Community and evangelism

I remember cringing a few years ago when the Mel Gibson Passion movie came out, and I noticed a number of ministers...making foolish pronouncements like 'This is the greatest evangelistic tool there has ever been in the entire history of the church.' When anyone uses that type of language you can be pretty certain that they know almost nothing about the history of the church.

What about the church? Doesn't Jesus teach us here [John 17:20-23] that His single greatest evangelistic agency is the church? And notice--I think this is significant--not the church simply as a random collection of individuals who have been converted, but the church as a new, counter-cultural community in which the fellowship of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit comes to expression in the unity, and community, and joy, and sense of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ among His people.

That's the reason, you know, in the New Testament there's hardly any instruction whatsoever about how to be a witness. And by contrast, in our evangelism manuals all the emphasis lies on 'How can you as an individual be a witness?' and 'Here are the questions you need to learn to ask.' Now what's that a sign of? That's a sign of the bankruptcy of the church, because when the church is full of the power of the Holy Spirit what happens is what Simon Peter describes in 1 Peter, chapter 3--that you're in a situation that you need to be ready to give an answer for the hope that's in you.

- Sinclair Ferguson