What Ever Happened to Gospel Preaching?

Here are some meditations I'm having as I prepare to teach the fine folks at Fort Wayne for Jesus next week. I am very excited to be working with brothers and sisters who are so adamant about reaching their city!

A Fear Stricken Church

Many mature Christians concede to the importance of evangelism. They know that Christ commanded it. They profess to believe the doctrines of heaven and hell. They see need for Jesus' message in this sin-sick generation. And still, there is precious little evangelism coming from the Church today. There are probably several reasons for this, but I think I can name the culprit here: the fear of man. 

We are now living in a day and age where Christians are being intimidated and emasculated by a wicked culture that suppresses the truth in wickedness. They are fear-stricken at the prospect of being labeled as “intolerant bigots,” and will do anything to avoid the negative false stereotypes ascribed to Gospel preachers. Because of this, we are either afraid to evangelize or have devised milder alternatives to reaching the lost.

This is what it looks like when Christians give way to the fear of man:

Pastors preach hard truths to animate the choir, but belch half-truths to appease the critics.

Church calendars are filled with activities to occupy the saints, but absent are times of outreach to sinners.

Personal evangelism has been substituted with productions and events.

Bestsellers are written, lost sinners are forgotten.

Ministers more often accept advice from worldly bloggers than from the wisdom of the Bible.

Rare are exhortations from the pulpit to reach the lost; rarer are expectations for the pew to respond in obedience.

Today’s so-called preachers have a new vocabulary which is foreign to the Bible; they have changed the definitions of age-old Christian practices; what they call evangelism is completely unlike the ministry of Jesus and His disciples.

It is time to return to the ancient paths...