By Randy Siever

“Being nice to people doesn’t get them saved. You need to present them with the bad news about their sin, tell them about Jesus and the cross, and bring them to a point of decision.That’s what Jesus called us to do, and anything short of that is just a cop out.”

I knew my fellow evangelist meant well, and I understood perfectly what she was saying in her critique of my Doable Evangelism presentation. I would have argued the same points myself just a few years ago.

“Pre-evangelism” is an insider term, used mostly by evangelists like me in recent decades to describe any effort to find an “opening” for the verbal presentation of the Gospel. This would include the building of relationships with people you don’t know, praying for the lost, various random, but strategic, acts of kindness, etc. These don’t qualify as evangelism. They just set you up for it.

Real evangelism requires the pitch, much like my evangelist friend described above. Some sow, some water, some reap. It’s all good…but everyone knows that it’s the reapers who are doing the real evangelism. Those who sow and water are just helping them get the job done.

This modern evangelism paradigm is supported by a few lines from the verbal Apostle Paul: “…how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?” (Rom. 10:14b). And, “Faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.” (Rom. 10:17). We have concluded from this that evangelism is primarily about telling, and without speaking the Gospel there is no conversion…right? Read the rest of this entry »

By Hannah Delane

In preparation for each Off the Map event, we ask some of our local OTM colleagues to find three lost people for us to interview. The always proves to be an interesting experience for both parties. Israel Askew was our designated lost-person locater guy in Portland. Since we don’t have a manual on “how to find a lost person,” each searcher makes up his own strategy. Israel chose to simply walk around the campus of Portland State University and approach anyone who appeared to look lost. One of the people he managed to talk into getting on stage with us was Hannah Delane a student at PSU. We asked her to tell us what it was like to be one of our “3 lost college students” in Portland at Off The Map. Read the rest of this entry »

By Fred Peatross

“I’m a shepherd in the church.” “I am a minister on the church staff.” “I’ve been the involvement minister at the church for a few years now.” “He left the church.” “I gave money to the church.” We do “church work.” Sound familiar?

For years I parroted the traditional institutional jargon about “the church.” It sounded pretty convincing, but the more I studied and reflected upon scripture and our institutional concept the more I realized that I had a bad case of building-centric Christianity. Read the rest of this entry »