In all the times I’ve read the Bible, either I’ve missed it or these aren’t there:
- The Bible doesn’t tell us to invite unsaved people to church.
- It doesn’t tell us we need to get people saved.
- The Scriptures never mention attendance numbers at any meeting of the church (unless you want to stretch a point to include I Corinthians 15:6, but that is talking about witnesses to the truth of Christ’s resurrection).
- The Scriptures encourage evangelism, but never condemn anyone for not being evangelistic, not even in I Corinthians or in Revelation 2-3, which together describe almost everything that could be wrong in a church.
- My Bible doesn’t anywhere tell any church to start a particular program to target reaching a particular group of people.
- It never says we need to get more people into the church. It never says we need to get more young people into the church.
- The Word of God never says we need to make our church services appealing to unbelievers when they visit. It only suggests, in I Corinthians 14:23-24, that our message is to be clear enough so they can understand it if they do visit.
- The Bible never mentions how many people Paul or any other person led to the Lord.
- The Bible never tells us how many churches Paul, Peter, or anyone else started.
- The Scriptures seem to say more about removing people from the church (I Corinthians 5, II Thessalonians 3, Matthew 18, Romans 16:17, etc.) than they do about bringing people into the church.
Just some things to consider when we think about the purpose of the church, missions, and evangelism.
Mind Renewers 
Now bro Jon, you know all that stuff is mentioned in Paul’s missing letter to the Corinthians! 🙂
Patrick, Patrick, you MUST LEARN TO READ! All I said is that “I haven’t found” them. “Found” and “missing” are mutually exclusive! 🙂
You know, I don’t believe I’ve found them either!!
I’ll have to ask Dad… see if he has… 🙂
Tell him to check that missing letter to the Corinthians Patrick mentioned. I’d do it myself, but I can’t find my copy.
Jon,
Not sure about number 4. Wouldn’t you say evangelism is a command to the church? (The Great Commission and Acts 1:8 come to mind) If so, the condemnation is inherent in the command- do this or do wrong. Love the rest of the list though.
Hi, Chip. Thanks for reading AND commenting. Good question, surprised no one pointed it out before (this post has received a lot of attention). I had indeed thought of that, and decided to include #4 anyway — and worded it carefully. Several thoughts:
First, I don’t see inherent condemnation in a command. I take your point, that if we don’t obey we are condemned. You are obviously correct. But God’s commands are for our benefit, not for our condemnation (note also John 3:17). So I wouldn’t view a command in that way. But you are correct that a command makes us choose between obedience and condemnation.
Second, the statement still stands. Despite all the problems in the NT churches, we don’t see any “you aren’t evangelising, you’re terrible” statements. We hear them in churches today all the time, but they aren’t in Scripture.
Here’s the point of #4: If I go into the pulpit and preach against people’s failure to evangelise, I’m doing something that the Holy Spirit never ever found it necessary to do in the Scriptures. It just didn’t happen. And we need to take that into consideration when we talk about the church and evangelism.
Either they never failed to evangelise in NT times, or it wasn’t important enough to merit an inspired rebuke, or failure to evangelise is only a symptom and the inspired rebukes went to root causes rather than the symptom. I’ll choose door #3. Which means if I hear a sermon chastising people for lack of evangelism, I’m going to think 1) he’s not really got the emphasis of the Word in what he’s saying and 2) he’s not hitting the underlying problems.
If people love the Lord, they’ll want to talk about Him. If they live pure lives, people will ask them why (I Peter 3:15). The only thing that keeps someone who loves the Lord and is living a holy life from witnessing is fear. Instead of lambasting people for not being evangelistic enough, they need to be encouraged in boldness, holiness, and love. The other will fall into place then, and without those things it will be forced and fake.
The emphasis of Scripture is on holiness and love, not on evangelism.
Does that make sense, or does it sound like I’m rambling? 🙂