Graveyard evangelism

There are a number of things that graveyards and places of higher learning have in common. One is that there are names etched into walls or plaques, another is that those names used to mean something. The inhabitants of the former are entirely dead in their graves, the inhabitants of the latter are overwhelmingly dead in their sins and transgressions, in which they still walk.

Now, imagine that you had set your mind to evangelising the residents of either of these places. You said your prayers, you stuffed your pocket with tracts, and your bag with New Testaments. You picked a modest but ‘cool’ outfit so that you would seem relatable but not sketchy. You rehearsed your apologetics arguments, all the way from the cosmological argument to the transcendental argument. What do you instantly notice?

Upon reaching the first grave, that of a certain Jorge Mario Bergoglio, you encounter a rather serious problem. He refuses to shake your hand, he does not reciprocate your greeting, he cares not for your comments about the weather, and he shows no interest at all in talking about Christ!

‘Oh my,’ you say, ‘what am I doing wrong? What do I need to do to make this poor Mr Bergoglio a believer?’

The conclusion to this allegory should be by now rather obvious. Jorge does not respond positively to the presentation of the gospel because he is dead. Here we discover what is not the capacity nor commission of the evangelist: resurrection. The evangelist does not have the power to bring dead people to life. We all understand this to be true in the corporal sense, and it is just as true in the spiritual sense. That is evident in Paul’s choice of words. We are not sick in our sins, nor feverish and comatose in our transgressions, we are dead.

Romans 1 adds some details to this plight of the natural man. All people are created with an intrinsic knowledge of the God of the Bible, but all people have refused to honour God and give thanks to him, and as a result, their ‘foolish hearts were darkened’ and ‘claiming to be wise, they became fools’ (Rom1:21b, 22). Sin has had an impact not only on our conduct, making us workers of lawlessness, and on our hearts, making us factories of idols, but on our minds, making our reasoning flawed and foolish. The scope of the human capacities that sin has corrupted is total. That is why some eminent students of the Scripture described the condition of the natural man as ‘Total Depravity’.

Unsurprisingly, our pride rushes to our defense at such an allegation. ‘Totally depraved?’, we object, ‘Why, do you not know that I honour my father and mother, refrain from theft and perjury, and enter not into my neighbour’s wife?’ We mistakenly hear this doctrine as saying that we are as evil in conduct and thought as we could possibly be. That’s simply not true.

The PR team for this doctrine have done a rather poor job, and in our garden of flowers which tell us things about the Scripture, we will replace the T of our tulip with ‘C’, that is, ‘Consistent Rejection’.

Before you ask what we mean by Consistent Rejection, apart from perhaps a description of the love-life of this author during highschool, we will return to the graveyard from earlier, and our dear friend Frankie- oh, I mean Jorge.

The evangelist must learn that the person they are speaking to is dead on the inside. They are not ‘drowning’ as some semi-pelagians would say, nearly dead but retaining just enough capacity to ‘reach out with the hand of faith’ and grasp Christ. They are dead. Hear it from Paul if you will not hear it from us.

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Romans 8:5-8, emphasis mine

Here lies the inspiration for ‘Consistent Rejection’. The spiritually dead person rejects your gospel, because they are slaves to sin, so they freely choose to act according to that enslaved nature. No one has hold a gun to a vulture’s head to convince it to pick at a carcass. It freely chooses according to its nature to eat such things. Likewise, no one has to thrust a lance in the face of a little bunny rabbit to convince it to eat lettuce and carrots. It freely acts according to its nature.

In the same way, a spiritually dead person will freely and consistently reject the gospel. They are a slave to sin, they cannot submit to God’s law nor please him, they are dead.

The reason that places of higher learning were compared to graveyards at the start is that the experience of evangelism at a uni or tafe must be understood as graveyard evangelism, lest it end in discouragement or burnout. If you set out to win people to Christ with your clever arguments, seeker-sensitive attractions or winsome dress and vocabulary, you will quickly find yourself discouraged.

Prayer is your greatest tool in evangelism. Hear us say this, and hear it well. If you are conversing with an unbeliever on spiritual matters, pray in your head to the Lord of hosts that he would bring spiritual resurrection to your interlocutor. This is probably one of the most important things you can do in evangelism, and for two reasons: Firstly, the Lord may grant repentance and faith (2 Tim 2:25, Phil 1:29), and secondly you will learn a posture of reliance on God in the great and awesome work of evangelism.

Finally, the element of your evangelism that must be central and defining is your use of Scripture. Do not fall into some fantastical idea that there is a strong, positive, linear correlation between Scriptures quoted and frequency of repentance that you could use to reliably plot success in evangelism, but there truly is saving power in the words of Scripture (Rom 1:16).

Do not lose the excitement of this truth: when you bring God’s word to a world enslaved to sin, you are making war in the spiritual places, and doing battle with the unseen powers and principalities. You are a common clay jar, but the treasure you carry within you (the gospel proclaimed) is powerful to bring down enemy strongholds (2 Corinthians 10:4) and to raise dead sinners to life in Christ (Eph 2:5).

You might be tempted to think, ‘what could be more discouraging to an evangelist than the knowledge that they are ultimately powerless to save anyone at all?’ However you would be missing the glory. What could be more encouraging to an evangelist than the reality that it is not their performance or practise that determines the salvation of others? What could bring greater reassurance than the fact that despite the field of dead bones before us, God’s work which he has demonstrated and promised to do is the work of bringing people to life (Ezekiel 36-37) and granting them a believing heart?

If you are reading this, and the fear has come upon you that you are dead in your sins, and without hope in your own ability to be saved, it may well be that God has granted you a repentant and contrite heart with which to grasp him unto salvation. Behold the cross, see the saviour killed on behalf of his people. Cast your lot with him, trust in Christ for salvation and as your Lord, and you will find him to be a perfect saviour.