Numerical Evangelism

I was sitting at my seminary graduation banquet table and it was testimony time. A young man leaped on the platform and grabbed the mic and said he just returned from holding a two-day crusade and he had a 1,100 people except Christ and everybody in that banquet hall clapped their hands and shouted amen. That is everybody but me.

That young evangelist just got 1,100 people to do something, to either walk an aisle or raise their hand or repeat a prayer. He doesn't know for sure if any of them were truly born again. He was just like most other evangelists today who are number hunters.

They make it awful easy for someone to accept their Jesus so they can have bragging rights within their denomination. Numerical evangelism is big today. If you don't believe me just get on the web and pull up some websites of evangelists and read their stirring accounts of all the people getting saved in their meetings while you think we're in the midst of the third great awakening.

The trouble with the anemic evangelism of our day is we are preaching to get results. We offer folks our little bitty Jesus who wouldn't harm a flea and folks accept our little Jesus like they would take a piece of chewing gum and they chew on that free ticket of heaven until the flavor goes out of their religion. We are using the wrong yardstick to measure our success.

We view success in numerical figures as to how many we can get to say yes to Jesus. How many responded to us but the true earmark of heaven's smile upon a man's ministry is found not in numbers but in transformation. Has the spiritual life of the church been transformed or are the members still wallowing in their pig pens? Has the community where you held your meetings been transformed by the power of God or is the town just as wicked as it was since you were there? I believe we can have a church on every street corner and those churches can be growing but churches don't impact the community in which they exist and that community is just as wicked and foul as it's ever been.

Our modern evangelism is missing something because we place all our efforts on getting a response so we can count the numbers and then bragging both about how greatly used to God we are as we break our wrists patting ourselves on the back while folks all around us are dropping into hell. But evangelism in former days was different. It wasn't held in a football stadium with Hollywood entertainers with strategically placed religious workers who get up during the invitation and come forward to make it look like folks are responding all over the place.

People are like sheep. They see a bunch of folks going forward. They will join them even if they are led off a cliff.

But evangelism in former days friends didn't act this way. It didn't preach for numerical success. It just proclaimed the great doctrines of the gospel so sinners could be transformed and born from above and in the process churches were transformed.

Communities were altered by the power of the old-fashioned gospel. When George Whitfield preached from the courthouse steps in Philadelphia in 1740 Benjamin Franklin said that when Whitfield left town it was if the entire city had become religious. He said you could hear family devotions in most of the houses all over that city.

George Whitfield didn't preach for numerical success. Whitfield preached only for his hearers to come to Christ so they could be born again. When George Whitfield preached for Jonathan Edwards in his church in Northampton Edwards commented that it seemed as if the entire town was altered for eternity.

I got a copy of Mordecai Ham's biography and I want to read you an excerpt from it friends. Put on your seat belt for you will need it. Here's the account of Evangelist Ham in Macon, Georgia in 1935.

After finishing in Spartanburg Mr. Ham went to Macon. His tabernacle was first erected in a residential section but later was removed to the very center of the red light district. 13 houses surrounded the tabernacle lot but within a very short time all 13 were closed and on the buildings appeared for rent signs.

The girls had been converted. Then it goes on to say friends one local businessman was shrewd enough to foresee the change that would take place in that neighborhood from Ham's meetings. He obtained options on most of the property and netted himself a tidy sum from the increase of the property value brought about by the presence of the Ham Ramsey meeting.

The two doctrines that Mordecai Ham always preached were repentance and the lordship of Christ. He preached for change. Whitfield preached the doctrine of regeneration for he as well preached for change.

We preach today the doctrine of numberification because we want numbers success in numbers. We leave a town the same way we come into it unchanged. Like I said friends our evangelism today doesn't get anywhere because it doesn't go deep enough.

We are content to collect all the fool's gold that shimmers on the surface and then hold it up in bags but men used of God in former times dug deep into the conscience of sinners with the rights and claims of the gospel and they found the mother load all to the glory of God. When will we stop all this foolishness and nonsense and numbers and just preach the Christ of the cross for transforming grace? Let us pray.