How Evangelistic Should Sundays Be?

00:00:05.000 | Emmanuel from Sweden writes in to ask Pastor John, "How evangelistic for

00:00:09.280 | non-believers should the Sunday gathering be?"

00:00:12.400 | Well, when I hear the term "Sunday gathering," I take it to refer to the

00:00:18.600 | people of God gathered for worship. There's nothing wrong with having

00:00:25.800 | evangelistic services designed totally for unbelievers on Sunday. There's nothing

00:00:31.720 | in the Bible that says, "Don't evangelize on Sunday with meetings," but that would

00:00:35.920 | not be the stated gathering of God's people for worship. And I know, too, that

00:00:43.280 | not all Christians believe that the New Testament even calls us to have

00:00:47.720 | corporate worship services once a week. I've talked with people in this category

00:00:54.080 | who think the only thing Christians should get together for is edification,

00:00:58.600 | not for worship. Now, I think that's a mistake, but I won't try to defend it

00:01:04.760 | here. I think we are called to corporate worship as the people of God. Then the

00:01:11.240 | question becomes, "What place does evangelism have in that service?" That's

00:01:19.960 | the real question, and I would want to say that that service should be

00:01:28.520 | wonderfully and gloriously vertical in its focus. We should focus on God, and

00:01:36.560 | there are a lot of people who think that because there are many, many, many good

00:01:41.080 | things in the Christian life, all of those should be dumped into that one

00:01:45.360 | service. So we need a place for ministry to children there. We need a place for

00:01:51.680 | community communication there. We need a place for art of drama and painting, and

00:01:56.880 | we need evangelism there. We need concerts there. We need political

00:02:00.000 | activism there. And when you're done, week after week after week, something becomes

00:02:06.120 | very man-centered, the vertical focus is blunted, and it weakens, and a power goes

00:02:13.380 | out of the church, even while you're trying to empower all of those things. So

00:02:19.200 | the implication I think this has for direct evangelism is to say that it is

00:02:24.200 | always secondary in the corporate worship gatherings of God's people. We

00:02:34.160 | should gather in order to commune corporately with our Father and with our

00:02:40.080 | Lord Jesus Christ and magnify him in the enjoyment that we take in him through

00:02:45.880 | singing and praying and confession and thanksgiving and preaching and the

00:02:53.800 | sacraments, and evangelism happens the way it does in 1st Corinthians 14. If

00:03:02.640 | people prophesy in this service, that is, if people speak with remarkable

00:03:07.880 | penetrating insight from God, people are convicted and called to account, and the

00:03:13.840 | secrets of their heart are disclosed. So they fall down on their face and worship

00:03:19.960 | God and say, "God is really in this place." So I believe evangelism

00:03:26.680 | happens when people meet God authentically, because the Word of God is

00:03:32.960 | being spoken, and faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

00:03:37.480 | It's the same gospel that builds people up, saves people, and the unbeliever who's

00:03:43.480 | sitting there while feeling out of place at first, which is inevitable, might come

00:03:50.240 | to have his heart opened, his eyes made keen to see the beauty of Christ. He

00:03:57.200 | falls down on his face, taste buds are awakened for the beauty of Christ, and he

00:04:02.680 | loves and trusts Jesus, and then, "These are my people. I'm not a

00:04:07.880 | foreigner anymore here." I think that happens while evangelism is in secondary

00:04:14.600 | position and vertical, radical, hard pursuit of God is in first position.

00:04:20.320 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email

00:04:23.760 | your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. At DesiringGod.org

00:04:28.320 | you'll find thousands of other free resources from John Piper. I'm your host,

00:04:31.440 | Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.

00:04:34.600 | [BLANK_AUDIO]