This section looks at how the gospel is to be preached.
In the same way you discover what the gospel is through the Scriptures, you must also look to the Bible to see how the gospel is delivered.
We absolutely believe in the SUFFICIENCY of the word of God for evangelism. Because of this, we therefore, reject pragmatic evangelistic philosophies (a method in philosophy where value is determined by practical results (1), that run rampant in the church today.
Sufficiency & Pragmatism
"What then does it mean that Scripture is sufficient? It means that the Bible is sufficient for the church's life and work. It is able to draw unbelievers to Christ, to enable me to grow in godliness, to provide direction to my life and to go beyond myself and beyond the church to transform and revitalize all of society. As I read this definition of Scripture's sufficiency in James Boice's book "Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace" it was like the last piece of a puzzle fell into place and I finally understood what my primary concern is with so many of today's churches. These churches have stopped believing in the sufficiency of Scripture.
Almost every church, at least in the evangelical world, would include in its statement of faith that they believe in sola scriptura (the Scripture alone is sufficient), even if they do not use those words to do so. And most of these churches do believe in the Bible's authority, inspiration and inerrancy. However, few would believe and put into practice the idea of the Bible's sufficiency. The evidence of this is visible in churches all around us. People no longer look to the Bible as being the key to evangelism. Instead they put their trust in music, drama, outreach programs and less imposing but more attractive church buildings. When people do come to church they are not challenged by the gospel.
It is interesting to see how Jesus evangelized. He used miracles, but this did not form the basis of his ministry. What he did more than anything was preach! He would often cease performing miracles in order to preach and share God's words. In the first chapter of Mark we see Jesus walking away from a crowd of what we would consider seekers, leaving them to go to a new village where no one knew who He was. Why did He do this? "Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out." His miracles the previous day had drawn larger and larger crowds and more people were coming to be healed, but despite this "success" Jesus moved on because the foundation of His ministry was the preaching of the gospel. He did not want to be known as a worker of miracles when his true ministry was teaching.
How would we react in a similar situation today? I suspect we would consider anything that brought great crowds to our churches to be a success. Yet unless the foundation of our ministry is the faithful and full exposition of the gospel, the crowds mean nothing. God does not call us to gather crowds, but to make disciples by calling people to repentance. People are saved not by being in church and participating in services, but by the Word of God.
"I believe it is only through a firm conviction of the sufficiency of Scripture that a church can truly consider itself built on a foundation of sola scriptura. Scripture's inerrancy, authority and inspiration mean little if we do not also believe in its sufficiency. When we do not believe in Scripture's sufficiency we must substitute it with something. What we put in its place can never have the power and authority of the Bible. It can never be sufficient." (2)
–Tim Challies
Furthermore, when the church moves from the foundation of the doctrine of biblical suffiency, pragmatic man-centered evangelisic schemes are sure to follow.
Check out this clip from Paris Reidhead's sermon, "Ten Shekels and a Shirt," regarding pragmatism.
"What can we call this and how will it apply to our days generation. Would I be out of line if I were to talk to you for a little while about utilitarian religion and expedient Christianity? And a youthful God? I would like to call attention to the fact that our day is a day which the ruling philosophy is pragmatism. You understand what I mean by pragmatism, pragmatism means if it works it's true. If it succeeds it's good. And the test of all practices, all principles, all truth, so called all teaching, is do they work? Do they work? Now, according to pragmatism, the greatest failures of the ages have been some of the men God has honored most.
For instance, whereas Noah was a mighty good ship builder, his main occupation wasn't ship building, it was preaching. He was a terrible failure as a preacher. His wife and three children and their wives are all he had. Seven converts in 120 years, you wouldn't call that particularly effective. Most mission boards would have asked the missionaries to withdraw long before this. I say as a ship builder he did quite well, but as a preacher he was a failure.
And then we come down across the years to another man by the name of Jeremiah. He was a mighty effective preacher, but ineffective as far as results were concerned. If you were to measure statistically how successful Jeremiah was, he would probably get a large cipher. For we find that he lost out with the people, he lost out with royalty, even the ministerial association voted against him and wouldn't have anything to do with him. He had everything fail. The only one he seemed able to please was.... God, but otherwise he was a distinct failure.
And then we come to another well known person, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was a failure from judging all the standards. He never succeeded in organizing a church or denomination. He wasn't able to build a school. He didn't succeed in getting a mission board established. He never had a book printed. He never was able to get any of the various criteria or instruments that we find and are so useful, I'm not being sarcastic at all, they are useful. And our Lord preached for three years, healed thousands of people, fed thousands of people, and yet when it was all over there were 120..., 500 to whom he could have revealed Himself after His resurrection. And the day that He was taken, one man said "If all the others forsake you, I'm willing to die for you." He looked at this one and said "Peter you don't know your own heart. You're going to deny me three times before the cock crows this morning." So all men forsook Him and fled. By every standard of our generation or any generation, our Lord was a single failure.
The question comes then to this, what is the standard of success and by what are we going to judge our lives and our ministry? And the question that you are going to ask yourself, "Is God an end or is He a means?" And you have to decide very early in your Christian life whether you're viewing God as an end or a means. Our generation is prepared to honor with single honor anyone that's successful regardless of whether they settled this problem or not." (3)
Decisionism
Below is a short clip of a sermon by Paul Washer on this issue.
*A special thanks to Derreck Kinter with Richmond Biblical Evangelism Team for giving us permission to use portions of what Richmond Biblical Evangelism Team has put together.
