Q. Elder Bradford, tell us how the Adventist message came to you and your family. Are "you a product of evangelism, at least indirectly? I suppose all of us, in one sense, are products of evangelism.
A. That's right. My mother's parents became Seventh-day Adventists as the result of Edson White's work on the Morning Star riverboat in the 1890s, in Mississippi. My father's father became a Seventh-day Adventist through reading The Great Controversy. He was a lay preacher in the Presbyterian Church, in Kansas City, Kansas, and he accepted the message way back in those early days. It's because of his efforts that we have several Adventist churches today; he became a worker in the Adventist Church after he was grown. He sold his business and set out to preach and was ordained.
Q. You are the leader for North America. What are your ideals for evangelism in that division, and what is your appraisal of what is happening evangelistically in North America?
A. I would say that there is a reawakened interest in evangelism in North America that will soon, I believe, manifest itself in a resurgence of evangelistic activity. The Andrews University Church Growth Study, which was commissioned by the Faith Action Advance Committee of the North American Division, indicates clearly that our churches, our lay people, and our pastors believe in evangelism. Of course, there is no dichotomy between inreach and outreach, between nurture and soul winning. They both must go together. So I think there are signs that evangelism is bursting forth with new vigor and activity all over North America.
Q. You wouldn't agree, then, with those who say that evangelism is especially difficult to do in North America, or that Inter-America or South America can have evangelistic success but it is a different story in North America?
A. No, I don't agree with that. We must adapt our methods and our approaches to meet each situation, but I don't agree with the defeatist attitude — the line some people parrot — that we can't do evangelism here. I just don't believe that.
Q. You mentioned that you hope far a resurgence of evangelism and that both in-reach and outreach are necessary parts of it. Would you outline the dimensions of that resurgence as you hope to see it?
A. Well, looking at the statistics, we can see a pattern of increase in soul winning, as someone pointed out the other day in two of our committees, the Faith Action Advance Committee, and the General Conference Thousand Days of Reaping Committee. In 1978 there were approximately 30,000 baptisms in North America. In 1979 there were 33,000; in 1980 there were almost 37,000. If that pattern were followed, we would have almost 40,000 in 1981. Unfortunately, we're not quite keeping that up.
There is, however, an encouraging word in various parts of the country, that larger crowds of non-Adventist people are attending meetings. There is a receptivity on the part of the public in recent times. People are interested in prophecy, current events, and health. So we've got avenues to people. And those who are skillful enough to know how to use these avenues to advantage are having success.
Q. You have just finished a series of meetings of your own, in which you participated with your son-in-law in Baltimore. Based on this recent experience could you list any trends that we could and should capitalize on?
A. The wave of the future is the involvement of the total church in the evangelistic experience. And I wouldn't enter into any kind of public evangelism without the assurance that the churches were involved—first of all, the pastors and church officers. The way to go now is to get the people involved, because still the best interests we get are those generated by church members. In the New Testament sense, the church members are the ministers anyway. I was on the plane coming back from California some time ago, and a lady sat behind me whose husband is pastor of a large church somewhere nearby here in Maryland. She said to me, "Shepherds don't reproduce sheep; sheep produce sheep!" And I thought of that. So our approach should be to get the people involved. Do anything to excite the people, to motivate them. And, of course, the church must have an ongoing program.
Now another thing, some of my evangelistic friends have told me that there is not the high threshold of prejudice against the Seventh-day Adventist Church that there once was. Our meetings in Baltimore were held in a church fully identified as a Seventh-day Adventist church. And people came—some of whom hadn't ever been inside a Seventh-day Adventist church. In fact, one man told me he hadn't been to church in almost sixty years! He was a man of 70 years of age, but he said he just didn't believe what he had heard was taught in the churches. He listened on the radio, but he didn't believe that, either. So he just stayed home and read his Bible. But just casually seeing our advertisement in his mailbox, he decided to come, and he and his wife were baptized! So there are people out on the street who can be reached with some kind of appeal and who will come to public meetings these days. But it's going to have to be, and it must be, a cooperative effort, a total involvement, of ministers, church officers, and members. It's always going to go flat otherwise.
Q. As vice-president of the General Conference for North America, you don't have much extra time on your hands, I'm sure! Many of us who aren't in pastoral ministry excuse ourselves from evangelism by pleading a lack of time. Even some pastors don't feel they have time to prepare for a series of public meetings, and rely instead on professional evangelists. How do you work a series of meetings such as you have just held into your schedule?
A. I'm like John Wesley, who said he never threw away a sermon in his life. I have the very first one I ever preached. I don't preach it anymore, but I have it! I've always kept all of my evangelistic sermons. I've tried to keep them up to date, of course. I've had several short campaigns since being here at the General Conference, so my sermons are fairly current, and I don't have to take a lot of time in sermon preparation. That's one advantage I have. Also, we are close by Baltimore. It takes us only an hour to drive there.
Q. Were you involved in visitation, as well as preaching?
A. Oh, yes. I wouldn't say I was involved in extensive visitation, but I did some. My wife and I always try to visit some. We're still going to be visiting people over there. I found great joy in working with these humble people. South Baltimore is not the most affluent section of the city. And yet they gave good offerings—$60 or $70 some nights from these poor people. It was a great honor and a privilege for me to go into their homes. A woman who is the assistant minister in a Baptist church read about keeping the Sabbath. I went into her home and prayed with her and her family. She isn't baptized yet, but she's going to be. And she's going to bring twelve or fifteen people with her from that little church. And there was another man—the one who told me he hadn't been to church for sixty years. I went around to visit his wife, and she accepted everything at home in the bed, sick. She came to only three meetings. When I went to visit her, she said, "I cleaned that old hog out of the refrigerator," and she laughed! And her husband said, "How do you pay the tithe? Before you pay your bills or after?"
I said, "Now you know you'd pay the Lord first." And he answered, "I thought that." You know, nobody in this building can pay me that way! Elder Wilson can't pay me, that way!
I had another advantage. It's my son-in-law's church, and he has kept me acquainted with what he's doing. They have been involved in The Real Truth Bible Course, a very brief, simple, mimeographed course. So they had quite a number of people studying, and still do. We really wanted to follow that up.
Also, we got a lady from Birmingham, Alabama, Mrs. Mildred Johnson, who had worked with me in Memphis, Tennessee, in Mission '72. She is a crackerjack of a Bible instructor. I am a firm believer in women Bible instructors. They can get close to people; they can give the mother's touch, and appeal in ways that men never can. In a month, this lady prepared twenty-eight people from her list for baptism. She didn't have a long list, but she worked it thoroughly, and had tremendous results.
I'm sold on women Bible instructors. I think we ought to multiply them. I am going to suggest to our North American FAA Committee—which is the Thousand Days Committee for North America— that, based on what the fields return to us, we set a target for lay Bible instructors, trained for reaping campaigns during the Thousand Days.
Now I realize that Thousand Days, FAA, or whatever it is, must be more than drum-beating. We can't send people out like they sent children out in the crusades, unequipped, unprepared, without strate1-gies, without proper leadership and guidance. We've got to prepare our people, because there's a real war out there, and many of us are not ready for it. The first thing the church must do is undergird its members, and prepare its personnel, and give them the weapons that we have. Thank God, we have mighty weapons! We must develop the strategies, the tactics, the plans, and then each of us along the line must execute them.
We have to face the fact that people cannot be public relationed into the message. The only way you're going to get people into the message is eyeball-to-eye ball, heart-to-heart, one-to-one confrontation. "Evangelism is not spraying the world with words," as Leighton Ford once said. I think we ought to attempt to communicate realities to pastors and their people. Otherwise, we're not going to be credible. They have a tendency$~~you know, to look upon us here in the General Conference as drumbeaters, as armchair generals who say "You go, while we encourage you!" We've got to communicate to this division that we understand where it's at, that we know what's happening in the local church.
The local church is the most visible manifestation of the body of Christ, and it's endowed with power. It is here that the saints are outfitted and equipped for service. It has power already. We can't create it here at the General Conference. It's the Holy Ghost that pours out His gifts. What we are trying to do is release the dynamics that are already there, to bring the gifts to flower, to give the Holy Spirit an atmosphere and climate in which He can operate and become the Chief Administrator of the church. We want to provide tools to challenge people and hold before them all of these great objectives and targets that we own together. Then we want to encourage them and give them a little example leadership. And the Holy Spirit and the people will show us. They will.
But we've got to prove to pastors that this is not another scheme, another slogan—not just another big banner and bunting that we crank out every so many years so that someone can chart it and show the peaks and the valleys, and what Earl Cleveland calls the "muscle spasms." The FAA approach is to help undergird whatever is done in the local fields. We're not telling people you've got to use the title FAA. Some people don't like it; we don't care. A rose by any name will smell as sweet. It's the principles that are important.
Q. You've mentioned Faith Action, which is the program for North America. How is Faith Action Advance going to affect evangelism for North America?
A. Faith Action Advance is based on three basic principles. The first one is that every responsible man is to drop responsibilities on others. This concept comes from Ellen White. The union president's first responsibility is to make his staff and his conference presidents capable, effective leaders. He drops responsibility on them. The conference president's first duty is to make his staff and his pastors capable, effective leaders. And the pastor, who is an administrator and a responsible man, is to make his church officers and department leaders and every member of his church capable, effective leaders and ministers. And, of course, central to this first great principle is holding before each part of the team their joint mission, priorities, and objectives.
The second big principle is that every unit of organization is to be of service to its target population. We are all here as service units, and we have target populations.
Then the third principle is that the local church is the basic unit of organization and the focus of all activity. Here are all the essential elements of church growth.
You know, church growth is the in concept now. I have sampled the churchgrowth literature. I've read Peter Wagner, McGavran, Schuller, and Win Am (and James Kennedy before that). I can't say that I've thoroughly done a definitive study, but I've sampled them, and I've picked up some things. It's almost like deja vu when I read these things. I say, "I've read this before!" I've come to the place where I see that every valid principle that these people enunciate is already clearly outlined in the Spirit of Prophecy. All these valid principles that they have can be reduced to two, upon which all the others hang. The first one is "small companies," and the second is "assignment." These are the essential elements of church growth. Ellen White says that she was shown by One who cannot err that small companies should be the basis of all missionary endeavor. Small companies. That's why Wesley succeeded and why Whitefield's movement fizzled out. Little Wesley reproduced himself in small group classes.
Ellen White also says that everyone added to the ranks by conversion is to be assigned a post of duty. One of the big things in the church-growth movement today is spiritual gifts. We read about spiritual gifts everywhere. Now, the development and use of spiritual gifts is nothing more or less than "assignment," because we have already been assigned a task by the gifts that God has given us through the Holy Spirit. He's made the assignment by the gifts. So to help people discover their spiritual gifts and to use them is a part of assignment. And we could double our successes, not only in soul winning but in retention, if we knew skillfully how to help people develop and use their spiritual gifts. We'd win more and hold more.
And then, of course, there are the priorities. The last part of Faith Action Advance sets the priorities as the Word, worship, fellowship, and service. You can't have a church without the Word. You can't have a church without worship, fellowship, and service. All forms of outreach and ministries. That's Faith Action Advance in a nutshell.
Q. Statistics indicating how people make decisions for Christ and the church seem to confirm that the number one avenue by which people come into the Adventist Church is from favorably knowing a successful Adventist or having a close Adventist friend. Public evangelism, for example, is way down the list almost at the bottom as a means of bringing people, in. Would you comment on this?
A. From my own experience and observation, it is public evangelism, however, that brings it all about and ties it together. As I said before, people are not going to come into this church in large numbers without a confrontation with the Word. They may have these good, favorable impressions. They may have these Adventist friends who gave them bread over the fence, or helped them in some way, or witnessed by their life. Don't misunderstand; we ought to do these things. But I believe that these people are not going to become Seventh-day Adventists until they have been in a situation where the Word challenges them and they are confronted with it. Most people have to have this almost traumatic experience in which they are made to think about the claims of Christ as a matter of life and death. Very, very few people will just drift in.
Q. Are you saying that evangelism can take many forms, but that they all need to kad, ultimately, to a confrontation that is best done, perhaps, in public meetings?
A. In public meetings or in church on Sabbath. We really pass up great evangelistic opportunities on Sabbath. I talked yesterday on the phone with a union president who told me, "I have challenged my presidents and the pastors in this field to make a call to join the church every Sabbath." In the black community we call it "opening the doors of the church." There are scores of people who have been attending our churches and have never been brought face to face with a decision for eternity. This is a problem with too many churches. They have become religious clubs, not really churches. But with the Word, worship, fellowship, and service, they will be churches. Every Sabbath morning ought to be an evangelistic experience.
Look at the Southern Baptists. My sister-in-law is a widow now. She has a friend, a professional friend, who asked her to go to his church, the First Baptist church of Jacksonvills, Florida, and sing in the choir. It's one of these huge institutional churches with thousands of members and two or three services every Sunday. She went on Sunday and signed the guest register. Thursday, two gentle men came to see her. They said, "Oh, Mrs. Allen, we see that you're single now. Why don't you come arid join our singles club? We have something to offer you." Now if every Seventh-day Adventist church were that alert, we would see results that would be astonishing! If every church would tactfully and lovingly give people opportunities to join, we'd be amazed. We'd be amazed here in North America, because there are many people who have been coming to our churches, some of them off and on for years, and nobody's ever challenged them to join.
Q. How important do you feel it is for us here in the General Conference complex, to give some kind of personal leadership to evangelism?
A. We should be involved, no doubt about it—not in a way to preempt the ministry of the pastor, but to support him. I don't think that our efforts sallying forth from this complex ought to be in competition with what the brethren are doing out there. We shouldn't demand big budgets from them. We ought to go out as a lay person almost, and assist in whatever way we can.
Q. Would you call this example leadership?
A. I think so. I wouldn't want to go to a conference committee and demand a huge budget. I don't look on myself as a professional evangelist, but I must become involved to the extent that I will say to a pastor, I'd be glad to come and help you in any way I can.
Q. If you had a final word to say to pastors regarding the priority of evangelism the importance of it what would you tell them?
A. I started to say, I'd use Earl Cleve land's little saying. He says evangelism will grow hair and cure bunions. I don't know if I ought to say that. But I would say that I agree with Karl Menninger, the psychologist. When he was asked what he would do to heal America, he said, "I'd preach. I'd preach repentance and faith." He chides the preacher, "You preachers have an unparalleled opportunity. Psychiatrists with the largest clientele see only a few people every week, but you have the opportunity on a given moment—eleven o'clock at your worship hour—to speak to scores, hundreds, and some of you to thousands. That's preventive medicine. That brings healing."
If you can show me a counseling ministry that's filled up a church, I'll go into it. I'll drop preaching and go into counseling. So I would say to pastors to preach. That's our job—to preach. Preach the Word of God. Preach it evangelistically; preach it redemptively. Preach Christ and lift Him up in such a way that sinners will be saved.
