2 Timothy 4 verse 1 the Bible reads, I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus
Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead that is appearing in his kingdom.
Preach the word, be instant, in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all
longsuffering and doctrine.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own
lust shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears.
They shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables, but watch
thou in all things endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist make full proof
of their ministry.
And the part I want to focus in there is on verse 5 where it says, be thou watchful in
all things, but watch thou in all things endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist.
So he's telling, Paul's telling Timothy here that he is to do the work of an evangelist.
And this is a charge that he's laid upon all of us.
And I just want to talk about what it means to be an evangelist or what it means to do
evangelism.
And specifically what I want to talk about is a problem that we have in a lot of independent
fundamental Baptist churches and it's that they have an insufficient evangelism.
That's the title of the sermon this morning, it's an inefficient evangelism, inefficient
evangelism.
That's what we see taking place.
And it's important that we understand what it means to have efficient evangelism, but
also it means it's important to understand when we be able to identify inefficient evangelism.
Because it's a charge that's been laid upon us.
If you look there in verse one it says, I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus
Christ and he goes on to list these things and part of that charge is to do the work
of an evangelist.
So if we're going to do work, if we're going to labor for God, we ought to do it efficiently.
And what we see today is a lot of people who are very inefficient in their evangelism.
Now what does it mean to be inefficient?
It means to not achieve, not achieving the maximum productivity, not doing the best you
can, not getting a full yield out of what it is you're trying to take in.
Wasting or failing to make the best use of time or resources.
That's what it means to be inefficient.
And of course we're probably all here probably are very familiar with the term evangelism.
We know that's just the spreading of the gospel by public preaching or our own personal witness.
That would be evangelism, going out and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And when you think about being inefficient, we could all probably relate this to in terms
of work.
You can imagine if somebody was an inefficient worker at their job, what kind of person would
they be?
They'd be a person who lingers a little too long, drags their feet, doesn't walk at a
good pace.
And we've probably all worked with people like that.
They never had that sense of urgency.
They drag their feet from job to job.
And I remember I worked with a guy and it just drove me nuts because he always had this
kind of like saunter everywhere he went.
He'd walk about this fast and I'd say, I'd be up on a ladder and I'd be working on this
something.
I'd say, hey, go grab that tool real quick.
I could have gotten down off the ladder, ran over there and got it quicker than he could
have done it.
And then he comes back and they hand it to you like this.
They don't extend, little things like that.
That's what it means to be inefficient, to not use the, not to be efficient.
It's not to put the arm out, walk fast, get it to that guy, not have that sense of urgency.
So that's something that we can relate also to evangelism.
That's what I want to talk about is just some examples of what we see in Baptist churches
that they use as a form of evangelism.
When you examine it and you look at it and you compare it to the biblical model of evangelism,
you see that it's very inefficient.
It might have some effectiveness, but it's actually very inefficient.
Now you're there in 2 Timothy chapter 4.
Just stay there.
The first one I want to talk about is the bus route.
I'm hesitant to pick on this one because, you know, let me just say right out of the
gate that this is something that I was a part of for 7 years.
I was a bus captain, I was very involved, I helped start a bus program at a Baptist
church and there are good things about it.
I'm not just here trying to rip on it, but the fact is that we need to be efficient in
our soul winning because it is a charge that's been laid upon us before God and the Lord
Jesus Christ.
And I think the bus route is probably one of the biggest spiritual crutches that a lot
of Baptist churches use today to excuse themselves from actual efficient evangelism.
They use the bus route as an excuse not to do that.
Now if you're not familiar with the bus route and what that is, this is something that was
developed and popularized in the 70's and 80's and became very popular.
It's just when a church goes out on a Sunday morning with a school bus that they purchased
for the church and they pick up kids in their surrounding area and they pick up the children
and then they bring them back to the church and have church services for the kids and
then take them back.
It's pretty simple.
But it's something that I feel even that has kind of gone by the wayside in Baptist churches
too.
It's not as popular as it once was.
It's still out there, you can find it, but it's definitely still very popular in Bible
colleges.
If you were to go to a Baptist Bible college they would probably in all likelihood have
a bus route and it's the main method used by Bible colleges for obvious reasons.
They have the staffing that it takes.
They have the drivers, they have the bus workers that go out and do all the work because it
takes a lot of work.
It takes a lot of people to run a bus route.
They have all the financial resources and there's a lot of financial resources that
are needed in order to run a successful bus ministry and think about all the curriculum
that has to be bought on the route when entertaining the kids and when you get them to the junior
church and the Sunday schools and the candy and all the promotions that go along with
it.
And then obviously they have enough people to run the ministries at the church.
I mean it would be very hard to run a bus ministry and then bring them to the church
if there was nobody there to take care of them.
I mean they're not going to sit them down in the main service.
That's not something that they want to do.
So just how does a typical bus route operate?
Let's just look at how it operates and as we begin to examine a bus route and what it
takes to run a bus route, we'll begin to see how very inefficient it is at evangelizing
the lost.
Not that it doesn't have benefits, not that there isn't some good that comes out of it,
but we have to again just understand that a bus route falls short of reaching the entire
world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It will not accomplish that goal.
It will not be an efficient means of evangelism.
So you would think first of all, how does a typical program operate?
I've talked to people about bus routes in the past and people who are not familiar with
it at all, they're kind of taken aback by when you begin to explain to them what's all
involved.
Because a bus route just isn't Sunday morning.
A lot of people, that's what everyone at the church sees when you show up with a busload
of kids and you know, 50, 30, 50, 60, 80 kids sometimes compiling off some bus and they
think, wow, that's great.
What they don't see is the Saturday morning.
They don't see the laborers going out Saturdays and working then because that's when the bus
program really begins is on a Saturday.
When you go out and you start calling and what they call prospecting, and if you think
about that word prospecting, that's like what a guy would do when he would go out into the
hills looking for gold, right?
He would go out there and he would look for, this looks like a place I might find some
valuable resources, right?
And that's exactly what takes place in bus calling.
And this is one of the major reasons I think that the bus route is an inefficient means
of evangelism because it specifically targets a certain group of people and it's people
who have children.
Meaning if you do not have children, in all likelihood your door is not going to get knocked.
I don't know how, obviously I can only speak from the experience that I had with the bus
route that I was involved with, but I imagine the way I was taught is the way it's practiced
in many other bus programs is that people would go out and they would look specifically
when, and when I would do it I would call it child sign.
You would look for the sign of children, you know how when you're out tracking an animal
you'd look for their sign, you know you would look for like a rub on a tree if you're looking
for an antlered deer or something like that.
You would look for sign, right?
Well I would call this child sign.
You would look for signs of children, you know you'd go out and go through the neighborhoods
trying to build your bus route and do your prospecting.
You would look for toys in the yard, you'd look for bikes in the yard, you would look
for a yard that has not a lot of grass maybe, it's been all beaten down and turned into
a mud hole, right?
You'd look for that house that has, you know, footprints all over the front door, a crayon
and everything like that.
And it was pretty obvious which families had children and which ones didn't, you know,
so that right there would narrow your search down.
You wouldn't even talk to the other people.
You might canvas an area and just let them know what you're doing, you know, in the hopes
that maybe there's a child in there that, you know, doesn't get allowed to go outdoors
or have any toys or something, right?
But normally that's what you would, to be efficient in your bus calling, you would go
and you would target specific homes that look like they have kids.
So you would approach the door, you know, now imagine this, a total stranger coming
to your door, knocking on your door, and asking if you can pick up all of your children the
next day on a bus and take them away from you for several hours and then bring them back.
And now when I would explain this to people, they would think, wow, and then of course
I'm speaking to people, you know, who have their guard up that are a little bit more
vigilant about protecting their children.
And it's amazing to me what blew me away when I started doing this is how many people would
just say, yeah, go ahead.
They would just, I'll freely allow just this perfect stranger to pick up their kid.
I don't know, maybe I just have a face you can trust, I'm not sure what it is, but they
would just let me pick their kids up and cart them off every Sunday morning, you know,
at the break of dawn to some strange building that they've never even been to.
The amazing thing, and really the motive behind the bus route is, you know, yes it's reaching
children but really if you really want to know what the inside motive is on a bus route,
it's to bring the parents.
You know, there's that motto, get the kids and you'll get the parents, right?
That's one follows the other.
And that's why a lot of these people run bus routes.
Yes, they reach the children, they try to give them the gospel if they're even preaching
the right gospel and teach them about Jesus Christ, but really the motive is to build
the church, it's to bring people to the church, it's to get a family to come out and start
coming to church.
And I don't know how many families I would, I had children that rode that bus for years
and you would never see their parents unless you had a special day, you know, unless you
had the 100 foot Sunday, you know, where you make an ice cream sundae 100 feet long and
then the parents would show up to take pictures or you'd have to have some kind of carnival
with pony rides and a bouncy house and then they would come out for that or a pig roast,
you know, you'd have to roast a whole pig and have, you know, hay wagging sundae or
you'd have to do these great big promotions and make a great big deal out of it.
You know, I remember swallowing goldfish and dressing up in a monkey suit like a gorilla
and taking whipped cream pies to the face all to get these kids to come ride this bus
and the whole thing was just so that we could, that's quite the image, but it was just to
get these people to come out, you know, and that was the whole point.
But is that really what we've been called to do is just reach children?
Just to bring them out and show them, you know, some flannel graph of Jesus in a dress?
And that's what's taking place when you get them into these junior churches and just have
them sing a bunch of crazy and wild songs and just act, you know, goofy and try to teach
them a little bit of Bible?
You know, the great commission is to go out and preach the gospel, is to go out and reach
lost souls with the good news that Jesus Christ has died for their soul and if they don't
want to hear it, then moving on to the next one.
But that's one of the major inefficiencies with the bus route is that you're targeting
a very narrow audience specifically and on purpose with no intent of reaching the others.
You're trying to bring them out for the sole purpose, I believe, of getting their families
to come out and build a church.
And that's what it seems like a lot of pastors are obsessed with today, is filling a church
house.
That's their main goal is to build a large building and then to fill it with people.
That's a great thing, but that should be a byproduct of a ministry, I believe.
I believe that when a ministry's sole focus is going out and reaching the lost, you know,
people who have a zeal for God will come naturally.
And isn't that what we see taking place here at Faithful Word?
I mean, I remember when we were at a church back home in Michigan that we were just, you
know, we saw and heard about Faithful Word and saw the great works that they were doing
as far as soul winning.
And we're deep, I mean, we're just net deep in the bus route.
And you know, one of the knocks on me when I left that church is that, you know, my heart
wasn't in the ministry.
But it's hard to have your heart in a ministry like that when you know how inefficient it
is.
When you know it's not even accomplishing the task that you've been put on this earth
to do, which is to reach people with Jesus Christ, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And then you look out and you see another church in another part of the country that
has no bus route, yet it's going out and knocking doors and leading people, lost souls, to Jesus
Christ, saving people from hell.
It's hard to have a heart for a ministry that doesn't accomplish that, you know, in an efficient
manner.
Now, were there kids that got saved in the bus route?
I absolutely believe there were.
You know, but we could have easily, just as easily given them the gospel at the door the
first time you met them, rather than drag them out, you know, kicking and screaming
sometimes.
Parents, because I'll tell you what, parents, when you come knock on a parent's door who
has no control over their children, just an average person in the world is just trying
to get by and you say, hey, I'm from such and such Baptist church, we're coming through
every Sunday with a big bus route, a big bus picking up all the kids in the neighborhood,
and we'll take them off your hands for four to six hours.
We'll do it every Sunday for free.
All they hear is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, free babysitting, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah.
Right?
And that's exactly what happens, and that's their mentality.
And, you know, and I guess I can understand where they're coming from, you know, if you
were in that position, you know, lost without God in the world and just trying to look for,
you know, a break from your kids that you hardly have any control over.
But, you know, it's very discouraging when you're picking up and putting all this effort
into just picking up children, and then you come back and, you know, the parents are just
been smoking weed all afternoon, you know, that's what they do.
They just want their alone time to just, you know, hang out and do their thing, you know,
and party a little bit.
So that's one of the major problems, that's one of the major inefficient forms of evangelism
that we see in Baptist churches today.
And, you know, that's just the bus calling, you know, and that alone is a lot of work.
I mean, you're putting in eight, ten hours of bus calling sometimes if you're serious
about getting it to grow.
If you really want to have a big bus ride, it takes a lot of going out on Saturday.
So now you've got a guy, you know, say he's got a family, you know, he's there Sunday
morning, Sunday night, he's there Wednesday night, now he's giving up his Saturdays to
go out and do bus calling, you know, and something that he just kind of feels like doing a kid
end up feeling like you're just spinning your wheels, you know, you're not really getting
anything done other than bringing a bunch of kids in.
Now the other thing is that Sunday morning comes, you know, and you're bringing these
kids in, you can't just get on a bus with about, you know, a few dozen kids and not
do anything.
They will eat you alive.
They will.
They will tear that thing apart.
These kids that are coming out of the world with little to no discipline, no respect for
anything, they will chew you up.
So when you get on that bus ride on Sunday morning, you have got to be one animated and
interesting individual.
Otherwise it's just, you're getting fed to the sharks pretty much.
And you know, so you have to come up with all these programs and the games and the songs
and you know, sometimes my wife, she was on the bus ride with me, she'll bring up one
of these songs and I just can't, I can't do it anymore.
You know, these songs that we've sung a hundred times every Sunday, I've been right up, right
down, right happy, you know what I'm talking about.
All these crazy wacky songs, they have nothing to do with Jesus Christ or anything that you've
got to do just to entertain these kids for hours.
And kids today, I'm telling you, they're hard to entertain.
Kids out of the world, I mean, they've got Xboxes and PlayStations and 3D movies that
they get to go to and laser tag and all this crazy stuff that their parents take it to.
And now just some guy in a suit is going to get up and try to sing a song about some Bible
story.
You know, it's hard.
You've got to have lasers coming out of your eyes and fire and there's got to be neon lights.
It's just, if you're not an energetic individual, it just doesn't, it takes a lot of energy
is what I'm getting at.
You're expending a lot of energy, but you're not getting a lot of return.
It's very inefficient.
So that's just, then you're getting them to the church and then, you know, that's really
when a lot of the stuff goes.
And if you would turn to First Timothy chapter two, it's when you finally get to the church
and you start to see some of the, how biblical it is.
You know, how even, I would even say anti-biblical.
Not just that it's a poor and inefficient model, but it actually goes against certain
scriptures.
It actually creates opportunity for people to go against scripture.
And that would be with women teaching.
And this is something that they go back and forth on.
There's a lot of, you know, clever ways to kind of reason their way around clear scripture.
So you're bringing these kids in, you know, and I would get a 45 minute reprieve once
I got the kids to the church.
I get to go to adult Sunday school class while the children went to all their Sunday school
classes.
And every single one of them was taught by a woman.
And then after that, I would come into the junior church.
Now women are not to speak in church, they are not to teach in church.
That's what it says there in First Timothy chapter two, verse 11, let the woman learn
in silence with all subjection, but I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority
over the man, but to be in silence.
For Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived
was in the transgression.
Now this is something that I've even seen women Sunday school teachers bring up to a
pastor and say, is this right for me to be teaching these children?
You know, and these pastors have a lot of clever ways to go around.
First of all, they'll say, well since I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority
over the man.
But they'll say, well you know, I'm just saying they suffer not to teach or to usurp
authority over the man, saying it's not right for her to teach a man.
No, that's right, she's not right to teach a man, but is that really what that verse
is saying?
I mean, if you go in there with that preconceived notion that it's okay, then you can make
it, it'll sound that that's what he's saying here.
Suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over a man.
But wouldn't it read, but I suffer not a woman to teach or to teach a man, or to usurp
authority over a man, is that really speaking to the same person there, that they're not
to teach men?
Or is it she's just not to teach at all?
I tend to think that she's just not to teach.
I mean, there's men in a church, are they supposed to leave the room when she's supposed
to teach?
Okay, but let's say, let's give them that.
Let's say, you know what, it says not to suffer, suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority
over a man.
She's not to teach a man.
It's not that she's just not supposed to teach.
Let's give them that.
Let the woman learn in silence is the first, that's the preceding verse.
So she's supposed to be silent in the church, right?
So it's perfectly okay for a woman to teach children as long as she does it silently.
I guess, and you know what, I'm sure there's some Sunday school curriculum out there that
makes that possible.
That there's some kind of, you know, flannelgraph or, I don't know, I just always go back to
flannelgraph.
That's the only one I can remember.
Maybe she'd get a whiteboard.
Yeah, do some sign language.
You know, I don't know, pre-record it, play it, I don't know.
But it says that she's to learn in silence, but I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to
usurp authority over a man, but to be in silence.
Why?
Why is that?
Is it because Paul just had a bad attitude towards women?
Is it just because he didn't like women?
You know, just he got tired of all the nannies, right?
Sorry, I'm going to get in so much trouble.
No, that's not the case.
Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived
being in the transgression.
You ever wonder why women are not to teach?
Because it says that the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
And you know, it's not popular opinion today, but the fact is, the Bible makes it clear
that women are more easily deceived than men.
They're more easily led astray by the devil, because they are the weaker vessel.
You know, there's more feelings involved.
It's harder for a woman to draw a hard line in the sand and say, no, this is right, that
is wrong, this is false doctrine, you know, and let the Bible speak for itself, and draw
that hard line where it draws it.
A woman wants to kind of blur that line out of sake of sparing people's feelings, out
of emotion that is involved.
That's why women should not teach, and I believe they shouldn't even be teaching children in
the setting of a church.
Period.
Women shouldn't be doing it.
Because one of the, that curriculum, where they're in their own studies, that they get
something wrong, they're more easily led astray, it's more easily, you know, it's easier for
them to teach false doctrine.
It's easier for them to be deceived, and to teach something that's false.
I think of Sunday school teachers back in the church that I was involved with.
They all had Schofield.
I know one in particular had a Schofield.
I remember once even going out and saying, do you know that teaches the gap theory in
Genesis 1, and then just getting this deer in the headlights look, but kept reading that
Schofield.
And that was the Sunday school teacher.
Now, women are very good at it.
I think that they are very good at dealing with children.
They can teach children, because they should be teaching their own children.
That's where women can teach children.
That's where she can teach doctrine, and that's where the father can keep an eye on the doctrine
that's being taught, and can stand up and correct where correction is needed, and encourage
where encouragement is needed, but they're not to be teaching in a church setting.
Well let's say it's not church, that's the next one.
Well it's not church, then why are you doing it?
Why are we even having this service if it's not church?
It really is a church when you think about it.
I mean, it's in the church building, you know, it's the Bible being taught, but it doesn't
really feel like church, because in a way it is a church.
That's kind of a convenient excuse to say, well it's okay for the women to teach in church
because this isn't really church.
Well I thought we were picking up the kids to bring them to church.
It's just this weird convoluted way, because they have to keep this bus route.
Because it's all they have.
Because they think that this is the end all be all of evangelism, and it's not.
It's one of the biggest, inefficient, the biggest wastes of time in Baptist churches.
And I know that's going to rub people the wrong way, and it's something, it's like the
sacred cow that we can't go after for something.
This is the fact that it is, and I'm hesitant to do it, because in some churches that is
all they have.
That's the only form of out-treat that they have at all.
And if you start going after it, and try to take that away from them, they've got nothing.
But they still have to come to terms, if you can get these people to understand, look this
is not an efficient use of your energy and your resources to reach people with the gospel
of Jesus Christ.
And it opens yourself up for, I believe, unbiblical practices in the church of allowing women
to teach, and to teach doctrine.
And if you would, I'll just read to you 1 Corinthians 14, let the women keep silence
in the churches, and if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home, it is
a shame for women to speak in the church.
And the problem is that a lot of these proponents, they mistake, another big thing is they, another
excuse for bringing, having these bus routes, is they mistake the church for Jesus.
You know, because I've asked them, and let me explain what I mean by that.
I remember when I was first getting involved in the bus route, I don't even know who this
person was, I can't remember, but I said, I talked about it and they said, well that's
unbiblical.
And at the time I was just taking it back, like how could that be unbiblical?
And I remember I said, you know, I went to my pastor and said, hey, you know, so-and-so
said this is unbiblical.
You know?
And I remember reading and thinking, well where is it in the Bible?
I mean, surely if this is something we're doing in the church, then we're going to find
some kind of biblical example of doing such a thing.
And they never have that, they'll just turn to like, well D.L. Moody did it.
He used to ride a wagon around and pick up kids in, you know, the suburbs, or the ghettos
of Chicago or something.
You know, there's some story, but they could never take you to a verse.
Well my pastor, he had a verse, and it was in Mark 2, Mark 2, if you want to turn there
quickly, Mark 2.
So this is the only text verse I've ever seen for a bus route, is in Mark 2, chapter 2,
verse 1.
And again he entered into Capernaum, and after some days, after some days, and it was noise
that he was in the house, and straightway many were gathered together insomuch that
there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door, and he preached
the word unto them, and they came unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy which was born
of four.
That's the bus route.
It's when somebody, it's one who could not get himself to Jesus, was born of four.
That sounds great, doesn't it?
You know, that's what we're doing.
We're like that one that's, you know, burying the others.
We're one of the four that are going on burying that poor child who has no other means to
get to Jesus.
But the problem is you're mistaking church for Jesus.
You're not bringing them to Jesus.
You're bringing them to church.
You're not even bringing them to church.
You're bringing them to some woman that's going to show them a picture of Jesus with
long hair and a dress.
That's what you're doing.
But this is their text verse, and it sounds good, it appeals to the emotion, but it's
not correct.
It's incorrect.
If you want to be one of the four, what you do is you knock on that child's door and ask
them, hey, if you died, hey, should you go to heaven, and you give them the gospel.
And if they received it, great, and if they didn't, that's unfortunate.
You try to reach that whole house with the gospel.
That's how you bring somebody to Jesus.
It's not going out on a bus route with candy and games and silly songs and getting them
to a church.
That's not bringing people to Jesus.
It could be a really long way to get somebody to Jesus.
It's taking a long route, the scenic route, to get there, but it's inefficient.
That's the point of the sermon.
If the whole point is to give the child the gospel, you're there, they're there, you've
got the Bible in your hand, what are you waiting for?
Why do you have to pick them up, cart them around, cook them chocolate chip pancakes,
Sunday, once a month, just to convince them to come out, and then maybe you'll get around
to preaching the gospel after you explain the Ozark and Jericho and Daniel in the lion's
den and all these exciting stories that are just going to make them want to learn the
Bible.
Maybe you'll finally get around to preaching them the gospel.
You could do it right there at the door.
Bearing one who is unable to get to Jesus means just preaching them the gospel.
That's how you bring someone to Jesus.
I will say this, the numbers are accurate.
If you were to say this is the bus route, the ratio there seems about right to me.
It takes about four people to every one.
The ideal bus route ratio I heard was one worker for every 10 children, which we did
not have, by the way.
I did a junior church that had everyone from five years old to 12.
I had like 30 to 60 kids sometimes, and a lot of times it was just me.
This is after two hours of bus calling and an hour and a half of junior church with all
these kids and then right back onto the bus to drop them all off.
Boy, you seem a little burnt out.
I remember the pastor coming and saying, you reach more of the people than I do.
You talk to more people out in the streets than I do.
I just thought to myself, well, that's a shame.
That's a knock on you.
It's too bad you got a guy going out and spending six, seven, eight hours on a Sunday carting
people around and you don't do anything, but I was doing more preaching than them on Sundays.
Hour and a half on the bus, on the way back, I'm preaching three services in the course
of eight hours.
Respect to any, after starting this, anybody who's done any preaching knows what a drain
it is on your mind.
It's unbelievable.
So nothing but respect for anybody who gets up and preaches.
I have a lot more having started doing this.
But that's one of the biggest inefficient, I'll move on to another subject, another inefficient
means of evangelism.
We kind of picked on the bus route, but the last thing I'll say about the bus route is
this, is that kids can easily be saved at the door just as they can after a three hour
bus ride.
They can be just as easy to say that the first time you meet them, right at the door, you
don't have to develop this bond with them, you can preach them the gospel.
And I'll say this is that parents, you know it's unfortunate because parents rarely will
take on the responsibility to bring their children to church.
Even if, you know I've heard this statement, I believe this is very true, people will stay,
some people, you can carry them, but wherever you put them down, that's where they're going
to stay.
They will never take it upon themselves to start to go forward for themselves.
And that's what it is with children, wherever you stop, that's where they're going to stay.
And a lot of times, because of their situation, they're going to go right back to where they
were.
They're going to fall right back into the world because their parents are worldly.
They're pumping, you know at home, there's more getting pumped in at home than we can
pump out in an hour and a half at church.
They've got how many hours of the week in front of a television and the internet and
their parents, just filling their minds with this stuff.
We're going to try and get that out of them, it's an uphill battle, it's a losing battle.
And of course, the great victory in a lot of Baptist churches is if you can get a bus
kid to go to Bible college, and get him to vote Republican, you've really accomplished
that.
That is like the monumental achievement for God, if you can take this ghetto kid, get
him on a bus route, and get him to Bible college, and become a Republican, and a bus worker.
Anyway, I'm going off on it.
I'm going to move on because I can stay on there too long.
The next major inefficient, inefficient means of evangelism is street preaching.
And I don't want to spend a lot of time on this one, the clock's broken this morning,
so you might just have to cut me off, but the street preaching is another one.
I don't know in terms of popular type, this is more or less popular than bus routes, it's
probably comparable, but there's just, I mean street preaching is incredibly inefficient.
Number one, it's usually practiced by heretics, first of all, I mean right out of the gate.
I mean they don't even have the gospel right.
You know, I learned, there was a guy that came and visited our church here this last
Wednesday night, and by visit our church, I mean he showed up like 20 to 30 minutes
after the service had ended, and he's standing in the back with his friend, and they're kind
of, they have this, like this look, real nervous looking guys.
So I went up and introduced myself, and shook his hand, and he just was all smiles and friendly.
He kept asking for Pastor Anderson, like is he, or not even asking, but he was addressing
him by his first name, is Steve here?
I said, no, Pastor Anderson's left already, you know, okay, I really wanted to stop and
say see Steve, you know, and that's a red flag, you know, whenever there's a guy, and
I thought, okay, maybe it's just one of these guys, it's just YouTube, and decided to crawl
out of his mom's basement, I mean he looked like a slob, and decided to come, you know,
check out his idol church or something.
But you know, Pastor Anderson was gone, and he just went, but the thing is, once I told
him that, he got, it seemed like he got real relaxed, and he's like, oh, do you mind if
we kind of walk around, check the place out, and I'm like, no, go ahead, you mind if we
take some pictures?
Yeah.
And then somebody on Facebook points it out that this guy turns out to be some Calvinist
who was there to, and he said, he's like, well I was leaving town, I thought I'd just
stop by and check it out here before I go.
So, and he was from out of town, but he shows up, and so I went to his Facebook page, and
it's just him mocking, posting the pictures that he took there, and then just mocking
Pastor Anderson, calling him names, and just going on about, you know, how, what a big
man he was to have snuck in there, so it wasn't, it wasn't even really, it wasn't even really
like a visit, it was like a publicity stunt, and he's one of these like street preachers,
but do you want to know the real irony about this?
This is like one of the greatest ironies in life that you'll find.
He's a Calvinist.
A Calvinist street preacher.
Talk about irony.
I mean, honestly, what, what good is it if you're a Calvinist and you think God just,
you know, picks people at random, who's going to be saved and who isn't?
He's, God's going to condemn some to hell and save others.
What point is there are you going out talking about it?
What point is it you go out and tell people, you know, some of you are elect, some of you
aren't.
I don't know which one's which, but God does, I mean, what are you going to yell at these
people?
You don't even have the right gospel.
So that's one of the major inefficiencies of street preaching is these people that,
I mean, if you're a Calvinist, I mean, good night, I think you got better things to do
with your time, like drink whiskey and watch James White videos or something.
But you know, the thing about Calvinism is you couldn't talk about anything more biblical.
The Bible says that in 2 Peter 3, that the Lord is not slack and serving his promises
as some men count slackness, but as long suffering to us, we're not willing that any
should perish.
So it says right there that God is not willing that any should perish.
That verse flies in the face of Calvinism.
It flies in the face of it.
And I'm sure they've got some cute, clever way to work their ways around these verses,
but it says he's not willing that any should perish.
God wills nobody to hell.
Now God does send people to hell if they reject the gospel, if they die in their sin.
He says not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Not some, not the elect, not the few, not the chosen as a Calvinist, but that all would
come to repentance.
God doesn't want any to perish, but all to come to repentance.
Another verse would be 1 Timothy 4.10, for therefore we both labor and suffer approach.
Why do we labor?
Why do we do all the work?
Why do we suffer approach?
Why do we suffer the mocking and the ridicule of the world?
Because we trust in the living God as the Savior of all men.
That's why we labor, because we know that God died for everybody, that Jesus Christ
is the Savior of all men, especially of those that believe.
So even the unbeliever, the one who chooses not to believe, Jesus Christ is still their
Savior.
They just rejected it.
That's the difference.
So if you're going to be a street preacher, you should at least get that out.
Another one, if they're not Calvinists, they're repent of the sins guys, and that's probably
the majority of them.
Turn the bird!
You know, they're out there just, you know, repent!
They don't even know, they just got this convoluted idea of what repent means.
It's always people have to fall on their face in sackcloth and hatches and call out to God
in contrite spirit if they're going to be saved, but it's the wrong gospels.
So if you would turn to Isaiah chapter 42, I'll show you how, again, an inefficient,
not only is street preaching an inefficient means of evangelism, but it's also unbiblical.
There is no biblical model for spreading the gospel in such a manner.
You won't find that means of evangelism in the Bible.
Another major problem with them, why it's so inefficient, is that they preach to captive
masses, that people, a captive audience, people who have, you know, they had no intention
of hearing Bible preaching.
They'll say, well Jesus was a preacher.
He went out, he did open air street preaching.
Yeah, but he preached to people who came and gathered.
Remember when Jesus said, you know, you look to beheld the multitudes, as sheep having
no shepherd, and he had compassion on them, and then he began to preach unto them.
They were following him.
They weren't at the mall, you know, or at some parade somewhere, or at a concert, trying
to go about their own lives, and have Jesus just show up and start yelling at them.
You know, insisting that they stop what they're doing and listen to him.
No, he did not have a captive audience.
He didn't have people that had no choice but to listen to him.
You know, that they were being inconvenienced.
They were willingly sitting down and listening.
Just as you guys have come here this morning and sat down to hear the preaching of the
word of God.
I didn't show up to your door and hold you at gunpoint and force you to come to church
this morning so you'd have to listen to me, right?
And that makes it, when you preach to people who don't want to hear it, and when these
guys go out and just start, you know, go downtown in some busy city and start yelling at people
who are, you know, in the middle of the work week trying to get to the bank and their work
and on their lunch break and just start preaching, and you know, a lot of times again preaching
the wrong gospel, it makes them unreceptive.
It turns people off to the things of God.
It spoils the well.
And I've literally seen this, when I first moved to Phoenix I had to get a second job
driving and delivering pizza in East Mesa over at Country Club and Southern.
And every, about every other Friday night during the summer, this Pentecostal church
would go out and they would stand on the corner of Country Club and Southern, this busy intersection,
and do street preaching, open air preaching.
And my, you know, the store I worked out of, the Pizza Hut was right there, so I had to
drive by it multiple times.
And I remember just, like, listening to him, just like, you couldn't even hear what the
guy's saying.
He's preaching at a traffic light.
The people are in their cars in the summer in Phoenix.
Do you think they have their windows down?
Do you, I mean, talk about ridiculous that is.
They can't, you couldn't even hear the guy, you know, and I didn't even have a radio on.
Yeah, that's what it is, you just all you hear is like,
I don't want to see a bunch of others, man.
You know, it's like, this is, you can't even make out what he's saying.
You'd have to roll down your window and really listen and try to decipher what he was saying.
Talk about an inefficient means of evangelism.
Probably didn't have the right gospel, never bothered finding that out.
And I just remember how odd it was because there was one guy, and they'd have, like,
some of the people that came out, they'd have, like, about a dozen people, and the whole
time they're just back there going, clapping while he's out there just,
and a lot of times it was just him going off about what, you know, how great God was for
taking away all his sins or something like that.
I tried to listen a few times, but I remember just shaking my head like,
what a stupid way to try to reach people with the gospel, even if you've even got it right.
And can you imagine if that's what we were to do here, like, Pastor Anderson started a new,
you know, traffic light ministry here at Faithful Word where we're just going to go out on Friday
nights, and we're all going to clap, and we're going to yell at people as they're
driving by in their cars.
I mean, at the best, they might catch, like, how long is a traffic light?
Yeah, maybe, you know, that's a long trip.
Where have you been?
When it turns green, you go.
You're that guy that's always getting haunted.
No, it's like, you know, maybe what?
Maybe a minute?
30, 45 seconds?
Maybe there's that three minute one out there.
I've never seen it, but it could be, you know.
So you're out there, and you might catch, okay, three minutes of what, you know?
Can you give the gospel in three minutes?
If you can, you're really good.
But the fact is, you're probably not giving a very good gospel presentation.
So the point is, street preaching is just completely inefficient.
It's a terrible way to try and evangelize anybody.
And there in Isaiah 42, in verse 1, it's speaking of Jesus Christ.
Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect, in whom my soul delighted.
I have put my spirit upon him who shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.
He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets.
Does that sound like a guy?
Does that sound like a street preacher to you?
I mean, that's exactly what a street preacher does.
And they try to say, well, that's what Jesus did.
No, the Bible says he will not cause his voice to be heard in the streets.
Jesus does not go around randomly yelling at passers-by.
That's not what he did.
Now, he would go and he would lift up his voice at times,
but that was not his main form of evangelism.
He would go out and he would send his disciples a lot of times to go out.
And we're going to look at that in a minute.
So we see the opposite of street preaching as the model that Jesus set.
Another one, I'll just touch on this,
another major inefficient form of evangelism would be tract ministries.
And if you think that's an efficient form, I don't know what to tell you.
Because that is not.
And I've been involved, I've had people come to churches that I've been a part of
and present their gospel ministry of sending cargo loads of Bible tracts.
I've spent hours, hours handing out Bible tracts.
And Traverse City, where I'm from, the National Cherry Festival,
we have like, I can't remember, like 3 million people come through this town of like
maybe 60 or 70,000 people in one week.
It's the National Cherry Festival every summer.
It's a festival that goes on, they go on for 100 years, over 100 years.
People come from all around the area and they come through the city.
And a lot of times our church would go out and try and just hand out
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of gospel tracts.
And I remember when I was doing that, I would go around the corner
and collect them, the ones that were on the top of the trash can.
Because that's what people do.
They take the tract, they look at it, first trash can they find, boom.
Or they stick it in their pocket and they go home and they throw it out there.
It very rarely gets read.
But even then, is that going to get them saved just reading a gospel tract?
Don't you need somebody there to preach the gospel to you?
To explain to you?
I mean, are you just trusting that they're going to understand what the Bible is saying?
That, you know, understand without readist?
How can I, except some man should explain, you know, should tell me.
So they need to be...
So, you know, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on gospel tracts.
That's a huge waste.
But that's what a lot of people do.
They feel good because they've donated X amount of dollars to some gospel tract ministry.
Or they went out and, brother, I handed out 100 gospel tracts today.
Praise the Lord.
I did my service for God.
I've evangelized.
It's inefficient.
So we see, you know, but I will say this.
You know, all of these examples that I've given are incredibly inefficient.
But the most inefficient thing, a form of evangelism, is not doing anything at all.
And at least in some of these, there's an off chance that maybe somebody will get saved.
Maybe somebody will read that gospel.
I know I read a gospel tract and didn't understand it.
But it made some form of an impression on me.
Got me thinking about Jesus Christ, at least.
I'll give it that much.
But it took somebody taking the Bible and opening it up and explaining, going through
the Romans road, and showing me that I'm a sinner.
That Jesus died for my sins and that I need to call upon Him in faith.
That's how people get saved.
But there is some, there could be a grain of truth and goodness in every one of these.
You know, the bus ministry probably more than the others.
It could be that there's a street preacher out there who isn't a Calvinist, who isn't
preaching or penning your sins heresy, and actually gets somebody to stop, roll down
their window, maybe park the car, and listen to what you have to say.
You know, or you could take a side.
I'm sure that happens.
But I didn't say it's completely, you know, ineffective.
I said it's inefficient.
It's not an efficient means of evangelizing.
But the worst of all, it's not doing anything.
And you know, I'd be a real hypocrite to get up here and criticize these other methods
if I did nothing.
And that's why a lot of these other methods, they don't receive any criticism from pastors.
Because they themselves are doing nothing.
And that's the worst of all.
You know, and if you're the person who's not doing any soul winning, well, you know,
shame on you.
We need to be out there.
We need to be doing soul winning and doing it efficiently.
Now going door to door, let me just conclude.
Going door to door soul winning.
Let's talk, we've talked about the inefficient.
Let's talk about the most efficient means is door to door soul winning.
Going to each home in a city and knocking on their door in hopes that they'll come
to their door and allow you and not sit there and compliment the lawn or their sweater and
talk about the game, but get right into it.
Hey, if you got today, you're 100% sure you'd go to heaven.
You know, confront them with the gospel.
It takes boldness and it takes, you know, it takes some spirituality and it takes...
But you know what?
It's the most efficient means to do it.
And not only that is the most effective, it's also the most biblical.
It's the one method that we were talking about this morning that we could actually go to
the Bible and see clear verses and see clear scripture teaching us.
And that's the model that's been set forth in scripture.
If you would turn to Matthew chapter 9.
You see, in Mark 6, your turn in Matthew 9, but in Mark 16, Jesus said,
Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
That's a big task.
He said the whole world.
He said every creature.
You know, a few months back, Pastor Anderson got up, preached that sermon about evangelizing
the whole world.
And I know some people were kind of taken aback like, wow, that's a little over the
top.
No, that's the vision Jesus Christ had.
That's right.
That's exactly what he said in scripture.
Reach the whole world.
God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
He's the savior of all men.
So is it any surprise that he wants us to reach the whole world?
And is he just, you know, some dreamer Jesus Christ?
He's just hoping for the best.
Or is there actually a way where we could reach the whole world?
Now, why would he give us a charge like that and not give us a means to do it?
He didn't say, you know, it's not like God just said you need to reach everybody and
it just didn't give us any means to do it.
It didn't give any clue on how to accomplish that goal.
And we have very clear scriptures that tell us how to do it.
So would it make sense that God, if God gives us that charge to go out and reach the whole
world, that we would go to where people are?
And where are people most available and most inconvenienced in their home?
I mean, you catch me at home, you're probably pulling me off the couch.
You know, you could, especially like on a Sunday afternoon, the average guy, you know,
what are they doing on a weekend?
People are relaxing.
If you can catch them at home where they're likely to be, obviously, you know, people
are out and about, but if you keep going and keep going, you can try and reach everybody.
You'll reach them.
We just, it's a numbers game.
I mean, if we had half the city of Phoenix soul winning, we'd reach everybody.
Yeah, that's right.
It's just that there's nobody to go.
You know, the harvest truly is great.
It's the laborers that are few.
You know, many hands make light work.
We just need more laborers.
We could, it's not a far-fetched concept.
It's just that people don't want to do it.
Now, it's the example that Jesus set going door to door in Matthew 9.
Matthew 9 and 35, and Jesus went about all the cities and villages teaching in their
synagogues and preaching the gospel of the multitudes.
So you see right there, Jesus went to all the cities and the villages.
Does that mean he just went down to the town square and stood there?
No, he went there and preached to individuals.
He went there and preached to people and people were able to hear him.
It's the example of the apostles in Luke 10.
After these things, the Lord appointed 70 also and sent them two and two before his
face into every city and place, whether himself he would come.
And then he gives in this charge in verse 3,
Go your ways, behold I send you forth as lambs among wolves, carrying neither purse nor
scrip nor shoes, and salute no man by the way.
And whatsoever house ye enter, first say peace be to this house, and if the son of peace
be there, your peace shall rest upon it.
If not, it shall turn to you again.
And in the same house remain eating and drinking such things they give.
So get what he's saying, he's saying you're going to go into these cities and the first
house that receives you, that's where you're going to basically set up shop.
That's what I believe he's teaching here.
It goes on and says, and this is the part of the verse that Baptists would love to cling
to these days.
Verse 7, in the same house remain eating and drinking such things as they have for the
laborer worthy of his hire, go not from house to house.
See it right there.
It says go not from house to house.
Is that what he's saying here though?
He's saying don't go from house to house to get your needs met.
Don't go from house to house because he says the laborer is worthy of his hire.
The same house remain, the house that receives you first, remain in that one, eating and
drinking such things as they give.
The laborer is worthy of his hire, go not from house to house.
Don't go into the city and treat it like a buffet.
Go to one restaurant, sit down, that's where you're going to eat.
That's where you're setting up shop.
That's going to be your headquarters.
That's where you're going to go.
To whatsoever city you enter and they receive you, each such things as you are set before
you.
So he's saying you go to that house and if the city receives you, if it's a receptive
city, whatever that house is going, it sets before you that heat.
Go not from house to house.
But if the city does not receive you, then you're to leave.
So it's not that he's saying just go to one house in the city.
Hopefully this makes sense because I know some people struggle.
It says go not from house to house.
That's not what it's saying there.
You know it's the house that received them would be the house that provided them while
they preached in that city.
That's what that verse is saying.
And they were to abide in that house if the city received them.
Meaning how would you know if the city received you if you didn't go preach to it?
If you didn't go door to door.
Acts 5 42 I'll read to you.
In the daily in the temple and in every house they cease not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.
So if they were to not go from house to house, it's not very long that they're breaking
that commandment where it says they're teaching and preaching Jesus Christ in every house.
They would say not house to house, well they ended up going in every house.
So that's the example in Acts 5 the early church.
But Baptist today they just think they've outsmarted God here.
They've got a better way to do it.
They've got a more friendlier way, just a better way to build the church.
It's just so much better.
But the example is to go to every house.
So how is door to door soul winning unbiblical?
That is the biblical model that we see in scripture.
It's the example of Jesus Christ.
It's the example of the apostles.
And it's the example of Paul.
Here there in Acts turn over to verse 20.
Acts chapter 20 verse 18.
And when they were come to him he said to them,
ye know from the first day that I came into Asia after what manner I have been with you
at all seasons, Acts 20 verse 19.
Serving the Lord with all humility of mind with many tears and temptations
which befell me by the lying weight of the Jews.
And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you,
and but have showed you and have taught you publicly and from house to house.
See right now we're being taught publicly.
We're at church and we're hearing the preaching of the word God.
And later we're going to go from house to house during our soul winning time.
That's the example that we see in scripture.
It's people going house to house.
They're preaching the gospel to every creature.
And really that's, you know, I don't, I don't,
hopefully I don't have to make too big of a case for soul winning.
You know, it seems pretty clear to me.
I mean at least this method has very clear scripture.
You know, where as bus calling they have one born of the four.
Where as the, you know, the street preacher,
he's got a verse in Isaiah that's complete opposite of what he's doing.
That's the example of Jesus Christ.
At least we have these clear scriptures.
I mean, if you can think of a better way to reach the entire world,
to reach every creature in all the world,
the gospel of Jesus Christ, I'm all ears.
Let's hear it.
But I defy anyone to find a more efficient and effective method
than door to door soul winning.
So why is it getting done?
Because it's the work of an evangelist.
He takes work.
It takes dedication.
Because there's times where it is discouraging.
People don't want to listen.
People are rude to you at the door.
You know, I think that last week we're out here.
We went to this complex and it was,
nobody was home.
The ones that weren't home, they didn't want to hear it.
But I'd let, that morning I preached that sermon about,
you know, people going to hell.
I remember walking out of here last Sunday thinking about
that, just that, that, that thought of people being cast in the lake of fire.
And how if we go out in the stock here,
if we only reach one person today,
if we go out and go soloing and we only reach one person,
that's one less person that's going to be cast in the lake of fire.
That's one less person that's going to die and go to hell.
So when we're out then, you know, that's, people lose focus of that.
That's when we get discouraged.
But if we go out there and, you know, door after door,
and sure enough, last weekend, last Sunday,
door after door, not home, not home, not, don't want to hear it,
don't want to hear it, but the last door I knocked,
that person got saved.
And so it's, you know, and I walked away rejoicing.
The Bible says, you know, that the angels were rejoicing in heaven
over that one sinner that repented, you know,
that one sinner that put their trust in Jesus Christ.
That day, it makes it worth it.
But that's not good enough for people that want to fill their building.
It's not good enough for people who just want to pat themselves in the back
without actually having to talk to anybody and confront them about their soul.
And that's, you know, that's the most efficient manner
is doing the work of an evangelist.
So that's what we should do.
And I just want to close in Acts 21.
You know, let's have the rep,
I want to look at a guy who had a reputation of being an evangelist.
And that was Philip.
And the next day, we were, in verse 8,
and the next day, they, and the next day,
we that were of Paul's company departed and came unto Caesarea.
And we entered into the house of Philip, the evangelist.
So here's a guy that's, who's Philip?
You know, the evangelist.
You know, the guy who went out, and even his daughters,
and says, and the man had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy.
So even his family had people who went out
and prophesied or preached the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Let's have that kind, let's be known as that.
Let's put our name in there.
Instead of Philip, the evangelist, let's be so-and-so, the evangelist.
Put your name in that spot.
Could that be said of you, that you have that reputation of being an evangelist?
And if you are, then you're probably one who goes door-to-door soul man.
Because that is the most efficient means to go.
And it's the biblical model that God has given us.
Let's pray.
Hey Father, again, thank you for the clear teaching of Scripture.
Thank you for, Lord, that you've made salvation so simple and easy
that one only has to just put their faith and trust in you.
And understand that you died for them, Lord Jesus,
and that you were buried and that you rose again.
And Father, I pray you'd help every one of us to help have that reputation as Philip did,
to be an evangelist.
Lord, they help us not to be caught up in gimmicks or new and creative ways
to try and reach the gospel of Jesus Christ,
but that we would simply look to your word and see the example of Scripture of going door-to-door
and of reaching an entire world.
Lord, that if others would put aside these inefficient means, Lord,
and get on board with the program that you've put down,
Lord, we could accomplish great things for you.
We could accomplish that charge that you've given us to preach the gospel to every creature.
And Lord, I just pray that you would be with us now as we go our own ways
and bring us back again next week.
In Jesus' name, Amen.