Vance Havner said, "The Gospel is not something we come to church to hear; it is something we go from church to tell."¹

If They Can Pass Out Drugs…

Brock attended Bonaroo, a massive music conference holding enough people to fill up University of Michigan’s football stadium. Waiting in a line of slow-moving cars as they neared the check point station, a stranger walked up to the car, stuck his head through the window and asked if they wanted a “dose” (key word for drugs).

If the world is this bold to offer drugs, how could we not be a million times more courageous in offering people the gospel of Jesus Christ? Learning how to share your faith catches fire when you go to the lost. We can talk about and analyze evangelism all day, but we will suffer spiritual constipation until we take initiative and go to the lost.

When Christ delivered the Great Commission, He did not just say, “Make disciples,” but “Go and make disciples.” Go can be translated as to proceed, to travel, to journey, or to go out. This does not mean you have to cross the Atlantic and become a missionary in order to obey the Great Commission. You can go into your local park, go into your barber shop, go onto your school campus or in your workplace.

In the Great Commission we find four action verbs and the order of these verbs is significant. We cannot baptize and teach people if we do not make them disciples and we cannot make them disciples if we do not first go to them. It’s impossible to obey the great commission if we leave out the very first step, “go!”

If the only social functions you attend are those of your church, you will find it very difficult to make disciples. Church leaders are not modeling evangelism to their people if the only people they give the gospel to are those who walk through the doors of their church or life group. That’s like fishing in an aquarium. William Fay says it with excellence in his timeless work, Share Jesus Without Fear:

God did not call you to hide from the world. He called you to go into the world. After all, the world cannot know Jesus if we keep his identity a secret. We must go and tell others who he is. Remember Romans 10:15, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"²

It is no accident that God gave you unsaved neighbors, roommates, co-workers, and family members. It is not without purpose that God has placed you in a world with pagans at the park, in the mall, at the grocery store, on the golf course, and in the restaurant.

On Their Turf

When Jason first modeled evangelism for me, I noticed he was drawn to “hangout” places where people stand around, smoke, get stoned, and tell dirty jokes. We’d talk to people like this until two in the morning. It didn’t take me long to realize that the most effective evangelism happens on their turf, not ours.

If you want to live a fulfilling, exciting, and God-honoring life, then go into the world. I don’t mean just live in the world—you’re already doing that. I mean intentionally go to the lost. “But hold on, Seth, aren’t we supposed to be holy and set apart from the word?” Absolutely. Paul talks about that in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18. But this same Paul was around unbelievers all the time. The difference was how he lived not where he lived.

If to “come out from their midst and be separate...and do not touch what is unclean” (2 Cor 6:17) means to physically stay away from unbelievers, Paul would not have written to the very same church, “I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world” (1 Cor 5:9-10).

Shortly before His arrest, Christ prayed to the Father:

I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one (John 17:14-15).

Two crucial lessons flow from Christ’s prayer:

Lesson #1: The godly Christian is not of the world. This means he is not like the world. He’s totally different. His values are not the world’s values. His speech is not the world’s speech. His goals and pursuits are other worldly; they don’t come from this planet but from heaven above. He’s living for Christ the King, not lusts and wealth.

Lesson #2: The godly Christian is in the world. He is not like the monk who traps himself behind stone walls, lashes his body with leather strings, dines on stale bread, and chants a thousand prayers each sunrise.

By not being of the world you are a living example of Jesus Christ. But for people to see your example you must be in the world. What good is a candle in a bright room? How can you be effective salt to the lost if you never climb out of the saltshaker? That’s why Evangelist Mark Cahill loves to go soul fishing at South Beach in Florida. What’s so special about that place? It’s where lots of sinners congregate. One of my favorite “fishing spots” is the Bronco Mall at Western Michigan University or on South Haven Beach at Lake Michigan during fireworks season. Christ spent most of His ministry time outside the temple among the common sinners, walking in their world, standing in their shoes, and illustrating the gospel with stories they could relate to. If you work with unbelievers or have unsaved neighbors or family, going into the world might be as simple as bringing up spiritual things in a conversation or asking someone how you can pray for them. This can lead into a conversation about Christ that bears fruit days later. In a sermon on open-air preaching, Charles Spurgeon said,

We ought actually to go into the streets and lanes and highways, for there are lurkers in the hedges, tramps on the highways, street-walkers and lane-haunters, whom we shall never reach unless we pursue them into their own domains. Sportsmen must not stop at home and wait for the birds to come and be shot at, neither must fishermen throw their nets inside their boats and hope to take many fish. Traders go to the markets; they follow their customers and go out after business if it will not come to them; and so must we.

A Disease and a Cure

A cruel disease hits your city, taking the life of thousands of victims just three days after contraction. You’re a doctor and after many sleepless nights, researching and testing, you concoct a cure. That’s great news. But what good is your medicine if it stays in your laboratory? You can talk about it, pray about it, and sing about it, but until you get this cure into the world it’s useless.

As a believer, you carry the only cure to the deadliest disease of all. Jesus said,

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:14-16).

How can we share the cure if the only time we talk about Christ is around church people? Today, many well-meaning Bible churches have become so insular and engrossed in their holy huddles that they can no longer face the world and its post-Christian thinking. They are like the apostles before the coming of the Spirit, when they stayed hid behind closed doors. But if the Spirit has already come, where are the evangelists? Where are the Christians preaching the truth on the streets and in the marketplaces? Where are the believers sharing their faith in the workplace and with their neighbors?

Street-preaching?

You don’t have to become a street evangelist or open air preacher to go. That’s one of many methods. So try this. Make a list of all the unbelievers you see on a regular basis, and think widely—your doctor, barber, neighbor, coworker, roommate, relative, manager, mailman—and then ask, “How can I arrange a situation to reach these people for Christ?” Start up a Bible study with a few guys at work (during off-the-clock hours). Aaron, an engineer who attends our church did this at his workplace and led two men to Christ over the period of a year. Take your unbeliever friend to lunch and ask him permission to ask a personal question about eternity. Invite your barber to an outreach event at your church where the gospel will be presented, and then during the ride home, ask him what he thought of the message. Invite people new to the neighborhood over for dinner and share your testimony. Throw a block party. The opportunities are endless. But this assumes that you have unsaved friends in your life.

Smelling Like a Pub

During a seminar on evangelism, I asked each class member to write down the names of three friends who didn’t know Christ. After the class, one of the students came up and said, “Seth I got really convicted when you asked that question because I had trouble thinking of just three unbelievers whom I’m friends with.” He suddenly realized that though he may not be of the world, he isn’t in it enough. All his friends, roommates, and co-workers were believers.

As unspiritual as it may sound, I enjoy throwing myself into the middle of drug-addicted, home-broken, God-cursing, disillusioned unbelievers who smell like a pub. This does not mean that I enjoy what they do, but I love being with them to keep myself fresh on how far God’s grace has brought me. I find that being around unbelievers strengthens my resolve to live for Christ because I am reminded of all the misery they suffer without Him. Until you are in the world, you will find it very difficult to communicate the gospel to the world. Evangelist, Lewis Drummond wrote,

The challenge for all Christians is to thrust ourselves in the worst of all places—among the poorest of the poor, the sickest of the sick, the loneliest of the lonely, and the most skeptical of the skeptics—just as Jesus did. Often we Christians seem to be too interested in protecting ourselves from every form of pain and doubt. Instead, we should find ourselves in the poverty-stricken ghettos, pain-wrenched hospitals, and doubt-ridden circles of the skeptics wherever they are found.³

Martin Luther was not used by God until he left the monastery. Paul was no evangelist until he entered the synagogues and started preaching (Acts 9:20). Where would you and I be if Jesus avoided sinners during His time on earth? For the same reason, God used persecution of the early church to scatter Christians all over the world, causing the gospel to spread with them (Acts 8:1, 4; 11:19). In Billy Graham’s own words, “The church, having come to Christ, is to go for Christ.”⁴

Seven Buffets Minus One Treadmill

The average lay leader in the local church attends services on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, monthly fellowship events and sometimes a weekly Bible study or small group. Add to that your daily work schedule, raising children, baking meals, time with your spouse, paying bills, flossing teeth, and unplugging toilets and you have no time left for the lost. How many Christian meetings do we really need? It’s like attending seven buffet restaurants a day and never getting on the treadmill. Going to Boy Scouts, enjoying a field trip or attending a stamp-up party with a non-Christian friend so you can reach her for Christ is every bit as spiritual as attending a Bible study.

Pastor Alex Montoya, preaching professor at The Master’s Seminary and church planter of more than twenty churches in the Los Angeles area, wrote:

There have been times in my ministry when an icy chill has come over my heart, when my soul no longer weeps, when my sermons no longer connect, and when the act of preaching becomes drudgery. I know that I have then lost compassion for people. That is when I retreat to a small taco stand in the barrio of East Los Angeles, to a place where real people live. I order a cup of coffee and sit with my back against the wall. Then I watch, I observe, I read, and I listen intently for the heart cry.

A group of gang-bangers come in for a snack—one in four will die before the age of eighteen; two of the others will end up in prison. All are doomed to a hard life. A young mother comes in with her brood of youngsters. It is obvious that they are poor. They share drinks. They live in poverty; some will never see a forest or snow. An old drunk staggers in, begging for a meal. He is quickly thrown out. That was somebody’s baby boy. A mother at one time cradled that man and nursed him. The poor specimen of humanity has children. His wife is somewhere out there. They have long since disowned him, but they have not forgotten him. He is still somebody’s daddy. For all I know, he could have been my own.⁵

We must be in the world if we are going to reach the world.

How Do We Go?

It’s simple: Spend time with and befriend unbelievers. Following are practical and natural ways you can go to the lost:

• Invite your neighbors or fellow soccer parents over for dinner and serve them a meal fit for nobility.
• Instead of attending umpteen Christian events or studies every week, drop one of these in place of doing something with an unbeliever friend like skiing, bowling, hiking, shopping, or anything else you both enjoy doing.
• During college, room with an unbeliever instead of your parents.
• Go to a fair or festival and look for opportunities to strike up conversations with random people.
• At work, instead of eating lunch by yourself, do it with a friend or take your boss to lunch.
• Join a local sports team or book club.
• Study with students from your class.

Events like these create hundreds of opportunities to bring up spiritual things and see if God is drawing their interest. When you and your unbeliever friend are alone, sipping coffee at Starbucks or over a campfire, it’s not too difficult to ask, “John, may I ask you a personal question?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s say that on your way home tonight a tire blows on your car, you spin out of control and go flying over the bridge to your death. You wake up standing before God, and God asks, ‘John, why should I let you into heaven?’ What would you say?”

Chances are, he’ll say, “Cause I’m a good person.”

And then you ask, “John, may I tell you what I would say?”

“Sure.” There’s your green light to share the most important message John will ever hear. Now albeit, if you smack your car engine with a sledge hammer so you can take it to the mechanic to witness to him, you’re probably taking it too far! But just like fishermen don’t catch fish until they get in the boat and shove off, we can’t expect to reach the lost if we don’t go to them.

Friend of Sinners

I’ll never forget a guy named Paul who turned down a Wednesday night Bible study so he could play basketball with his unsaved buddies and witness to them. If his choice was wrong then we have to ask what on earth Christ was doing at a party with Matthew’s money-mongering friends (Matt 9:10). The Pharisees were enraged. “What is this so-called teacher of the Law doing with these dirty people?” Christ’s response defused them in a flash, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire compassion, and not sacrifice,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt 9:12-13).

They bulleted Christ with a slur no man wanted to carry: friend of sinners. And yet that attack turned into one of the most beautiful complements a man could receive. No matter what your personality type, gifting, or background, if you are saved, you have all that it takes to go into the world. God put you where you are for a reason. Every unbeliever in your life is not arbitrary chance but a divine appointment and God want to use you to reach them. Evangelist Paul E. Little tells an encouraging story about a woman struggling to go in her workplace,

I know a young woman who resolved before God to make a new beginning right where she was. She'd been working in the same office for eight and a half years. Every noon hour while the rest of the office staff ate lunch together, she sat alone in a back room to eat by herself. She couldn't join in some of the stories and jokes her coworkers told but didn't know how to be positive in that kind of atmosphere. Finally, though, she decided to just be a friend to a few. Motivated by love for the other women, she searched out a couple of funny stories of her own and began to mix with the other women at lunch. Six months after her first weak-kneed but joke-supplied attempt, she told me that the other women seemed genuinely happy that she joined them. She had even witnessed to two of them. It's true! Changes can come right where you are.⁶

Endnotes

1. Robert J. Morgan, Nelson's Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes, electronic ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 777.

2. William Fay, Share Jesus Without Fear (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1999), 115.

3. Lewis Drummond quoted in The Complete Evangelism Guidebook, ed. by Scott Dawson (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 93-94.

4. D. James D. Kennedy, Evangelism Explosion (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1996), foreword.

5. Alex Montoya, Preaching With Passion (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2000), 68.

6. Paul E. Little, How to Give Away Your Faith (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 78.