Growing Edge Book Review: Why Words Follow Works
When explosive evangelism fizzles and servant evangelism doesn't work, what's next?
Kathy Callahan-Howell
October 1, 2003
Whenever I preach on evangelism my congregation looks like deer caught in the headlights. We've tried training courses on sharing your faith. We've done servant evangelism, giving away free drinks on a busy street corner. That's great for awaking people's compassion, but it doesn't always lead to our neighbors being introduced to Jesus.
As one author says, it's less threatening to reach strangers, but what about reaching your friends and family.
Happily, the chief proponent of servant evangelism, Steve Sjogren, is now pointing out a few steps we've been missing.
Sjogren, author of the best-selling Conspiracy of Kindness, is launching pastor of Vineyard Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. He and co-authors Dave Ping, director of Equipping Ministries International, and Doug Pollock, evangelism director for Athletes in Action, have now written Irresistible Evangelism: The Natural Way to Open Others to Jesus (Group, 2003).
Sjogren's now famous church of 6,000 began with 37 people who were willing to scrub toilets to demonstrate the servant spirit of Christ. Now, Sjogren says, servanthood may not be enough.
A few years back, a famous pastor who developed a well-known 1960s approach to evangelism verbalized his concerns to Sjogren about servant evangelism.
"Steve," he said, "I think there is too much serving and not enough evangelism here."
Yet the staff of that pastor's church told Sjogren they thought servant evangelism would help to appeal to people who no longer responded to their methods. Once people were interested, their classic approach worked great.
Sjogren wondered if perhaps both approaches were imbalanced.
"If you've tried servant evangelism and don't know what to do next," he writes, "this book will provide a practical ...
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