Peddlers of the Gospel or simply naïve – what are our evangelical leaders telling us?

I follow a number of prominent evangelicals on twitter and Facebook. I read their books. I love much of what they have to say. And then today I read this. And it made me mad. Here's an excerpt from Mark Driscoll's letter to the churches:

“Christians are being ostracised. Gay marriage has been legalised, the bandwagon has stopped carrying us and has begun rolling over us. The church is dying, and no one is noticing because we’re wasting time criticising rather than evangelising..”

“...stand firm in God’s grace, hold fast to the word. Jesus is alive. Quit licking your wounds – stand up, dust yourself off, and get to work”

And here is the punch-line. What do we do about this? Driscoll says:

“My friends Rick Warren, Matt Chandler, Greg Laurie, James MacDonald and Crawford Loritts are some of the men leading this charge, and all will be speaking with me at this year’s Resurgence Conference”

“Join us”

“God is faithful, he has called you. It’s your move”

So let me get this clear. We need to get to work. We spend too much time criticising rather than evangelising. The solution? God is calling you to attend our conference.

All over social media we are being told that we need to subscribe to this or that blog or webinar and attend this or that conference which hold the answers to how we can be more effective for God. Each group seeks to gain followers, enabling their ministry to propagate. Granted, they may not be seeking to line their individual pockets but do we not risk slipping into peddling the Gospel with this approach?

What if we spent less time with our heads in our phones and more time evangelising?

What if we spent less time at conferences and more time evangelising?

Why don’t the Resurgence and other groups do a free webcast if their message is REALLY important?

Why don’t these leaders call only our local church leaders to hear them, and trust them to disseminate this information into the everyday lives of their people? Could it be that their conference would be smaller and less visible? Could it be that their brand might not be as successful?

What if we look up from our limited view of the church in our culture and see that worldwide the church is growing? And maybe even seek to learn from our majority world brothers and sisters rather than North Americans and Brits?

Of course I need to improve my evangelising, of course I need a kick up the backside sometimes. I am sure the Resurgence Conference will have excellent content and speakers. But this approach by so many of our evangelical leaders seems to be dangerous and the wrong one. I would rather go and find those who are doing it and soak it up from them. My real heroes are those who DO it rather than TALK or WRITE about it.

Let’s get off our computers, out of the conference centres, into the real world where real people are who need to hear and see the Gospel in our lives.


(To Driscoll's credit he has previously blogged about the danger of conferences here which brings some balance to his letter)