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Evangelism That Works?

I’ve seen Google ads for Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University that promote the program with this line: Evangelism that works.
ramseyad2
I recently took the class, and I can definitely recommend it for its solid financial training. However, I’d say to advertise it as evangelism that works is to demonstrate a lack of understanding of evangelism.

In the course, Ramsey certainly talks about the Bible and gives applications for Scripture verses, but that isn’t evangelism. Evangelism isn’t getting people to come to your church, or pointing out to them that biblical principles about finances are relevant to their lives.

Evangelism is proclaiming the gospel, and that means explaining to people that:

  • God is holy, we are sinners, and God can’t allow sinners into heaven.
  • God made a way to not compromise His justice yet forgive people’s sins through Jesus Christ.

I think Ramsey is trying to appeal to the fear of evangelism that most of us have in abundance. If you can’t work up the nerve to actually witness to someone, maybe you can invite them to an event at your church. Once you get them there, you don’t have to actually share the gospel; you just have to play videos.

I recommend Ramsey’s books and products for their financial advice, but I can’t recommend them for evangelism purposes. If you invested the two hours a week in going out witnessing, you could almost certainly witness to many more people than you would if you held a Financial Peace University at which you actually proclaimed the gospel.

People don’t get saved by hanging around with really likable Christians or learning that the Bible is cool. They can only be saved by hearing the gospel (Romans 10:14), and there simply is no gospel message within the materials of the Financial Peace University. As desperately as we try to avoid it, the cold, hard fact is that Christians must actually open their mouths and explain the gospel.

—–Update—–8/18/09—–

I’ve been thinking about the line “Evangelism that works” and it’s been bothering me. Even if there was evangelism in Ramsey’s materials, we don’t select our evangelism based on what works. We do what the Bible says, regardless of the results. Furthermore, we don’t do it expecting results, but because God has commanded it.

25 thoughts on “Evangelism That Works?”

  1. Bill,

    Sounds like the same thing that my former church was fond us – reduce evangelism to inviting folks to church. What a sorry crutch that contradicts the Scripture.

    Regarding Ramsey’s books, my wife helped out (ASL interpreter) a while back at his Financial Peace seminar (video and workbook at our former church). She told me he had a lot of out of context verses and never mentioned giving to the Lord as worship – the focus was on saving and getting out of debt.

    I much prefer the folks and resources at http://www.crown.org/

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  2. Evangelism is the spreading of the Gospel, the Good News. The Good News is that as a sinner in need of saving, you can receive Jesus as your personal Saviour. Not a savior. Not even as THE Savior. But as your very own Saviour, to save your from all of your sin.
    This can be related many different ways and not even all at the same time, but in order to evangelize, some part of it, must be imparted, not just displayed, to the lost person.
    God does the saving. He is looking for Christians to tell others something about salvation that He can use in their lives. Kindness is good and honesty and character and etc. But there needs to be something about salvation in there, somewhere, or else God has no more now, than He did before, to work in the lost person’s life, to bring that person to Jesus Christ for salvation.
    Fear is a real emotion. It is difficult to deal with. But a lifetime of fear in the same area of life, is a life without growth. A life without progress. A life full of excuses. A life of regrets. Confront fear at least a little at a time. Move from the boogyman in the closet to at least the courage to cleaning it out or at the very least, taking the door off the closet. Move forward.
    Steve Andres
    http://www.AndresUSA.com
    http://www.PublicEvangelism.WordPress.com

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  4. Great post! I loved your two point definition of the gospel. In my pickiness though, I wonder if you would consider changing the wording of point #2.

    Instead of “God found a way…”, would you consider changing it to “God made a way…”? To me, when I read “God found a way”, it implies that He had to look for a way. Totally your call, though! I might just be too picky. 🙂

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  5. Yeah, you’re right. At the end of the day, that really is the cold hard fact. Hard truth, but good to hear. Thanks man.

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  6. Nice post!

    You are so right!

    Evangelism is opening our mouths and sharing what our Lord has done for them and for us.

    It is speaking into their lostness with the only cure for that lostness, Jesus Christ.

    The Lord will be there in our poor words to accomplish His purposes.

    Thanks!

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  8. One thing you forget about evangelism is that there is a Genesis 1, 2 before the Fall. We should share w/ others the reality that we were originally created good and had God’s Spirit living in us before we get to the doom and gloom about sin.

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  9. T Sheets,

    “We” weren’t in the garden and “we” never had that un tarnished relationship with God. “We” were born as children of wrath and unless one is predestinated by God to be saved, that cannot be changed. That reality needs to be part of the gospel proclamation.

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  10. Ramsey is good at marketing and making money, too good. These guys hound churches to use their system. I used to get phone calls, e-mails, and mail from them all the time at our church. I was even assigned an account manager who called me bi-weekly to know “when we could get started.” When I asked to be removed from their contact list they acted like I was not a Christian if I didn’t use their material to help people become debt free. It took several calls and e-mails to get them to stop and every one I talked to thought I was going against the will of God. His employees view themselves as some kind of missionaries.
    I guess am just down on any group that wants to make money while operating out of a church. And Dave Ramsey’s #1 target is churches. If you want to be a mission, do it for free, otherwise your just another company wanting to make money off our congregation.

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  11. Manfred – You are right in saying “we” today were not in the Garden, but that is a part of our history. Adam and Eve are grandpa and grandma. We may be born into sin, but it was never intended to be that way and it’s important to look back to Genesis 1, 2 to see that, otherwise sin doesn’t make sense. I guess you will have a hard time looking back since you seem to be denying the freedom of choice humans have been given by God.

    Pastor Harold – H hear what you are saying about the Ramsey costs and checkups. I know someone who was harassed in a similar way you were describing. There are ways to get around the costs with the Ramsey stuff. I see nothing wrong with getting the DVDs and allowing people to watch them for free and take their own notes.

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  12. T Sheets,

    Clearly, my summary of the gospel doesn’t include everything that could be included in a presentation of the gospel. While God creating us may be an important part of presenting the gospel to some people, I don’t really see how a discussion of Adam’s situation would be an important point with anyone.

    I think our sinfulness is an excellent place to start with the vast majority of people I’ve talked to. Why would someone seek the Savior unless they realize they’re in need of saving?

    Thanks,
    Bill

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  13. Bill – How do we know we are in need of saving if we do not fully know why we are sinners in need of saving in the first place?

    You must start with Gen 1, 2 or you jump in to only half of the story. It’s like starting a movie halfway through. Ok, we are sinners, but why? What’s our history? Why are we in this state? Answers to these questions come from Genesis 1 and 2.

    T <

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  14. T Sheets,

    Why would it be important to know why we’re sinners? People get saved all the time without knowing why they’re sinners.

    Thanks,
    Bill

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  15. Bill,

    What does one need to be saved from, if he knows no sin? Implicit in the God given gift of faith in Christ is the growing knowledge that we are sinners in dire need of His grace.

    One who thinks he is “OK”, might accept a non-biblical Jesus (ala Joel Osteen), but he will spurn the notion that he needs to be saved – having done nothing wrong. Such is a deceived person.

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  16. I see that quite often in the Christian blogesphere.

    People just don’t think that they are all that bad.

    That’s where the strong Word of law comes in…to kill them off to the ‘I’m really not so bad and with a little help I can get better’ project.

    We are that bad, and we need to be killed and then raised again with Christ…over and over, and over again.

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  17. Manfred and Theoldadam,

    I certainly believe that someone needs to know that they’re sinners, as is evidenced in the post, and my comment before the last one. I’m just not sure what T Sheets is talking about, and my last comment was written to him.

    Thanks,
    Bill

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  19. Bill – You get a flat tire on a car. You have a problem and it must be fixed. Your theology is telling people that they have a flat tire and they must fix it. This is true, it is a problem and must be fixed. But, how do you know a flat tire is a problem in the first place unless you have been driving around on a good one and have that knowledge of a working good tire? That knowledge tells you there is something wrong with a flat and you shouldn’t drive around on it. A flat tire is not the norm.

    It just makes more sense to know “our” story, starting in Genesis 1 and 2. It sounds as if you would like to rip those two chapters out of the Bible and start with chapter 3. Why? Certainly if that was God’s plan He would have done it, but He didn’t.

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  20. T Sheets,

    If you think that telling people about Adam is important, you should definitely go for it. How often have you done it? Do you approach strangers and talk about Adam?

    Do you have examples from the Bible where Jesus or anyone else witnessed, and included Adam’s story?

    Thanks,
    Bill

    P.s. The thing that shows people how sinful they are is the law. Sin is transgression of the law (1 John 3:4). The law stops us from justifying ourselves, shows us what sin is (Romans 3:19-20), shows us the exceeding sinfulness of our sin (Romans 7:13), and is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). I guess to use your analogy, the law would be like a tire guage, and knowledge that your tires should be at 35 psi.

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  21. I have listened to Dave Ramsey for years now and he is an honorable man and I am really offended that people would say something so easily against someone who is helping people. Unfortunately, many Christians are in debt, extreme debt. Dave Ramsey has a solid program which is being used to help people break free from the world’s system of spend and more spending. He spends a lot of time encouraging couples to get together and develop a budget, save, give to the church, etc. He has a solid “ministry”, even though it is in the financial realm and not in the pulpit. Many in the pulpit are in debt and their churches are going bankrupt because they are violating God’s laws. How many articles do we see every day about churches losing their property.

    I go to one of the largest churches in south Louisiana and we have only had one sermon on finances and how to get out of debt in several years. Our church doesn’t offer Financial Peace University, I found it somewhere else. Through listening to Dave Ramsey, we only have a car note and a house note and we are working on paying both of those off. It is nice to be spiritual and say the answer is in the Word of God, but God uses people also and if someone is performing a tremendous service, why mock him?

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  22. Hi Diana,

    Maybe you could give me an example where anyone has mocked Dave Ramsey, because I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I did was point out his error concerning how he advertises his product, and one commenter said he doesn’t like his sales staff.

    All I’m saying is that teaching people the Bible’s financial principles isn’t evangelism. I even recommended the product, so I don’t understand why you’re offended.

    Thanks,
    Bill

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  23. Current events in my Christian life have really had me thinking about the phrases “invite Jesus into your life” and “asking Jesus into your heart”. They are obviously not Biblical sayings. You will not find them in the Bible. People say that Jesus has to wait on you. Tell that to the Apostle Paul.

    Jesus kicked the door down and walked into Pauls’ “life” and “heart”. Paul sure didn’t “invite” Him or “open his hearts door” to Him.

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  25. “[A]sking Jesus into your heart [is] obviously not [a] Biblical saying.”

    Absolutely true!! And if I hear one more person say they “prayed and asked Jesus into their heart” I’m gonna barf on their shoes. (Sorry for the graphic. That’s just how tired I am of that pablum.)

    Jesus kicked the door down and walked into Paul’s “life” and “heart”. Paul sure didn’t “invite” Him or “open his heart’s door” to Him.

    AMEN!! AMEN!! AMEN!!

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