Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Mark Dever on Evangelism

I played golf with Mark Dever today (to cop a line from my friend Chris Anderson) while he talked about evangelism.

This message on "Evangelism for the Pastor or Preacher" is worth the time to listen to. In it, he addresses the priority of evangelism in both personal life and preaching.

He makes some interesting observations including the fact that many pastors are woefully disconnected from evangelism. Many view the pastorate as an opportunity for a Christian desk job and they lose their passion for the lost.

He suggests the pastorate should be almost a begrudging work (my words, not his) since it takes one away from regular contact with the lost. He does not mean that negatively necessarily, but he makes a comment to the affect that it is something a man should do for the sake of the kingdom, not in order to get out of evangelism.

He also has some good suggestions about evangelistic preaching, reminding us that an evangelistic message is not one with a "come-forward" invitation, or a sweaty preacher that yells. An evangelistic message is not even one devoted solely to seeing people come to Christ. An evangelistic message is determined by the presence of the gospel.

I recommend you listen to it sometime.

3 comments:

Greg Linscott said...

I just want to know how you manage to play golf in Michigan in December...

Frank Sansone said...

To add to Greg's question, did the children get annoyed at this old guy with headphones taking too long at the hole with the elephant's mouth? :)

Larry said...

If you dress right, it's not bad. Some cold weather gloves and hat are all you need.

And it wasn't an elephant's mouth. It was a clown ...