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Kingdom Life

Evangelism and Healing and Deliverance (cont.)

 Proclamation of the need for spiritual birth and the distribution of spiritual gifts to the spirit-born by the Holy Spirit.

 Proclamation that those who believe are adopted into the family of God; and demonstration of radical love within the community of believers.

Sometime over the last 2000 years, this pattern has been replaced with a different pattern where the demonstration via signs and wonders has been de-emphasized. A more intellectual approach has become the norm. Proclamation is now commonly followed by testimony and apologetics. Testimony includes discussion of what Jesus has meant to me and has done for me and others. This is a good thing for it provides a personal witness that others can relate to. In addition, for those who might argue against Christ, we now take an apologetic approach. We provide a series of answers to the objections of the world, to help them better understand why Christianity is viable and reasonable. This can also be helpful and useful in evangelism.

It seems to me, however, that there is something very different about the modern approach to evangelism and the first century approach. I have noticed that we can “do evangelism” the modern way without the Holy Spirit. Humans can proclaim religious truth. Humans can share human testimony, even tell stories of third party supernatural events. Humans can learn theology, philosophy, history, and psychology and use this knowledge to construct an apologetic appeal. We can do this stuff without the Holy Spirit.

Now please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that we should throw away the evangelism tools that have been developed in the church. We should be trained to communicate the Gospel in a variety of ways and be ready, under the leading of the Holy Spirit, to speak the truth in love via proclamation, testimony, explanation, or apologetics.

My concern is that the church has developed a tendency to intentionally avoid the miraculous in evangelism altogether. Dependence on the Holy Spirit is risky. What if we pray for an unbeliever and they are not healed? What kind of testimony is that? Won’t people just make fun of us and God if we lay hands on the sick and they are not healed? We might assume that it be better just to do the controllable things; proclamation, testimony, apologetics, and then give an invitation. That way we, and of course God, will not be embarrassed by those who are not healed.

There may be times when a non-supernatural approach is appropriate. There will also be times when a supernatural, Hebrews 2 approach is best. Who decides? I would prefer to leave that decision to the Holy Spirit. He is the one who distributes the power of God to the church, so it seems like a good idea to let Him decide whether “God (will) also (be) bearing witness” while we evangelize. This would require that we are ready for signs and wonders, miracles, healing and deliverance to happen during evangelism. It means that we need to be trained to minister in the gifts of the Holy Spirit as part of our evangelism training.

What I would like to suggest is an approach which retains the power of the early church and utilizes the training of modern evangelism.

1. Proclaim the Gospel

2. Demonstrate the Gospel via signs and wonders and miracles (God bears witness)

3. Explain why you believe via testimony, theology, apologetics, etc. (we bear witness)

This approach to evangelism will be uncomfortable to many of us because we cannot do step 2 without the Holy Spirit. Perhaps this will be good for us, because we probably shouldn’t be doing evangelism without a complete reliance on the Holy Spirit anyway. We can be confident that our Father in heaven wants the folks saved more than we do. We can be assured that Jesus wants to bring Salvation, Healing, and Deliverance to those we evangelize more than we do. We should be confident that the Holy Spirit will release the power of God through the spiritual gifts for the benefit of those we are ministering to. And we should be humbly thankful that we have the privilege to share Jesus with others, with our words and with divinely empowered “mighty acts”.

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