I was eating my breakfast, thinking about The Who concert I had attended Friday night and thinking to myself, “What if I were a missionary returning from a 40 years ministry among a primitive people. What would my expectations be?” Yes, I would imagine The Who would still be a known group since they are celebrating 50 years as a group this year. But what about something simple as going to the music store? “Where is your record section? Or possibly, your 8 track or cassette?” If perhaps during their re-introduction to life in the modern west, the missionary is hosted by a Christan family, what kind of impression will there be? They will surely be impressed by the comforts and conveniences we enjoy. If they attend a church whose seeker-sensetivity is so accute that “people” are the predominant center of worship, they will surely be impressed. As far as that goes, any sample of churches having carpeting, a paved driveway, and a sound system will surely be impressive, if even slightly.

Now, think of the 40 years of the missionary, and consider our lives in retrospect. What resources have we squandered in our consumerism that would have been better used in sowing the seed of the Kingdom? What interest has been paid to a mortgage company by way of usery that would have met the dietery needs of an entire community for a year? A missionary, concerned solely with the prospect of saving souls will have the least ambition of consumerism. It is indeed an appalling reality.

Let us consider our attention now on evangelism. It is not the building in which the church meets that God offered the world as a vessel of salvation. The facilities do not save a person, nor does a program. The community of believers met and are to meet for the edification and equipping of the saints. To make a structure into the saving vessel is to put it in the place of a pagan temple, equal in its devotion and the service of its devotees to that of Athena or Apollo. Is it not by the Word we are saved when by faith we came to it through hearing? It was the intruction from a person who took us into the Word and by  the influence of the Spirit through the vessel of a human being that we came to know this faith. It was not through the works of any person nor the waters at any particular location that we were saved through baptism.

To the missionary, the tools that brought about life changes were the scarred hands that worked and knees calloused from prayer. A bedroll was more than adequate for resting from a tiring day of labor. The banquets held with thanksgiving were rice and beans with maybe a small portion of meat when rarely available. The satisfaction was not in the sacrifice of an austere life, but in the produce of God in the Kingdom. Sending money to missioneries has become a modern form of indulgences convincing the giver of a greater holiness that would cover the sins of apathy.

If evengelism is to be an impetus, then let us first consider how to best equip and edify the saint to this holy task, as was the purpose of the church. Let us no adorn the church with the expectation that the furniture or carpeting will win a single soul. All the conveniences that exist in our homes by virtue of our many technological advances can not replace the work of our hands and knees and the personal relation that will make for vessel of God.  “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14)