Reaching Generation Next , livre ebook

© 2002 by Lewis A. Drummond

Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Book House Company
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
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Ebook edition created 2013

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ISBN 978-1-4412-1531-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE ®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture marked KJV is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture marked NEB is taken from The New English Bible . Copyright © 1961, 1970, 1989 by The Delegates of Oxford University Press and The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press. Reprinted by permission.

Scripture marked NIV is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked RSV is taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

Scripture marked TLB is taken from The Living Bible © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked WEYMOUTH is taken from WEYMOUTH’S NEW TESTAMENT IN MODERN SPEECH by Richard Francis Weymouth. Published by special arrangement with James Clarke & Company, Ltd., and reprinted by permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.

Quotation on pages 21–22 taken from The Gagging of God by D. A. Carson. Copyright © 1996 by D. A. Carson. Used by permission of Zondervan.

The epilogue is taken from Lewis A. Drummend. Eight Keys to Biblical Revival . Minneapolis: Bethany, 1994. Used by permission.
A word to our postmodern day:

I observe that you are very religious. . . . I . . . found an altar with this inscription, “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.” Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.
Acts 17:22–23
Contents

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Foreword by Calvin Miller
Preface

1. Today’s Emerging World
2. What Is Church-Centered Evangelism?
3. Having an Answer to Postmodern Questions
4. Constructing a Christian Worldview for Postmoderns and Moderns Alike
5. The Proclamation of the Good News of God
6. A Basic Theology of Evangelism
7. Obstacles to Overcome
8. Equipping God’s People for the Task
9. Spiritual Power for the Work

Epilogue
Appendix A Evangelism and People with Disabilities by W. Daniel Blair
Appendix B A Diagnostic Church Survey
Appendix C How to Discover Your Gift
Notes
About the Author
Other Books by Author
Foreword

As the new millennium gets under way, evangelical Christians find themselves categorical thinkers in a noncategorical age. Taking the gospel to a world whose citizens see themselves as “special cases” of individuality where no universal codes apply is going to require the most sensitive and creative approaches to evangelism.
Lewis Drummond has been involved in both personal and mass evangelism for the past several decades. During those years he has observed the continual changes of the sociological fabric of Western culture. We have moved from the high years of cultural pride in the fifties, through the dyspepsia of the Vietnam years, to the blasé cultural indifference of the nineties, and finally to the return of patriotism in 2001. In every age his has been an important voice on how to reach out to a culture in hasty transition.
But the arrival of the postmodern mind-set has presented a particularly difficult challenge. Postmoderns have accepted their category while denying they can be categorized. They reject all one-size-fits-all theology. As they see themselves, each of them is too much an individual to admit to any one-for-all approach. Hell and heaven and how one gets to one and avoids the other they say cannot be cut from a single notion of how one comes to Christ. They feel there are no “spiritual laws” that apply to all people.
Further, postmoderns have a “code of individual sovereignty.” That is, they generally feel that people are all right pretty much as they are. Who has the right to require anyone else to believe what they believe even about eternity or how we get converted? Evangelism among many postmoderns is seen to be evil, because they assume that people are okay just as they are, and to try to make them what we think they ought to be is presumptuous and arrogant, even for the nobler causes of Christianity.
Postmoderns are multicultural, and they prize ethnic and religious identity. Christ may be noble and worthy of esteem, they say, but he is not above Buddha or Mohammed. Most postmoderns would also say, “Christians must stop trying to change the world with the kinds of aggressive evangelistic techniques that they used in the old nineteenth century. They must accede that no two possible converts can be handled in the same way or be forced to face one universal set of conversion requirements.
Lewis Drummond has done a good job with diagnosis and prescription in this study. This book may be a pacesetter on the subject of how we are to approach an age stuck in the gospel-avoidance mode. This book will help you understand how postmodern evangelization is to be done. But, as Dr. Drummond suggests, to follow God in fulfilling Christ’s command to the church will require more than a mere reading of any book. It will require a sensitive obedience to the Holy Spirit of God.
Calvin Miller
Preface

There is perhaps no theme that has captured the interest and imagination of the contemporary church quite as profoundly as the concept of evangelism. Nor is any theme more at the core of Christianity than evangelism. It consumed our Lord. That is why he came. It should, therefore, grip us at the very heart of our faith. Thankfully, that which was once ignored or even ridiculed by some has now become the concern of most enlightened Christians. God’s people are coming alive to the fact that the church evangelizes or it dies. It is that serious. And although it may be true that some of the motives that have spurred this new impetus are not as high or spiritual as one would wish, nonetheless, evangelism has become of vital interest to most Christians today, and for that we must thank our Lord. After all, he is the one who inspires the endeavor.
The purpose of this volume is to place in the hands of the Christian leader and the average layperson a basic work on the essential aspects of the evangelistic enterprise and to provide foundational guidelines on how to evangelize in a local church in today’s new world. We do live in a new day. It has been called, among other things, postmodernism or the Generation X era. The people of this generation, as well as the next generation that is rapidly growing up, must be reached.
This book has a practical as well as a theological purpose. The primary theme of the work is that the whole church stands at the fountainhead of the evangelistic tide in God’s kingdom. The church holds the key to successful outreach. Therefore, each believer must become an “evangelist” in a deep and profound sense. Elucidating this essential truth, the book attempts to guide God’s people and his church into a dynamic evangelistic program to reach the new age.
Moreover, there has arisen a fresh openness to spiritual things. Perhaps the terrorism and other calamities of our day, such as the September 11, 2001, attack in America, have cracked open a new door for the gospel. Regardless of what is occurring, this new generation is asking questions. And the church has the answer. It is Jesus Christ.
I must not close this brief preface without expressing my gratitude to the faithful secretaries at Beeson Divinity School. To them I acknowledge my debt. Above all, I express my gratitude to Janice Jordan who labored over the computer for hours getting the manuscript in place. Her work was invaluable. To Paul Baxter I express gratitude for permitting me to draw material from the book we coauthored, Responding to the Skeptic . I also thank my colleague and friend Calvin Miller for the foreword.
So I present my concept of the church’s evangelistic task for today with the prayer that God will use it to inspire and help us all to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Tim. 4:5).
one
Today’s Emerging World

Over thirty years ago I had the privilege of publishing my first book on evangelism. Those days witnessed the beginning of a revolutionary time. Western culture found itself in disturbing flux. In America the Boomers were on the scene with their deep reaction to Vietnam and the old traditions. The Iron Curtain held sway in Eastern Europe and seemed far from coming down, even though cracks and erosion began to appear. Modernity still reigned, but new ideas quickly began filling the cracks that were forming in the worldview of the moderns, a worldview that had held sway since the birth of the Renaissance. Yet, as is often the case, it seemed that many churches were almost oblivious to the ferment bubbling up all around them. They, who could have made a compelling contribution to the turbulent hour, often failed to rise to the challenge.
In that first volume I related the story that came out of the American Revolution of the eighteenth century. The tale seemed an apt illustration of the scene at that time. Washington Irving wrote a parody that unfolds in a fascinating fashion. Old Rip Van W