Public evangelism, public proclamation, is the vanguard of the church. It is altogether biblical. The prophets spoke to the masses. Jeremiah went to the Temple, the most populous area of the city. Isaiah spoke to the cities of Judah. Jonah evangelized a whole city.
Jesus taught the multitudes by the sea, on the grassy plains, and in the city streets. The apostles spoke to both Jew and Gentile in the most public manner possible—synagogues, market places, wherever the masses gathered. They sought to arrest the attention of the multitudes. They attended the great feasts. They spoke to a nation. They spoke to a world.
One of the most thrilling stories that has ever come to me describes the great camp meetings the Adventists had in the 1870s. One such meeting was held out side Boston. People came by the thou sands; even special trains were run. This is what Mrs. White had in mind when she said the message will return with power to the East, and it will return with power all over this continent and around the world.
I submit that every vision Ellen White had of a climactic closing work had strong overtones and connotations of public proclamation. Multitudes, she says, who have never heard words like these before will listen.
Now, I am not knocking other forms of outreach. I do not have an either/or mentality. I simply want to put things in order, in God's order. "There may be con versions without the instrumentality of a sermon. Where persons are so situated that they are deprived of every means of grace, they are wrought upon by the Spirit of God and convinced of the truth through reading the Word; but God's appointed means of saving souls is through 'the foolishness of preaching.'" 1 "The world will not be converted by the gift of tongues, or by the working of miracles, but by preaching Christ crucified." 2
The Reformation was borne by public proclamation. And every important re birth of faith has been associated with the rediscovery of the centrality of preaching.
Preaching prevents and heals
Karl Menninger, the great American psychologist, wrote, "Some clergymen prefer pastoral counseling of individuals to the pulpit function. But the latter is a greater opportunity to both heal and prevent. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, indeed, and there is much prevention to be done for large numbers of people who hunger and thirst after direction toward righteousness. . . .
"Preach! Tell it like it is. Say it from the pulpit. Cry it from the housetops. "What shall we cry?
"Cry comfort, cry repentance, cry hope. Because recognition of our part in the world's transgression is the only remaining hope." 3
We believe in public evangelism be cause we believe in the Word. The multitudes need the Word. The Word is the miracle-working power. "The hearts of many in the world as well as many church members are hungering for the bread of life and thirsting for the waters of salvation. They are interested in the service of song, but they are not longing for that or even prayer. They want to know the Scriptures. What saith the Word of God to me? The Holy Spirit is working on mind and heart, drawing them to the bread of life. They see everything around them changing. Human feelings, human ideas of what constitutes religion, change. They come to hear the Word just as it reads." 4
Marvelous things happen when masses come together drawn by the Holy Spirit. Hearts are made impressible. The Word is taken and stamped upon their souls. The Spirit speaks to people individually and personally. They hear the still small voice. They are brought to the foot of the cross. They rise up to follow Him. They are made whole.
Ellen White chided those ministers who stayed too close to the shore, hovering over churches, going about the usual rounds. She chastised those who con fined their ministry to the saved, reporting that "we had a good time." She rebuked the local congregations for binding their ministers to them to solve their petty troubles and manufactured trials. She suggested that the members should say to the preachers, "We will take care of the services here at the local church; you go out and preach the mes sage to those who know it not."
And Karl Barth writes as though he had read Ellen White. "One thing must prevail: 'Proclaim the gospel to every creature!' . . . Where the church is living, it must ask itself whether it is serving this commission or whether it is a purpose in itself. If the second is the case, then as a rule it begins to smack of the 'sacred.'... It should be an out and out 'worldly' thing, open to all humanity: 'Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.'"5
We are now almost at the swelling of Jordan. The church is knee-deep in troubles, and the tide is rising. The situation is beyond human methods, human strategies, human remedies. Post-Christian man has given way to neo-pagan man.
I am under conviction, the profound conviction, that the church will be girded and strengthened for this final conflict as it engages in mission. I would say with George Sweazey that the church is the evangelist. The church is a witnessing, preaching community. It is renewed for mission, and it is renewed in mission.
Please understand, I am not knocking personal one-on-one confrontation evangelism, nor am I knocking the fire side Bible study with the family and neighborhood friends. I am not knocking the spread of our literature or the witness that is given by the unselfish, winsome lifestyle. I am simply saying that the church must establish her priorities and put public proclamation where the Lord has placed it—upfront, first place, numero uno.
I am further saying that every other activity, every other outreach ministry, is tributary to public evangelism. Like the rivulets and creeks that feed the river that in turn flows out to the sea, so it all climaxes and comes together in mass evangelism. Everything else is prologue. Mass evangelism is harvest, reaping.
Finding the model ministry
Ellen White went to a church one Sabbath and found it crowded to the doors, standing room only, and precious little of that left. A vision that she had had many years before flashed into her consciousness. She said what she had seen re minded her of a beehive, and went on to tell of the activities that they were engaged in: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, conducting all kinds of out reach programs, operating a church school, a vegetarian restaurant, clinics and treatment rooms, a home for working men, ministries to the oppressed and depressed, specialized ministries to sail ors and transients, systematic distribution of literature, gospel correspondence as they used to do it in those days. And then in addition to all of that, she said, from time to time ministers would give the warning in prominent halls, in public situations.
This was Ellen White's dream. This is the pattern. We must adopt this as our model and then work to make it happen.
I mentioned above a wave of trouble that seems to be cresting. But another wave is sweeping over the North American church. The people of God are dis enchanted with earth's flawed systems. The long wilderness journey has made them homesick. The message, the third angel's message, despite all the attacks upon it, shines clearer and brighter than ever before. The organization under at tack remains intact. The anchor holds. There is a greater interest in spiritual things than ever before, and this interest cuts across the broad spectrum of the Adventist community.
Please understand that I've not gone Pollyanna. We still face troubles without and within. But in spite of the many adversaries, I see a great window of opportunity open before us. How long it will remain open, I do not know. But we had better enter while it remains open. Our people need leadership. They need direction. We must take the initiative, go on the attack, be aggressive.
Conference officers must lead the way. We must wring out every dollar and dime that we can for evangelism. We must not waste prodigally. We must monitor the programs and support those that are fruitful. And as for those programs and methods and evangelists who are not fruitful, we must guide them, give them pointed counsel, provide resources so that they can, if at all possible, become effective witnesses.
The evangelistic enterprise must not be carried forward in a stumbling, bumbling, fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants way. The whole church must get with it and be involved in it. This emphasis on public evangelism as being the ministry of the entire church and not just of a small group of specialists will galvanize the Adventist community as nothing has be fore. It will weave the diverse strands into a single garment. Sowing, reaping, plowing, and planting will all take place simultaneously. Seeing the reaping, the plowman and the planter will be encouraged. This spirit of evangelism, of proclamation, will seize men and women, boys and girls compelling them to give the message. And whether the world hears or forbears, they will know that the message of God has been among them.
May God give us a new and settled determination to put first things first.
1 Ellen G. White, Testimonies, vol. 5, p. 300.
2 ______, Testimonies to Ministers, p. 424.
3 Karl Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin?
(Dallas: Hawthorn Books, 1973), p. 228.
4 Ellen G. White, Evangelism, p. 501.
5 Cited by George Sweazey in The Church as
Evangelist (New York: Harper and Row, 1984),
p. 74.
