“Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide. … Do not move about from house to house.” Luke 10:5-7
John Chandler
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The end of World War II inaugurated an era of mass evangelism in the United States. Not only were thousands of dislocated Americans returning from combat, but national demographics indicated that millions were migrating from rural areas to big cities. Sensing this, evangelists like Charles Fuller and Billy Graham would travel to major urban areas, preach on the prodigal from Luke 15, and sing an invitation like Softly and Tenderly: “Calling, O sinner, come home.”
Hundreds of thousands did just that. There was a remarkable evangelistic harvest of prodigals who returned from the “far countries” into the fold of faith and church.
It all lasted until the cultural upheaval of the 1960s. All of those WW2 babies turned into teenage hippies and we didn’t have the foggiest notion of what to do with them. We invented “youth ministry” and said to youth ministers, “Here, you do something with them!”
The American church was staggered and struggled to adjust strategically in reaching a changing culture. While mass evangelism continued to enjoy pockets of success, since the ’60s has come language of “personal” evangelism — an emphasis on each individual, in a relational context, to share faith in Christ.
Refreshing is a recent trend of using the biblical language of evangelism with a “person of peace.” In Luke 10, when Jesus sent disciples out in teams (take note!) to proclaim the Kingdom, some found traction in one home and none in the next. Jesus’ counsel? Shake the dust off of your feet where there is no hearing, and remain in the house where there is. In other words, share your faith with the receptive before the resistant. Look for the person of peace and focus there. This is micro (relational) rather than macro (mass) evangelism.
Hey, I’m for whatever works in sharing the best news ever to hit the world.
Trending is written by John Chandler, leader of the Spence Network, www.spencenetwork.org./equip.htm. He is a member at All Souls, a Baptist congregation in Charlottesville, Va.