Topic: Evangelism

Whilst attending a church social last night our host presented an intriguing dilemma to us. He was describing a ministry which was run last Christmas in one of the less privelaged areas of the Aberdeen district. People who came along were given a warm meal (turkey with trimmings) and dessert, as well as gifts and the usual evangelical talk. However, there was a problem when it became clear that there weren't enough gifts to go around amongst the adults, as more people had turned up then expected.There were complaints from the several adults that no gift had been bought for a child who couldn't come and was at home. People began comparing gifts and some complained that others had recieved a better gift than others. The question posed was surely these people should be happy that they got something at all? Surely they should be happy knowing that someone cared?

Today I want to address a fundemental problem that God has revealed to me in evangelistic ministry.

I want to start by looking at Luke Chapter 15. In this chapter, Jesus is teaching the tax collectors and "sinners" (the Bible actually puts the word sinners here in quotation marks), and the Pharisees mutter "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them" (Luke 15 v2 NIV). Jesus hears them and tells them 3 parables: The Parable of the Lost Sheep, The Parable of the Lost Coin, and the Parable of the Lost Son.

The parables about the sheep and the coin possess a common trait in that they both are an illustration of how the Father seeks out the lost and celebrates when they are found again and return to him.

The third parable is somewhat different. Whilst still illustrating the supreme mercy of the Father, it also illustrates two different perspectives of God's blessing and love.

The third parable, whilst labelled as the Parable of the Lost Son, is actually the story of two sons: A younger son who sins against his father, demands his inheritance and squanders it, only to return broken and humbled to the father and celebrates. The older son in this story works hard and long for his father out in the fields and does his best to please him. When the younger son returns and the father celebrates, he becomes embittered, angry, and even hurt by the father's attitude:

"Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders, yet you never even gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends! But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes, you kill a fattened calf for him!" (Luke 15 v29-30 NIV)

Whilst I fully understand the significance of the younger son and the father in this story I would like to take a deeper look at the older son's attitude.

In this story the older son (who as you may have guessed by now represents the Pharisees attitude) becomes so reward-focused that he loses sight of his inheritance. He is so intent on earning his Father's affection that he forgets that he already has it. When the older son pours out his heart filled with hurt, anger, and contempt, the father's response is mind-blowing:

"My son, you are always with me, and everything i have is yours."

Incredible! Sometimes we get so lost in seraching for the tangible rewards of God that we forget our true inheritance: The Kingdom of God...and, perhaps just as significantly, the character of God:

" 3His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter Chapter 1 V3-4)"


I myself don't come from a particulary privelaged background (nor was I poor) but I was blest in the sense that I grew up in privelaged communities. The other side of this was that I was always around people who always seemed to have money to spare and could afford things that I could never dream of buying. Before I truely understood my inheritance, I would see other Christians with "nice things" and I would immediately sub-consciously assume that God's blessing was with them and would try to justify their reward. What were they doing for God that I wasn't doing? What did I lack?

The problem here was that I was stuck in the older son mentality of having to earn everything! Let's return to the original question: Why weren't the people who recieved gifts, food and attention not happy? I believe that the problem lay with the fundemental approach to evangelism. All too often we take a tip-toeing approach to spreading the gospel and come across as using food, gifts, and whatever else to lure people towards an event which will contain a gospel message. Let me just clarify that I do not believe that is done intentionally but may be how some events are portrayed. I will raise my hand and say that I have been guilty of unintentionally doing this in the past. The problem with this focus of course is that people don't really get why we are putting on these events. They don't understand that it wasn't our intention to give food, gifts, time, money, and whatever else.

1st Corinthians Chapter 13 tells us what? If I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, then I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, kind, doesn't envy, doesn't boast, isn't proud, isn't rude isn't self seeking, not easily angered, does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth, always protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres and NEVER FAILS.

As my friend Phil said in his blog, you could transpose the word "God" for the word "love" in that passage and you would have the beautiful image of the Father.

We can give all the time and money we want, but so long as people do not understand that we aren't interested in giving them "nice things" they will always thirst for more. We have to help people understand that the material gifts we give are nothing but a poor representation of the Father's unfailing love for us.

In short I would like to some up the parable of the two sons. by making a statement about the attitudes of the older son and the younger son respectively:

Nothing we can do can earn our Father's love, and nothing we do can seperate us from Him.

God's blessing be with you