CHURCH INVITATION IS NOT ENVAGELISM

“Go you into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”– Mar 16:15

There is a certain style of “Evangelism” now prevalent among us Pentecostals. It’s the invitation of people to come to _our_ church with the mouth-watering promise that their lives will be radically changed if they do so. 

This is a valid and practical approach to church awareness and church growth. A problem arises, however, when we call this practice “Evangelism”. 

Evangelism is the act of teaching people the Gospel message of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Inviting someone to church is NOT Evangelism. Church invitation is similar to giving a starving child the directions to a food canteen: It should solve his or her problem, it’s not the same as giving the starving child some food right there and then. 

There’re two main victims of ‘church invitation’ evangelism: the evangelism subject and the evangeliser. Firstly, church invitation without evangelism postpones the Gospel experience for the subject. It’s effectively saying, “Come to my church and _then_ you will learn about salvation from my pastor”. For the several persons who don’t eventually honour that invitation, we’ve wasted a good opportunity to directly tell them about the gospel message. (And those who do come may decide to come on a different day, when the sermon isn’t particularly about salvation). 

In addition, exclusive ‘Church Invitation’ Evangelism does a disservice to the members themselves. It robs them of the opportunity to learn how to actually preach the gospel – A key function of every Believer.  When we direct our members to go out and say _“Come to my church to hear my pastor preach and do miracles.” We're not training them to be full ministers of the Gospel.

The practice of personal witnessing, followed by church invitation, had been a classic winning formula among evangelicals for years; but replacing it with church invitation alone is neither ideal for the sinner nor for the members doing the invitation. Church invitation is good, but preaching the gospel directly is better – for both parties. 

PASTOR GREG ELKAN.