GYC Europe 2012: The Hour Has Come

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Public Evangelism

Daniel Pel

Engaging the Age: Reviving the Public Evangelistic Campaign- Part 1

This message was presented through a partnership between GYC and GYC Europe at the 2012 conference in Linz, Austria.

For other resources like this, visit us online at gycweb.org.

Well this seminar is Engaging the Age, reviving the public evangelistic campaign.

And this is not just for those that want to actually preach an evangelistic campaign, even though it is very much for those, but also for those of you that would like to be involved in planning or organizing an evangelistic series.

So thank you for coming, and I look forward to what God has in store for us.

Before we get started, let's have a word of prayer and I invite you to bow your heads together with me.

Father in heaven, thank you so much for bringing us together here.

Thank you so much for GYC and for the blessings we have received already.

And Lord, we look forward to many more blessings today.

And so we pray that you'll be with us in this session, in this workshop, as we look at the evangelistic series, and how that we can prepare, organize, and preach an evangelistic series.

Lord, we want you to be our teacher this morning.

We want your spirit to instruct us and guide us and lead us.

And so I ask that you will be with us and that you'll speak to us in a very personal way.

Alright, well let's start with a little bit of an overview here as to what we'll be looking at.

And I think you should be able to see this on the screen in just a moment.

We're not connected yet, so can we connect to the PowerPoint?

So these are the areas that we want to cover together.

In our first session today, we're going to look at public evangelism and its relevance today.

Public evangelism and its relevance today.

This morning in our second session, we're going to look at preparing to share all that is involved in the organizing and preparing of an evangelistic series.

And then this afternoon in our third session we will look at the message and its presentation, so the actual preaching of an evangelistic series and how to build up our messages.

And then in our last session this afternoon, we're going to look at the topic of keeping the interest, in other words, the follow-up of an evangelistic series.

So these are the 4 areas that we would like to look at through this series.

So we start with public evangelism and the question if it is still relevant for us today.

Many believe that public evangelism is something that is outdated, something that belongs to the past, Something that worked at 1 time but no longer works today.

And we want to ask if that's true and we want to see from a Biblical perspective if it is truly outdated because if that is so, then, you know, we might as well just go to another workshop this morning, and maybe personal evangelism or health evangelism.

But is there still a place also for public evangelism?

That's the first question we want to start with.

Is there a place for public evangelism or is it outdated?

Well, I think the relevance of public evangelism very much lies in the relevance of scripture.

Because in the scripture we find the great commission of Jesus to the disciples that they were to go into all the world and to preach the gospel, to teach all nations.

And so if they were called to teach all nations, If they were called to preach all nations and it was relevant to preach in a public setting in the first century, then the question is, is it still relevant today?

Well we look at our world today and 1 of the main arguments that is used against public evangelism that it is outdated is the fact that we are living in very different times.

The world is not the same as it used to be, And so we need to have new methods of evangelism.

And of course we should always be on the lookout for new ways to reach people and new ways to engage the age.

But the question is, if public evangelism was relevant in the first century, when we see in the Great Commission of Jesus when He sent out the disciples, has it then become unrelevant today?

Is the world so different today than it was in the days of the apostles, the early church?

So is the difference so great between the world at that time and this time that public evangelism worked then but no longer works today?

Now and to do that we're going to take a little bit of a journey here and we're going to go back to the first century.

And I just want to look at a couple of characteristics of the world and what it was like in the first century and I believe it's going to be very interesting because what we're going to see is that the world in the first century was very, very similar to the world that we experience today.

And you might say, well, how can that be?

You know, technology has increased and aren't we living in a very, very different world?

Many things are indeed different, but There are some fundamental pillars that make up society that are absolutely the same.

And this is very interesting to see because if public evangelism was relevant in the first century and these same pillars still exist today, then public evangelism is still relevant today.

In 1 Corinthians 1, and verse 22 and 23, we read the following.

For Jews requested a sign, and Greeks seek after what?

But we preach Christ crucified to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks what?

Now, and don't be afraid to answer, we're not many people in this seminar, so please just come as close as you can and just answer because I feel so distant here on the stage.

I'm just here because of the cameras, but let's make this a setting where we can interact with each other.

So here we have a description of the Greeks and the Greeks are searching after wisdom and for the Greeks the message of Christ is foolish.

Now what we need to understand is the world of the early disciples, the world of the apostles was a Greek world.

Now, you will know that the Roman Empire was the ruling empire at that time, but nonetheless Greek culture had emerged as the primary adopted culture in the Roman Empire.

So what you would see is that the Roman emperors, they determined to unify their empire, to unify the Roman Empire by diffusing the Greek culture to all the nations.

So you had Greek philosophy, you had Greek religion, you had Greek games like the Olympic Games which originate from Greece, you had the educational system, It was called Hellenization.

And so this took place, and even though the Romans ruled in the days of Paul and the early apostolic church of the first century, the Greek culture was adopted by the Romans, and so they used this to unify the empire.

The apostles went forward preaching, publicly preaching, in a Greek setting, in a Greek world.

There are a couple of things that characterize the Greek culture.

And in Acts chapter 17 verse 21, we have a little bit of an insight into the Greek culture.

It says the following, for all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

So This is a little bit of the world of the Greeks here.

They spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

Have you ever been in Sabbath school with some Greeks?

They're always telling something, They always want to hear something new.

Knowledge and wisdom were esteemed extremely high.

Now the Greeks developed the educational system that many other cultures adopted even today.

When you look at the universities, the universities are built upon a Greek foundation, actually, the Greek culture, when you go back and you examine that, very interesting.

Most universities of today can trace their organization and philosophy to Greek origin.

But not only did the Greeks promote knowledge, the Greeks also promoted pleasure.

When you look at the Greeks, they loved bread and games, you look at the big sports events that they would organize, They built huge arenas to watch gladiators fight.

As I said, the Olympic Games, you can trace that back to Greece as well.

Engaging the Age: Reviving the Public Evangelistic Campaign- Part 2

We're going to look at the message and its presentation this afternoon, how to prepare a sermon, an evangelistic sermon.

So I'm excited and I hope you are as well.

So thank you for coming and let's begin with a word of prayer shall we?

Heavenly Father we thank you Lord for the opportunity to come together and study your Word and Lord I pray that you'll be with us as We look at the evangelistic series and how to prepare a sermon, an evangelistic sermon that can make an impact upon the lives of people.

So I pray for your Holy Spirit to give me wisdom, to give us all understanding as we search Your Word.

Alright, just a very short review here of what we covered this morning.

We covered this morning in our 2 sessions.

In our first session we covered public evangelism and its relevance today.

And we looked at the early church, the apostolic church, and how public evangelism was very relevant at that time, and how basically there were pillars that formed society in the apostolic days that are still very prominent and present today in our age.

We looked at the promotion of knowledge in the Greek culture, the promotion of pleasure, pleasure seeking, and we looked at the various gods that they had, many religious persuasions, spiritual persuasions, and how these things we also see in our age today.

And if evangelism was relevant then, then definitely it is relevant today.

So we looked at the relevance of public evangelism today, and I shared some personal experiences of evangelism and how we need to learn how to cast out the net in the right way, how to be able to fish for souls, so to speak, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

We looked this morning also at preparing to share what is involved in planning and organizing for a public evangelistic series.

And this afternoon we're going to get right into basically the core, I would say, of this seminar, which is the message and its presentation.

And we're going to look at a couple of points.

We're going to look at actually 3 areas this afternoon.

The first area we're going to look at is presenting simple messages centered in Christ.

Presenting simple messages centered in Christ.

Secondly, we want to look at communicating a well-sequenced series.

In other words, how do you build up an evangelistic series?

And how are you going to build upon that in order to communicate the beautiful teachings that we have in God's Word?

And I'll be giving some, I believe, compelling ways, not only from my words, but from the words of inspiration.

Actually, a lot of what I'll be sharing this afternoon comes from the book Evangelism.

I was sharing a couple of quotations from that book this morning as well, and we'll be looking at that this afternoon as well.

The book has a lot to say about this area of communicating a well-sequenced series, so we'll be looking at that.

And then last but not least, we'll be looking at preaching with enthusiasm.

Our first point here, presenting simple messages centered in Christ.

Yesterday evening's message by David Esherick was actually kind of laying the foundation of really what I was going to share on this point this afternoon, because he, through a study of the book of Acts, showed in a very compelling way how over and over again there was in the 1 central theme was the person Jesus Christ.

And so it is also in our public evangelistic series, if not Christ is the focus, then we're only giving a bunch of ideas.

And you know, the teachings do not have the power in them that they're supposed to have when connected with the person Jesus Christ.

Because what public evangelism really is, it is introducing a person to Jesus Christ.

And we are doing that through simple messages that are centered in Christ.

Now and so whether you're presenting the law of God or whether you're presenting the Sabbath or whether you're presenting what happens when a person dies, all these topics center in the person Jesus Christ.

And so, in order to have an impact in public evangelism, we must ever keep that in mind.

Take notice of this quotation, again from the book Evangelism, page 171 and 172.

It says the following, A few forcible remarks upon some point of doctrine will fasten it in the mind much more firmly than if such a mass of matter were presented that nothing lies out clear and distinct in the mind of those ignorant of our faith.

There should be interspersed with the prophecies practical lessons of the teachings of Christ.

As we present the prophecies, let's say you're doing a public evangelistic series and you are presenting topics from Daniel and Revelation, as you are moving through the prophecies, inspiration tells us that we should put into those presentations practical lessons and teachings of Jesus Christ.

In other words, putting the person Jesus Christ on display in the midst of those prophecies.

Now John 5.39, many of us are familiar with this text.

He says, you Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, and these are they which, " what?

"...which testify of me." So the Scriptures testify of Jesus Christ.

So whether we are preaching prophecy or whether we are preaching any doctrine of Adventism, it is centered in the person Jesus Christ.

And so a way to make an evangelistic series successful and Christ-centered is to bring the teachings of Jesus into these prophecies.

And we can do so by studying the life of Jesus and looking at the lessons and bringing those into the prophecies.

Now in the book of Ecclesiastes, it's a very interesting passage there that I would like to look at together with you.

In Ecclesiastes chapter 12, we read there the following passage written by the King Solomon, the words of wisdom here.

And I want you to take notice of what he, how he characterizes a good preacher.

It says the following, Ecclesiastes chapter 12 beginning in verse 9, and moreover because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people, what's the word there?

You know, sometimes preaching can become very emotional and it can be detached from knowledge.

In our preaching, what has to be central is the person Jesus Christ and the life and teachings that he put on display in his Word.

His Word must be the point of gravitation, so to speak, that draws everything towards itself, a manifestation of the life of Jesus.

Public evangelism, when presenting the message, it's not just an emotional experience.

Even though the emotional experience is there, but if it's detached from a knowledge, then There's something that is missing.

The message is to reach the heart as well as the mind.

Now take notice what else it says in this passage here in Ecclesiastes chapter 12.

It says, moreover because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge.

Yes, he pondered and sought out and set in order many proverbs.

So he is here, when I read this, I get the image of a preacher that is using time in searching out how he can best present a message so it will be clearly understood by the audience or congregation that he is dealing with.

So there is a pondering going on, there's a searching out of knowledge.

And so when we prepare our messages for a public evangelistic series, we are to seek out the words that we're going to speak, the ideas we want to communicate, the person that we want to communicate, Jesus Christ.

And it takes time, it takes effort, and yet it will be rewarded.

It goes on to say, the preacher sought to find acceptable words and what was written was upright words of truth." Words of truth.

Not his own words, but the words that come directly from the source of all truth, the source of the Scriptures.

And so again, the Bible, the Scriptures is like the center of gravity.

And so in public evangelism, communicating the Word of God, we are communicating it, truth from his word, presenting a person, Jesus Christ, bringing the teachings of Christ even into the prophecies and everything that we teach, whether whatever doctrine we are presenting, whatever prophecy we are presenting, bringing Christ into that message and making the Word of God the center of that message.

Now it goes on, the same passage, it says, The words of the wise are like goads, and the words of scholars are like well-driven nails given by 1 shepherd." Again there's a mental picture that emerges here of a building project.

And think about it, if you were walking on the street And you look to your side and there was a building project and they were building a house but the house was not yet completed.

And you would walk by and you would look at the building site and you saw the beginnings of the house, the foundation and maybe some of the walls already.

But You could see that it was going to become a house even though it was not yet finished.

You could follow along from day to day, week to week as you would walk by and you would see that house getting completed.

Now if you would walk by that same site and you would look and you would think that they were building a boat right there and you would come back later and you found out it was not a boat but a house, you would be surprised and you would think, ah, so in the building process you weren't able to detect or identify what they were building.

Now, bringing this to a spiritual level, it's a little bit like when you hear a sermon, it is important that the person that is communicating that sermon is communicating it in such a way that you are able to follow with what is being built, spiritually speaking.

So in other words, if you are listening to a sermon and it's going a little bit about that and then a little bit about that and then a little bit about that and a little bit about everything but really about nothing in the end, it is very hard for you to see what is going on and where it's going.

Just like if you walk by and you see the building of a house and then it becomes also a house, that makes sense.

But if you thought it was a house but it becomes a boat, that doesn't make sense.

And so in this passage here in Ecclesiastes chapter 12, it's interesting because Solomon, talking about the wise preacher, is making this comparison to a builder, a builder.

And when we are involved in public presentations and preaching public presentations, it is like we are building.

And people need to see what we are building so there are no surprises suddenly in the end as to where we are going.

And So this has to do with the build up of a message, the logical build up of a message.

And we're going to talk a little bit about that this afternoon.

Series

Public Evangelism

Engaging the Age: Reviving the Public Evangelistic Campaign- Part 2

Transcript

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Parent Conference

Sponsor

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