It was a sweltering summer afternoon in Columbus, Ohio. I stood on the sidewalk, staring into the irate eyes of a woman who had been passing by. I, along with some folks from church, had left my secluded house in the country to hold signs and pass out tracts outside a football stadium in the Big City. Angry Lady was one of several thousand people heading to the stadium to watch a game. Until, that is, I mustered up all my regrettably minimal social courage and accosted Angry Lady with a weak smile, a proffered tract, and the question, “Would you like one?” Angry Lady, it turns out, did not. “I might take one,” she snapped at me, “if your friend back there hadn’t told me I had to submit.” She practically spat the last word at me, then stalked off. A bit shaken, I glanced up the street to observe one of my fellow churchgoers, a young married woman, holding a sign that read in bold capital letters, “WIVES SUBMIT TO YOUR HUSBANDS.  EPHESIANS 5:22.” I felt my heart sink into my shoes. I was (and am) unapologetically complementarian, but somehow I felt that most people passing that sign would have the same reaction as Angry Lady, which turned the already intimidating task of distributing tracts into an introvert’s nightmare. 

Before I go on, I’m going to throw out some disclaimers. First off, even though my experience took place in the context of street evangelism, my point is not to knock all forms of street preaching and literature distribution. I believe that these evangelistic methods have had (and still have) their place. Furthermore, I’m not going to criticize every attempt to share the Gospel with someone before establishing a relationship with them. One of my favorite books on evangelism, Tactics by Greg Koukl, provides practical methods of conducting meaningful conversations with people you may only encounter once. My goal is rather to describe some harmful concepts of evangelism that I have personally encountered in the Anabaptist community, and to instead (in a subsequent post) promote the concept of incarnational evangelism.

For the purposes of this post, I have identified three harmful concepts that discourage evangelism in the Anabaptist community, although I believe they may also apply to the broader evangelical American church.

Reaching the world is my responsibility

First is the notion that evangelism is the personal, primary responsibility of every individual believer. In my experience, that’s a statement that would garner many an “AMEN!” when thundered from a pulpit. But is this seemingly obvious truth, well, true? Kevin DeYoung notes that, while the epistles contain admonitions for specific individuals to preach and do the work of an evangelist (e.g. 2 Timothy 4:1-2, 5), “What we don’t have are a lot of verses commanding individual Christians to share their faith”¹.  Even the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20) itself must be understood in its context as given to the original eleven disciples. As DeYoung says, we “understand instinctively that the Great Commission is ours by application more than by direct command”². As an example, even die-hard evangelists don’t generally take the Great Commission to mean that every individual Christian needs to baptize people or do cross-cultural ministry.  DeYoung continues:

The Great Commission was, first, for the apostles and then, by extension, for the church they would leave behind. This means that the Great Commission is our mission not as a personal job description but insofar as we are members of Christ’s church. The mission of the church is the Great Commission… We have to acknowledge what we see and don’t see in the Bible. On the one hand, we see that the word preached to the church should not just stay in the church but flow through the church to outsiders. On the other hand, there is no indication that every conversation must turn to the gospel, or that our vocations can only be justified if we share our faith regularly, or that evangelism should trump all other ecclesiastical and doctrinal concerns. The New Testament encourages us to be ready to explain our Christian faith when asked; it encourages us to make the gospel look attractive by our honest and obedient lives; it encourages us to be concerned for the salvation of the lost; it encourages preachers to be faithful in teaching the gospel; it encourages believers to be conduits for the word of God. The New Testament does not expect us all to be extroverts, gifted conversationalists, and cold-call evangelists³.

Missiologist Michael Frost points out that, in Colossians 4:2-6, Paul seems to believe that God’s people should take a “two-pronged approach” regarding the Church’s evangelistic mission. In verses 2-4, Paul asks the believers in Colosse to pray that God would grant him opportunities to declare the “mystery of Christ” (v. 3) with clarity. In contrast, however, Paul admonishes the Colossians in verses 5-6 to “walk in wisdom toward outsiders… Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (ESV). Michael’s point? Paul doesn’t think that every individual Christian should be an evangelist, publicly proclaiming the Gospel, prizing open doors for the Word. While there are certain people in the church gifted for this task (Ephesians 4:11), most of God’s people will share the Gospel in response to questions from unbelievers – and this requires that we live what Michael calls a “questionable life,” a lifestyle so countercultural that it causes those around us to wonder and ask questions⁴.

This concept is borne out in the epistles of Paul and Peter. While the book of Acts depicts these men as bold evangelists preaching Christ in the public square, we don’t find them encouraging the average Christian to do the same. In Titus 2, for example, Paul provides lifestyle instructions for various demographics in the church. Paul intersperses his discourse with phrases indicating the purpose of his teaching: “That the word of God may not be reviled” (v. 5), “so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us” (v. 8), “so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (v. 10).  Paul wanted God’s people to demonstrate the power of the Gospel through their counter-cultural integrity. Similarly, in 1 Peter 3:15-16, Peter admonishes his readers to always be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” God’s people are to witness through their counter-cultural lifestyle and readiness to discuss their faith. 

Many of us (myself included) may feel that this approach is a cop-out, an excuse for avoiding the inherent unpleasantness of evangelism. However, I don’t believe that living a “questionable life” is the easy way out. After all, if we find ourselves living in such a way that the unbelievers around us aren’t asking us questions, a reasonable conclusion is that we may need to change our lifestyle! Or if we live so utterly surrounded by people just like us that we never receive opportunities to share our faith, perhaps it’s time to move. The fact that God has gifted certain people as evangelists doesn’t mean the rest of us can sit back and watch. We are called to support our evangelists as they take opportunities to boldly share God’s Word, and we are to live so counter-culturally that we are called to give a defense of the hope that is in us. 

Evangelism is confrontational

The second harmful concept I’ve identified is that evangelism is necessarily confrontational. If you’re agreeable and introverted (like me), the necessity of confrontation automatically makes evangelism about the last thing you would ever want to do. People need to be confronted and convicted of their sin, the reasoning goes, before they can realize their need for a savior and accept Christ. Proponents often refer to the book of Acts to support confrontational public preaching.  Elements of truth are certainly present in this line of reasoning, and the Gospel absolutely requires a radical shift in one’s worldview; thus, some confrontation is unavoidable.  However, I would maintain that confrontation, while useful in some contexts, isn’t a necessary component of every evangelistic endeavor.  

There are certainly times when a confrontational approach is effective, such as in Acts 2:36 when Peter accused his Jewish brethren of killing the promised Messiah! However, while Acts certainly contains many public proclamations of the Gospel, it’s not quite fair to assume the apostles were necessarily street preaching as many of these proclamations occurred in synagogues or other culturally appropriate places⁵. The recorded sermons we have in Acts also don’t sound like the typical “repent or perish” messages we may hear from street preachers⁶. In addition, the book of Acts also contains personal interactions, such as those of Peter and Cornelius (Acts 10) or Philip and the Ethiopian (Acts 8:26-40). It’s also important to realize that Acts is descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words, Acts is largely focused on recounting the expansion of the Church through the evangelistic ministries of people like Paul and Peter, not providing a blueprint for the everyday life of the average Christian. In the epistles of Paul and Peter, we don’t find calls to start itinerant preaching ministries, but rather to live counter-cultural lives and take opportunities to graciously share Christ in response to questioning unbelievers.  As Peter cautions us, we are to do this “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).  This sort of evangelism is every bit as legitimate as public proclamation; this is the method Paul and Peter promote to the average Christian.

Results don’t matter

A third idea I’ve heard repeated a lot is that we shouldn’t focus on the number of conversions in response to our ministry. The important thing is to proclaim the Gospel publicly because this plants seeds in people’s minds and convicts them of sin. We may never see the results of our labor, but many who hear us preaching could convert later for all we know. I find this concept to be particularly nefarious because it is partially true, especially in the context of cross-cultural ministry. As an example, supporters of long-term foreign missionaries often feel let down when their missionaries have been on the field for five years and nobody’s been converted yet. Isn’t it natural to want results? The truth of the matter is that cross-cultural work takes a very long time. It takes years to become proficient in a language and understand a culture, let alone convince someone to change their worldview and adopt something completely new! We can’t expect quick results in missions, and we can’t focus on statistics.

So why can’t we apply similar reasoning to evangelism back home? While we certainly can’t expect quick results from evangelism in any context, this truth must not be used to prop up evangelistic methods that simply don’t work. A cross-cultural worker taking years to learn a language and establish himself in a new culture and community just isn’t in the same category as an evangelistic effort in one’s own country, with no language barrier. It may take years of progress in a cross-cultural setting before a missionary can begin to share the Gospel; this is frankly quite different from evangelistic efforts which make no discernable progress whatsoever. Again, I’m not arguing that we ditch all evangelistic methods that don’t yield rapid results. I’m arguing that results are not irrelevant. Is it not appropriate to ask if our evangelistic efforts have a tangible effect on the growth and demographic of our churches? And if they don’t, when should we take a step back and reevaluate our methods? After all, if we appeal to the book of Acts for our missionary methods, perhaps we should stop and think when we don’t experience the results we also see in Acts.  

An Unpleasant Responsibility

In this post, I’ve outlined three issues that I believe dampen our enthusiasm for evangelism: (1) Evangelism is the personal, primary responsibility of every individual Christian, (2) evangelism is necessarily confrontational, and (3) results don’t matter in evangelism. These concepts combine to paint a picture of evangelism as a daunting, near-impossible task, yet simultaneously the weighty personal duty of every believer. 

I don’t believe that evangelism has to be guilt-inducing, intimidating, argumentative, and devoid of results. In my next post, I would like to outline a different vision for evangelism – a picture in which God’s people follow Christ’s example of reaching humanity by incarnating ourselves into the communities we seek to reach.

1. DeYoung, K. (2023). Impossible Christianity. Crossway: Wheaton, IL. (p. 51).
2. DeYoung, K. (2023). Impossible Christianity. Crossway: Wheaton, IL. (p. 53).
3. DeYoung, K. (2023). Impossible Christianity. Crossway: Wheaton, IL. (p. 51-54).
4. Exponential. (2015, April 9). ReThinking witness – Michael Frost.  https://youtu.be/AdzzWEtdOrU
5. See Acts 9:20; 13:5, 14:1; 17:1, 10, 17, 22; 18:19
6. See Acts 2:14-39; 3:12-26; 7:2-53; 10:34-43; 13:16-41, 46-48; 14:15-18; 17:22-34