by Pastor James Lee

There are all sorts of myths and lies that people have believed or still believe that are factually erroneous upon objective evaluation. Yes, the earth is not flat, Neptune does not rule the sea from some lost city Atlantis bemoaning his boy-smitten daughter, tomatoes are fruit not vegetables, and dropping a penny from the Empire State Building won’t end up killing someone (though it might really hurt). Likewise, we would do well to remember that false doctrine inhabits our false doxology and false praxis because we are misinformed about what the Bible actually teaches in some given area. When we don’t invest ourselves regularly, thoughtfully, carefully, devotionally, theologically, and humbly, and if we’re used to being spoon-fed the stuff that lines the shelves of pop Christianity, pop psychology, and pop culture, we will continue to simply do what we’ve always done and think like we always have thought: imbibe what our feelings and experience and friends teach us, without any ongoing reexamination, reordering, reformation and redirection. Therefore, we end up unknowingly perpetuating error. If we are not diligent, devoted, and discerning, in certain pockets of our functional theology. Our entire paradigm in a given matter can all be whack, if you get my drift, and we don’t have any idea that we’ve been suckered into such misdirection.

We might think our vision is clear, our interpretive grid so sound, be it our doctrine of parenting, our theology of work, our paradigm for reproof. But all of us are guilty at times of thinking that we’ve got it all down, because we got a few verses in our back pocket, gone to a conference, or because we’ve lived a bit longer and think that automatically makes us wiser (it doesn’t, by the way). When it comes down to it, we’re ignorant of what the Scriptures actually teach us. Jeremiah 17:9 warns, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.” And if we actually believe what the Bible says what our biggest problem is, then we have to realize our pride and depravity and laziness often has the wheel until we plow through the next intersection.

So it is always a very delightful, but very dangerous business, to come to the Word of God. Every time we hear it and read it, we stand at a kind of sanctifying crossroads, so that by it, we always live accountable, and will choose to either to resist it or bow beneath it. We can perpetuate error with the tunnel vision that just wants to see the comfortable truth, not the whole truth, or we can seek to truly humble ourselves before the Lord, with fear and trembling and adoration and expectation, at the very outset. Unfortunately, let me suggest that very often the least prepared time to hear the Word of God, is the time of the Lord’s Day sermon. We might come, but come unprepared, come with our “checklist” Christianity. Frustrated with the kids and spouse, we arrive late, then out comes our mental checklist. Come to church, check. Greet everyone, check. Sing, give offering, check, check. Bow my head and close my eyes allowing my mind to wander until I hear, “In Jesus’ name, Amen.” Listen to the sermon, leave service, and judge in a few seconds what the pastor has spent 20-30 hours of study and prayer on his knees and really his entire life up to that point to be enabled to say. Eat lunch, then do my thing. If we’re honest, that’s so easy for me to do, you to do, for all of us to do. But we must not come that way or leave that way when it comes to His inerrant truth. We must come as slaves, servants, soldiers of Christ, children of God, as humble learners.

Otherwise, if we try to put God into our paradigm, rather than allowing God to demolish it and mold us by His truth and His Spirit, then we’re going to perpetuate the very myths that short circuit our discipleship. One such myth that needs to be demolished and eradicated is the idea that one can evangelize without verbal proclamation. There’s a popular quote among evangelicals that has been falsely attributed to St. Francis Assisi, an imposter of biblical teaching, an urban legend disguised as truth, that says this: “Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.” Not really. Actually, just, “No.”

Folks who like to say that might be sincere and genuine about reaching our fellow sinners. I don’t want to minimize that. Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s so innocent, as Glen Stanton comments, “It is intended to say that proclaiming the Gospel by example is more virtuous than actually proclaiming with voice. It is a quote that has often rankled me because it seems to create a useless dichotomy between speech and action. Besides, the spirit behind it can be a little arrogant, intimating that those who ‘practice the Gospel’ are more faithful to the faith than those who preach it.”

Consider: is there a reason why that saying is so popular, and why most people don’t really bat an eye? It subtly tickles our ears and attempts to absolve us of evangelistic responsibility. Why? Because when theology takes a back seat to methodology, and we drink the contemporary kool-aid of wanting to be liked, we’re going to find some sanitized ways to justify our non-evangelism. It might be wrapped in the language of faithfulness, but it’s total unfaithfulness. So we’re going to debunk the mythical non-sense that we can evangelize without actually speaking the truth in love. And we’re going to do it ironically with a verse that often serves as the proof-text, poster-boy, and punchline to the comic tragedy of non-proclamation. Our Lord Jesus authoritatively declares in Matthew 5:16, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

Now in saying all that, I am certainly not saying that our good works and demonstration of love for others somehow don’t matter. They do. They do! While I understand there is a need for us to be pursuing, persistent, persuasive, and very, very patient, and prayerfully pleading that the Lord would sovereignly regenerate dead souls… I understand that there is an opposite error of viewing our evangelism as merely some data drop of a neatly packaged gospel outline right before we go on our merry way, without actually cultivating the possibility of relationship and being winsome in our conversations with our lost friends (yes, as real friends)…. What I am saying is that if we’re merely kind in the ways moral goodness, or social justice, or cultural etiquette might dictate, then we haven’t actually engaged in faithful evangelism, at least not yet… Preaching the gospel necessitates words! At some point, we have to be unashamedly His mouthpiece! We have to speak the message and content of the gospel, verbalize, talk, use our mouth, make it known, enunciate, teach, confront, give hope, explain, defend, articulate, clarify, answer questions, shout it from the mountain top, clearly, lovingly, boldly, gently, faithfully, obediently… say something!

Whenever I’m on a flight, I aim to share the good news with the person who sits next to me, and I can tell you that I’m equal shares of doing that out of faith, and failing to do that out of fear. But to my memory, I’ve never sat next to someone, who was anything but kind and respectful towards me (not always towards the gospel). And by His grace, I don’t think and I hope that I wasn’t anything but kind or respectful either. Nevertheless, l will argue that it would be difficult for me to testify with any kind of integrity that I preached the gospel to the precious soul next to me, in the paradigm of only “if necessary, use words.”

Before I was a “full-time” pastor, working in the marketplace, I had a lot to learn about evangelism amongst my coworkers that stretched and challenged me a great deal. I had a lot more failures than I did success, and it was a different context than the campus and street evangelism training I had received as a collegian with the Navigators. By the way, to momentarily encourage, that’s why some of the best personal evangelism I’ve seen is by those who aren’t in “professional” ministry. In my office environment, it was less an event than a process. So perhaps the timing of sharing the truths of the gospel might manifest differently, but a context never makes the sharing of it, any less urgent, intentional, and necessary! Thus, as your brother and co-laborer, it is my prayer that we will wrestle together in the importance of debunking the myth of non-verbal evangelism, for the good of the church, and the glory of God! Romans 10:14-17 exhorts us:

But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

John MacArthur commented, “God’s only witnesses are His children, and the world has no other way of knowing Him.” Let us together continue to shine brightly in bold, loving, and verbal gospel proclamation!