The following text is an excerpt for Dr. Pierson's book, Needs-Based Evangelism
Chapter 2
Needs-Based Evangelism: An Ancient Answer for a Real Future
The Mission Statement for the Jesus Church
Jesus walked into his hometown church. When it came time for the Scripture reading and the leader invited anyone to read, Jesus stood, took the Bible, and read from Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the opposed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:18-19). Those words spoken by Jesus have become the simple outline for sermons and Sunday school lessons over the years, and behind them is a basic message. Jesus said he came to meet our needs. The litany of things he described in his coming was simply a litany of human needs. In that simple statement said in Nazareth a long time ago, Jesus outline one of the most effective means of leading new people to find the power of God in their lives---that is, to show them how God's love meets their needs. His mission statement can be our church's mission statement, "We have been called to meet needs."
In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus is in a discussion about what is really necessary to go to heaven or to find life. The conclusion of the argument is simple: "Love God and love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus said to do that and you will really live. But it seemed hard to understand. So he told a story about what it would look like. We call it the story of the "good Samaritan." As he concluded that story, Jesus said to go and do the same thing. It is the only story that Jesus told in which he concluded by saying we were to do that very same thing. It is the story of a Samaritan simply responding to a need.
In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus describes judgment day and separating the sheep from the goats. He tells us that the sheep are those who help others. They will go to be with God; those that do not help are out. Then he explains a very powerful concept that is key to bringing people into a relationship with him: When we help someone in need, he is present.
Preachers, pastors, theologians, apostles, bishops, and ordinary Christians search for what it means to lead people to Christ, and we have devised many ways to do it. We hold revival meetings, camp meetings, and prayer meetings. We have pipe organs, praise bands, guitars, harps, flutes, and anything else we can think of, to lead in our worship. Some of us raise our hands, some bow our heads. Some shout and yell, and others are utterly quiet. We search for ways to witness. We stand on street corners and yell at passersby. We send multicolored postcards with clever graphics. We knock on doors, make telephone calls, send out personal letter, and employ countless other means to try to reach new people for Jesus Christ.
The last thing that Jesus said before he ascended into heaven was to go into all the world and preach the gospel (Matthew 28-:19-20). We are called to teach what Jesus taught. We are called to make disciples. On the day of Pentecost, the followers of Jesus modeled for us what we are called to do: lead people to become followers of Jesus and become a part of his church. Yet we continue to struggle with how to do it. In the history of Christianity, there is one approach that always works, and that is the approach Jesus began with: meet the needs of the people and proclaim the gospel.
The Good Samaritan Model
In the story of the good Samaritan, Jesus was in the midst of an argument with a lawyer. The challenge was what you have to do to get to heaven, to be okay with God. Jesus' answer as found in Matthew 22 and Luke 10 was simple. We call them the Great Commandments-love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. But the lawyer was not satisfied with that answer. Like many people, he wanted to know more. So who is my neighbor? The lawyer asked to answer this, Jesus told one of the most powerful, simple, clear stories in the Bible---the story of the good Samaritan, the story of meeting needs.
Strategies for growth in the mainline church today can include mass evangelism, confrontational witnessing, extensive advertising programs, new elaborate facilities, high-tech worship, and media-enhanced preaching. But, unless needs are met, growth won't happen. My church, The United Methodist Church, has for its entire existence focused on meeting needs. John Wesley's preaching in the fields or at the factories was to meet needs. The circuit riders moving across America, bringing the gospel, sought to meet needs. Whether by creating institutions of higher education in America or organizing homes for children, retired people, the homeless, and the marginalized, we know how to meet needs.
What is Needs-Based Evangelism?
We must combine clearly and enthusiastically our ability to meet needs with a proclamation of the gospel. If all we do is meet needs, we do not point people to the One who empowers us to meet those needs; instead, we witness only to ourselves. Making this connection between meeting needs and proclaiming the gospel should be as automatic as a tissue is to a sneeze, as a bandage is to a cut, as a hug is to tears.
A new program of evangelism needs to be instituted intensely all across the church. We must combine a caring ministry with proclamation of the gospel. We must witness as we share and help. When the homeless are fed, they need to be invited to our churches. When the youth are on a church basketball team, it should include prayer and worship. When a parenting class is offered, the gospel needs to be proclaimed. This is needs-based evangelism.
The leadership of the church needs to be committed to developing needs-based evangelism programs across the church. Wherever the needs are, the church should be there with the gospel of Jesus Christ, leading people to a better way of life. In the past, we have developed too many programs and activities within our churches that are nothing more than busy work to help us feel better about being in church. All of our programs need to be focused evangelistic ministry---ministry that includes the sharing of the gospel. With every program possibility considered, the leadership of local churches should ask, Will this lead people to find and follow Christ? It may be fun, fascinating, interesting, and entertaining, but unless it helps people find and follow Christ, it should never be a priority.
A congregation was discussing the possibility of a community drug rehabilitation program at their church. The need was obvious. The program they were considering was government-funded. Mary, the mother of a son who had serious drug problems, led the group advocating the program. In the midst of the discussion, Kevin, a thirty-five-old new church member, changed the direction of the plan. He explained that he had been a drug user for years and was now clean. He agreed with the need, and he felt the church should start a faith-based rehabilitation program where good therapy and good faith were presented together. Today that church has over one hundred people each week at the Friday evening recovery program and worship. Most of the one hundred are now involved in all the church life.
Built on Grace
Needs-based evangelism is one of the most effective and clear means of reaching new people for Jesus Christ. Churches all across America that are clearly meeting the needs of the people in the community are growing. When we combine the authentic social gospel with authentic evangelistic witness, people are led to Christ. This concept is like a two-edged sword. It must have both edges to work: real compassion, care, and help, coupled with authentic witness and sharing of the gospel. It need not be obnoxious, arrogant, or manipulative. It is simply sharing the loving truth.
Robert Schuller founded one of the largest and most influential churches in America, the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, in a drive-in theater. For many years, he held the Institute for Church Leadership. And in his Institute, he would describe their strategy of evangelism. He described it simply as, "Find a need, and meet it." That idea is both biblical and effective.
Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston is the largest church in the United Methodist denomination. When Kirbyjon Caldwell began his ministry at Windsor Village, he combined powerful evangelistic preaching and a practical understanding of the needs of people. Today, Windsor Village provides a fascinating combination of exciting worship and relevant ministry. A former shopping center has been converted into a center providing help for the community.
Needs-based evangelism is built first upon grace. In most evangelists' favorite scripture, John 3:16-17, we read, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." Perhaps the most important part in that scripture to understand is that Christ came not to condemn the world. The basis of the relationship with God through Jesus Christ is love. It is amazing grace. For needs-based evangelism to work, it must begin with authentic, non-manipulative care. It is genuine acceptance.
A nine-year-old boy invites his friend to Sunday school, not because he gets a prize from the teacher, but because he cares about his friend and wants to share something precious. A teenager brings her friend to the youth program because she cares. A sixty-eight-year-old woman who invites her friend to the choir concert at Christmas does it because she cares and wants her friend to enjoy the music. Effective evangelism happens when a church seeks to help families in crisis, marriages in difficulty, lonely people find wholeness, depressed adolescents find solutions, broken-hearted lovers rebuild their relationships. The invitation to Christ and his church becomes a part of the experience of his love.
Meeting Needs and Ministry
The examples of caring congregations are found all across the church. Over and over, real ministry means growth. Churches across America have adopted recovery programs during which a Friday night worship service focuses on the powerful keys of the Twelve-Step Program, and church leaders are there, open to care and love. People are led not only to a methodology of recovery, but also to Christ and to become participants in the way of Jesus.
Youth programs with vital, relevant teachings to help kids deal with radically troubling aspects of our society help adolescents find ways not only to cope, survive, and succeed, but also to find Jesus.
Among the most basic needs facing any American today is, how to get along with people? This is what a Christian understands clearly: to know that God loves us first and that Jesus taught us how to live.
We seem to be afraid to deal directly with real human needs. We become captured by old stereotypes, styles of ministry, and irrelevant cliques. We often get caught in a complicated network of solving problems that don't exist and offer cures to issues that are not there. The reason we fail in our ability to reach new people for Christ is that we are irrelevant.
Walk through the personal growth section of your bookstore. There are volumes and volumes of books about how to get along together. In the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, four verses provide seven things to do and seven things not to do that can remedy most human relationship problems. Needs-based evangelism is delivering the basic message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which Paul says in Romans 13:8 is love. The teachings of the New Testament are the best self-helps ever written on successful relationships.
A small, rural Oklahoma church began focusing their energy on meeting the needs of children in the community. With their weekday after-school program, they had more kids and adults in church for their expanded Wednesday night kids' witness program than they did on Sunday morning. For small and large churches, needs-based kids programs work and often reach the whole family.
Growing churches have programs and ministries to help families function----marriages become healthy, and personal communication becomes more effective. Workshops, retreats, training, and counseling can heal, help, and bring people to a church. The church of Christ is a community of love, learning, and healing.
One of the major areas of broken relationships today is divorce. Fifty percent of American marriages end in divorce. Mainline Protestant churches that believe in the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, should be leading the country in the ministry of helping people get through divorce. However, the opposite seems to be true. Mainline churches run from the issue of divorce. We run from the opportunity to help. Those few that help seem to help in a way that, instead of building up the person who has gone through this devastating experience, makes him or her feel guiltier. People make decisions for Christ when they have gone through difficult transitions. There is no more difficult transition in American life than going through divorce. The church needs to be there with all of its wisdom and power, loving help, and generosity.
The church I pastor has a strong divorce ministry built out of the context of an aggressive and caring singles program. We find that if forty people attend the Divorce Adjustment Workshop, thirty of those people will make a new or first-time commitment to Christ and twenty of them will become active in our church.
When needs are met, decisions are made.
Two members of our congregation were on a short vacation and attended a small rural church across the state in Oklahoma. It was an informal service. The pastor asked visitors to stand and introduce themselves. Gerald and Nancy were the only visitors there that Sunday, and so it was obvious who they were as they stood and introduced themselves and said a word about the church they came from in Tulsa. When the service was over, a lady rushed up to them and said she had been to their church. She had gone through Divorce Adjustment Workshop, and then said what so many have said, "It saved my life."
Meeting needs can mean the saving of life not only physically, but also spiritually. We must commit ourselves to a total ministry of helping people through their difficulties in life and, consequently, bringing them to the throne of God through Jesus Christ.
Needs-Based Evangelism is Strategic
Needs-based evangelism is simply strategic. People make decisions when they go through a crisis. When everything is going well, most of us don't want to change. Why would we change our ways, accept Christ, become a new person, and make decisions for a moral and accountable life when everything is going great? But when our marriage comes apart, or we lose our job, or a chemical imbalance in our brain makes us deeply depressed, or a teenager is arrested for use of drugs, then we are open to deal with life in a new way, to hear the truth of God's wonderful love, and to make the decision to accept Jesus as the answer.
The cultural prosperity of today lets us think that everything is fine. In the midst of the crisis of relationships, when polarity within our nation is high, in a world where we talk about the problems of drug abuse, degeneration of marriage, sexual abuse, and child abuse, we still convey to one another that everything is fine. Yet, a millimeter below the surface, it is not fine at all.
Needs-based evangelism is built on an understanding that we are called to be a good Samaritan church; to respond to the needs; to see beneath the surface of superficial prosperity where the hurt is; to understand that we are called, as best we can, to bring the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to meet those needs. When the church helps, that happens. People find not only the healing results of the love of Christ, but also Christ, himself, in their lives.
The old idea that we can divide the Christian faith into two tasks----evangelism and social concerns----is as ridiculous theologically and not helpful for the church as any of the heresies the church has allowed over the years. They are the same.
The description of Christ's own ministry that is found in Luke 4 is the description of caring, of bringing good news to the entire human situation.
The methodology for needs-based evangelism is basic Christianity. First, it begins with a commitment to follow Jesus, follow what he taught and what he said. Second, it involves a willingness to help, to meet the needs of others. Third, we must be open to what those needs are and see where we, as individuals and as churches, have resources to help. God does not expect us to solve every issue, but to solve some. The local church can provide some solutions. Most of the time, solutions don't need to be complicated. For most of the needs that people have today, the most powerful help is help, but also to be able to love, and it becomes the means of reaching others for Christ. Nonjudgmental needs-meeting is one of the most powerful means of opening the door between an individual and Jesus Christ.
Our acts of kindness and love should be done in the most professional, caring, effective ways we know, trusting that God will use our efforts like seeds planted to bring fruit. In all aspects of our meeting needs, the gospel needs to be presented. Too often, Christians help but do not explain why they help. Too often, Christians want to do noninvolved caring. Therefore, we never have the opportunity to explain about the God who loves us despite our sins. Real needs-based evangelism must involve clear, gentle witnessing. It needs to be cradled in the arms of the local church. Evangelism is ineffective when it is done at arms length. Evangelism works when it involves people one-on-one, up close, helping.
The Local Church Is the Basic Evangelism Unit
The local church is the home base of our caring. The church family is the experience of love: our love and God's love! Jesus is seen in us. Jesus is understood when we explain why we are there, why we are helping. People come to follow Christ when they see an example and hear your story and the explanation for helping. As people are helped through the ministries of a local church, they become involved in the church. Needs-based evangelism is best done by individual churches, not as churches working in ecumenical teams. People who are being helped need to identify with the local church community that is helping. If not, they will see Christ, experience the power of grace, and not have family to relate to, to be nurtured and helped and encouraged through. That is why needs-based evangelism is basically a local church plan. It is not organized by conferences, districts, and judicatories. It is done by congregations so that the amazing grace that is shared in helping is identified with a community of loving followers of Jesus. In this way, the person receiving the experience of Christ knows where to find the growth, support, and long-term affirmation. The local church is the basic evangelism unit.