospel in this world.

Gariss: On the one hand you love people just because they”re made in the image of God and they deserve to be loved. We don”t know if our love will lead to their salvation or not.

But this is an incredibly shallow love unless it eventually gets to the point where I can naturally talk with them about the difference Christ makes in a person”s life.

It was nice for Jesus to heal the man who was lowered through the roof. But he also spoke to him about his sins. It is a terribly inadequate love if the people loving cannot speak to those being loved about issues of the soul and eternity and the heart.

LeRoy Lawson: But the listener controls the point at which you can tell your story. Sometimes we are so eager to “make the sale” that we forget that.

Cachiaras: This is not just another fad or program. Suppose we were starting from scratch to express the kingdom of God through the vehicle of the church. What would that look like? It would not be just another item we check off.

Gariss: Luke 9 tells us that Jesus sent out his disciples to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick (v. 2). In the ministry of Jesus you never saw an artificial tension between evangelism and service. Some try to live the message and not proclaim it. That won”t work. I don”t like that quote, “At all times preach the gospel, and if necessary use words.” That”s not the example of Paul or Jesus.

Ahlberg: We”ve come to see our outreach as a generational ministry. We won”t really know if we”ve been successful with the single mothers we”re reaching until their children have broken generational cycles. This involves a huge commitment from Christians willing to pay the price required to walk people through the process of discipleship.

Luke Erickson: When we make announcements about serving at the homeless shelter or something like that, we try to avoid talking about how easy it is to do or how little time it will take out of your schedule. We look for opportunities to love people. Without that, it just becomes a game when we”re waiting to get what we want.

 

How is a holistic approach to ministry developing in churches today? Are too many focusing on evangelism alone? Have some lost sight of evangelism by going the “externally focused” route? What kind of balance is out there?

Lawson: I don”t see balance. I see expressions of every one of those kinds of churches. The larger churches in our fellowship are catching on more quickly. I see an increased commitment to serving their communities and the whole world. Even churches with an evangelistic emphasis are trying to resolve that tension between evangelism and being externally focused. And those that are succeeding are growing numerically as well.

Ahlberg: Our primary goal is to make disciples; it”s not to feed people. We don”t do any program that doesn”t involve the people we”re serving as servers themselves. We”re not just here to help you; we”re here to help you help yourself and become a part of this community that”s going to make a difference. What do you want, and what are you willing to do to get it?

 

This is so much different than the “community service” so many schools and businesses are offering.

Gariss: You start small. You make a little room in a budget and a little room in a schedule. But not much happens until you make room in your life. Otherwise, it”s not incarnate; it”s not Christlike. I can preach it and teach it, but who”s at my kitchen table?

Cachiaras: That”s a missional way of life. We started with projects, but we keep pushing this down, down, down away from programming to some sort of organic experience that we don”t even control any more. And now groups are owning things and going to perform ministry, and we didn”t even know they were going to do it. And now it”s in people”s homes and around kitchen tables and people are looking differently at what it means to be a disciple. And in the process, people are coming to church and getting baptized.

I think people are hungry to see what true discipleship looks like. It”s all about the “and.” It can”t be all words and no deeds or all deeds with no words. It”s both gather and scatter. The gospel really does work.

Lawson: One of the things you”re willing to sacrifice is control. What too many of us spend too much time on is trying to maintain control.

Cachiaras: It”s the releasing of people to be the hands and feet of Christ. Sometimes it”s programs, and sometimes it”s just having your neighbor for dinner. It”s not control; it”s cultural identity, it”s influence, and it”s definition of what this community”s about.

Gariss: This is so counterculture. Every church has to create entrepreneurial incarnational individuals. But so many cannot do this unless we teach them through some sort of program or project.

Erickson: We always challenge people who are going on service projects””to the homeless shelter in town or to service in Kenya””with, “How are you engaged in your own neighborhood?”

Ahlberg: You don”t have to go overseas to serve Christ. Disasters are happening every day in your own neighborhood. Just open your eyes.