By Reinder Bruinsma
Last year, some 30,000 new Seventh-day Adventists were baptized as the result of a well-orchestrated, nationwide series of evangelistic campaigns in the East African country of Tanzania. Next month, an even greater harvest is expected when about 100,000 new brothers and sisters will be added to the church in the Central African country of Rwanda.
We have never seen such large baptismal ceremonies in the Western world. But Adventism here in North America also began and developed in the context of camp meetings and public campaigns or “crusades” (a very unfortunate and insensitive word). Until a few decades ago, this method of evangelism was reasonably successful. However, today even with a large budget and lots of personnel, the number of those attracted by public evangelistic campaigns remains abysmally small.
Admittedly, they still work to some extent in reaching certain immigrant communities. But most pastors and other leaders have awakened to the indisputable fact that in the United States, Europe, and Australia, the days of public evangelistic meetings are definitely over. We must hope that those who are behind the mission to the big cities will also adapt their approach to this reality.
The New Testament makes it abundantly clear that the followers of Jesus have received a mandate to communicate the message of their Lord, along with all this implies for everyday life and the future for every person on this planet. However, the Biblical is silent about specific methods.
We know that the apostles and other leaders traveled through the ancient world and started church plants wherever they went. We read of occasions when lots of people were together, and the apostles used these as launching pads for their outreach, during a festival in Jerusalem (Acts 2), for instance. And the apostle Paul often met groups of people in the open air (Acts 17:16-34), or in the context of the existing synagogue structure (Acts 14:1).
But we search the New Testament in vain for instructions on how church members were to witness about their faith. We read nothing about the blessings of literature evangelism, standard Bible lessons that may be used by lay members, let alone stress seminars or Revelation seminars or their first-century equivalents. The members of the early church were supposed to share their faith as they went about their daily work and as they shared their meals with other people. Their witnessing was often far from easy. It is significant that the Greek word that is often translated as witness also has another meaning: martyr!
Witnessing in the Western culture in 2016 is possibly just as difficult as it was in the first century. In our postmodern context, people no longer want to hear about absolute Truth. They claim that all people are entitled to their own truth. Many people may still have a definite spiritual interest, but are no longer interested in any form of institutionalized religion. They are utterly suspicious of people and organizations who want to recruit them to their club, who claim to know exactly how to interpret the Bible, and who think they have all definitive answers.
If we want to communicate the gospel in this setting we must, first of all, listen to people, and talk with them, rather than talk to them. It is essential to understand the world in which the people around us live, to find out how they think, what they watch and read, and how they spend their leisure time. If we want people to be interested in what we have to say, it is essential that we speak their language, particularly when we talk about spiritual things.
A large percentage of today’s public—and I do not only refer to the millennials—does not even know the meaning of most of the simple religious terms we routinely use. And that is even more true when it comes to Adventist jargon. Many of us have a lot to learn a(nd to unlearn) if we want to be effective communicators. One of the biggest problems in Christian witnessing is the tendency to answer the kinds of questions people are no longer asking. We often want to respond to the questions we believe they should be asking!
The first issue postmodern people around us have on their minds is not what day of the week they should go to church. They do not wonder about a heavenly sanctuary or about the events surrounding the millennium. Often their first questions are whether God actually exists, how they can learn to pray, and how they should read the Bible.
Public evangelism is, in most cases, a thing of the past. Sharing the message of salvation in Jesus Christ and leading people to a faith community that takes Jesus as its ultimate example will mostly be through personal contacts and creative small-group ministries, with an important supporting role for social media.
If ever there was a time when a local faith community should be open and welcoming, it is today. Belonging tends to precede believing. The local church must be a place where our friends feel safe; where they can come with their questions, their doubts and their peculiarities. The keywords are: community, friendship, space (for one another), and patience.
Paul compared the church members in Corinth with letters from Christ (2 Cor. 3:3) for all people to read. This was the challenge he held before the Corinthians: Be aware of the fact that the people around you watch you. They try to read you, to see what kind of person you are.
That is true for us in 2016: People are reading us to see what kind of people we are deep down. Or to use a contemporary term: people want to find out whether we are authentic—whether we are genuine. If they feel we are for real, they may listen to us. If they decide we are fake, we might as well keep silent!
Reinder Bruinsma is a theologian, writer, and former church administrator. He writes from the Netherlands.