Featured Pre-Evangelism?

I've seen folks that will go into neighborhoods and "prayer walk". They go from house to house and ask God to prepare the hearts of the folks living there to accept the message of Christ, and then come back the next week or so and evangelize.

Perhaps that is what you are talking about.

 

Our church does several events such as a fall festival and a winter nights in which people come to the church campus. We get them to sign up, we show them a good time as well as being friendly to them. They are not strictly speaking evangelistic events, but they do give us opportunities to follow up and tell them about Jesus.

So yes, there is such a thing as pre-evangelism.

 

We sometimes think that the person who directly lead someone to the faith and witnessed their conversion deserves all the credit (the Lord carries that bill),

we often forget the people in the background... the prayer warriors, the ones who prepared the setting, the organizers of events, those that contribute funds to the church, etc....

The church is called a body because there are many parts, it is best observed when all the parts contribute to the process of making disciples from scratch.

Pre-evangelism, is merely Christians acting as they should act, like Christ to the world.

Rob

 

Paul absolutely “got to the gospel.” Called them to repent in light of the coming judgment of God, which can be known because God has raised Jesus (not referenced by name) from the dead.

 

Jesus and His disciples preached, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." What Paul is doing here is quite similar, except, with more information about the good news of the Kingdom of God:

The gospel ("good news") is quite present here:
(1) Culturally and communally, they were already worshipping God, although they were doing it in ignorance and in conjunction with idols (Acts 17:22-23).
(2) Paul explained to them this God, who unlike the idols, is Lord of all creation and has created all nations (Acts 17:24-26).
(3) This God has given them their religious impulses and they have been right to seek Him, for He is near and available to anyone who will make the effort to grasp for Him (Acts 17:27).
(4) They, just as their poets have said, derive their life, strength and existence from the grace of God (Acts 17:28; see also a similar reference in Paul's sermon to those in Lystra in Acts 15:17).
(5) That they cannot approach God the same way they would appease an idol (Acts 17:29).
(6) That God has "overlooked" their past ignorance, but is now calling them to repentance (Acts 17:30, see similar Acts 14:16).
(7) Judgment is coming, so they need to repent as previously explained.

You are confusing the gospel with a discussion of the atonement. If you read Paul's sermons in Acts carefully, you're not going to see a lot of talk about the atonement to non-Jewish audiences.

The gospel is about the kingdom of God -- that's what Jesus and the early church preached. Atonement is certainly part of the broader message, but the gospel can't be properly reduced to a theory of the atonement.

 

For me personally, I will be kind to the unsaved, I will tell them about Jesus Christ, but I will not buddy up with them in their unsaved state.

 

I will grant you that what I wrote does not line up with popular cultural Baptist teaching, but I am committed to accepting what the scripture says, not upholding our traditions.

Paul specifically claims that they were: "Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you." (Acts 17:23c) You may not like it, but that's what he said.

I don't understand why you think what I wrote was an error.

"Commending them"? I made no such claim. Paul simply notes that their religious impulses are given by God, just as Paul said, "that they would seek God..."

Again, I didn't say it was a commendation. Paul is simply showing them that in their own culture they have an understanding of the nearness of God.

That's not what Paul said, nor can it be reworded to claim that Paul told them they were worshipping "the wrong gods."

"Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man." (Acts 17:29)​

The implication is there that the Athenians can become right with God. Jesus preached "Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand" and Paul did not preach the cross much in Acts, only to Jewish audiences (see Acts 13:28-29). I realize that you probably won't accept that observation, but I ask you to check me on that claim and show me a place in Acts where Paul preached the cross to Gentiles.

Yes. Much of Greek philosophy held the gnostic view that the body was evil and the spirit was good. Therefore, there is no way (in some of their minds) that God would raise up a physical body again.

You are adding to scripture. Nowhere does it say that those who followed Paul had to hear about the cross to believe. No doubt they did hear about it as Paul and other Christians discipled those folks, but the cross is not an essential part of the gospel message preached by Paul.

Of course. Not every word said is recorded and there were things said before and after the events recorded, but it is clear that Luke has faithfully recorded the message of the gospel (repent and believe) that was provided to those at the Areopagus (aka Mars Hill).

There is good and bad news in it. Despite your bold allegation that "the errors here abound," you did not reveal a single error, but made a few yourself.

The gospel is about the Kingdom of God, not specifically about a theory of atonement.

The gospel of the Kingdom calls people into discipleship to Christ. In that discipleship, they are secure for all eternity with Christ and share in reigning with Him forever (Revelation 22:5).

A "gospel" based on atonement usually leads to preaching an absolute minimum standard for someone to get to "Heaven" after they did, involving some sort of transaction of sin for righteousness accomplished without a call to discipleship.

 

Jesus spent so much time with sinners -- in their homes and in public -- that He was criticized for it by the religious authorities. If you want to tell them about Jesus in a credible way, you will have to emulate the habits of Jesus, being a friend of sinners.

 

What would you consider buddying up to them?

 

Perhaps Paul has a different perception of "preaching the cross" than we do, or perhaps the records of the sermons are summaries and not complete texts. The following statement to the Corinthians certainly suggests he preached "the cross" (Christ crucified) to all men, both Jews and Gentiles.

 

I think you are correct when you point out that the sermons recorded are summaries. I don't think there was anyone there taking shorthand and then reconstructing the sermons word-for-word. And I also appreciate you pointing out the relevant reference in 1 Corinthians 1:23. Paul certainly did teach/preach the crucified Lord Jesus to all persons, Gentile or Jew, as part of the fuller witness of scripture. And I also affirm your insight that Paul probably meant something a little different by "preaching the cross" than our current Baptist culture.

I simply want to point out that Paul's presentations in Athens (Acts 17) and Lystra (Acts 14) constituted the gospel, just as much as "Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand" (John the Baptist, Jesus, and the disciples Jesus sent out) message. It is clear from Acts that Paul preached in different ways to Jews and Gentiles. With Jews, he could draw on their common heritage and quote scripture to make his points. To Gentiles who were completely unfamiliar with the Jewish scriptures and culture, he preached quite differently, offering the gospel in terms that were appropriate for their culture (what we call "contextualization" in missiology today).

On a personal note, when I evangelize today and I don't know if a person is familiar with the scripture (or if I know they intellectually reject them), I won't directly quote scripture in an obvious way, but point out things that they already believe about the state of the world and existence, and share the gospel on those terms. I gave an example of that recently in another thread.

I am specifically modeling how I present the gospel based on Paul's methods and Romans 1 (the world is messed up). It is a very effective way to speak to unbelievers and even atheists.