Evangelism is a process, not an event, Seventh-day Adventist world church leaders said during a review of outreach last week.
While traditional church outreach often involved weeklong preaching events with little follow-up, public evangelism's effectiveness today depends on committed, involved local church members who will befriend and disciple new believers, delegates of the last Council on Evangelism and Witness (CEW) meeting before General Conference Session said.
Church pastors, evangelists and other leaders should foster a "culture of involvement" among members, Michael L. Ryan, a world church vice president, told delegates gathered at world church headquarters for the April 1 full-day meeting, which preceded church spring business meetings this week.
"It's easy to make budget appropriations, hire an evangelist and arrange a meeting, but what would we do if we didn't have a cent to spend on evangelism?" evangelist Bob Folkenberg, Jr asked the delegates, adding that laypeople -- "active members with a lifestyle of evangelism" are the answer, "whether you're in Manila or Manhattan."
Evangelist Bruce Bauer reminded the delegates to keep Jesus' style of outreach in the New Testament in mind -- meeting needs and building trust before sharing beliefs.
"You can't preach effectively if you don't know where people are coming from," Bauer said. "Friendship is the basis for witness that appeals to people."
Bauer also dismissed the concept of one-size-fits-all approach to evangelism. "No one outreach effort is going to reach everyone," he said, adding that outreach should not be done haphazardly, but with demographic research in mind. Later, Ryan reiterated the point, calling for "contextualized outreach."
As a case study for such outreach, Mark Finley, a world church vice president and CEW chair, and Johnson Swamidass, an evangelist in India, outlined the Adventist Church's outreach in Chennai, India. There, membership has grown from 7 churches in 1994 to 154 today, largely due to "deliberate evangelism," such as church groups meeting at the city's major metro stations, Finley said.
During a question and answer period dividing the morning and afternoon sessions, Jairyong Lee, president of the church's Northern Asia-Pacific region, applauded the emphasis on lay evangelism, but said practical ideas on how best to motivate a congregation were needed.
"Often we just tell our members, 'Go out and get involved,' but we rarely recognize their work. I think if we did, it would encourage them to continue to evangelize," Lee said.
Also needed is a change in "church culture," said Bertil Wiklander, president for the church's Trans-European region.
"There is something very flawed about a church where members just attend meetings, listen to sermons and give tithes and offerings," he said, adding that some churches stress intellectualism over spirituality, doctrine over relationships and have grown "too holy," emphasizing "exclusiveness at the expense of compassion."
While some church leaders speculate that regions such as Trans-Europe are not receptive to traditional outreach, South Pacific church leaders Barry Oliver and Gary Webster said even so-called "post-modern" cultures can be reached through public evangelism.
"We've seen as much of a positive response to public evangelism in urban Australia as we have in the Pacific Islands, where you might expect it would find a better reception," said Oliver, president of the church's South Pacific region.
There, the church-run Institute for Public Evangelism trains and mentors young evangelists, then places them in areas with little strong leadership. In some regions, church membership has tripled as a result, an Institute report said.
South American regional church President Erton Köhler shared the area's emphasis on large-scale evangelism projects designed to unify members and motivate ongoing evangelism.
Köhler said the region's most successful projects are "simple and relevant," such as a current effort to encourage Sabbath-keeping by emphasizing that people are hardwired for a weekly break from everyday stress.
Later, delegates heard a report from Bulgaria, where a CEW-funded project is raising awareness against child marriage among the country's large Muslim Roma community, where children are regularly forced into arranged marriages by age 10 or 12, said Bruno Vertallier, president of the church in Euro-Africa.
Emphasizing the practicality of the church's message of hope is crucial, Finley said. "If we can show that the Bible is intellectually credible, but also intensely practical and relevant -- that is, can help my marriage, can it help my family -- if you blend those two things, we can be more direct in sharing our faith than some of us once thought," he said.