Dangers of Relational Evangelism: A Rejoinder

Recently, Doug Pol­lock stopped by to com­ment on a post a did a while back on some of the dan­gers in over-​emphasizing the rela­tional aspect of evan­ge­lism in lieu of actu­ally shar­ing the Gospel.  In that post, I use an exam­ple from a book enti­tled Irre­sistible Evan­ge­lism to which Doug is one of the authors.  He com­mented that I had mis­used his golf course analogy.  Here are my orig­i­nal comments.

I once flipped through a book that caught my eye enti­tled Irre­sistible Evan­ge­lism by the former pastor of the Cincin­nati Vine­yard. I was flip­ping through and found a hor­rific graphic that sum­ma­rized their phi­los­o­phy of evangelism.1 Basi­cally, the anal­ogy is between golf hole and evan­ge­lism. When you golf you don’t just shoot it straight into the hole (unless you’re insanely good), but instead you take one shot into the fair­way, then up to the green, then finally in the hole. And each of these steps cor­re­lates to the rela­tional process you move through in their method of evan­ge­lism. You don’t start off with the Gospel, because you need to first “get it up to the green.” This method­ol­ogy clearly shows their Arminian/decisional regen­er­a­tion theology.

This anal­ogy, I think, most clearly shows what rela­tional evan­ge­lism can go to taken to an extreme. We must first ask: Did anyone in the whole Bible present the truth of God only after the tee and fair­way shots? Jesus calls his dis­ci­ples from the very begin­ning to repen­tance, and Peter and Paul both giving stir­ring Gospel pre­sen­ta­tions to the masses. I would imag­ine that if there was a model to clone it would be these gen­tle­men, but each of these men also con­tex­tu­al­ized the Gospel to their audience.

I of course don’t want to misuse some­thing, and if I have done so I want to be cor­rected; so I asked Doug to write a short rejoinder.

I would share your con­cerns about too much friend­ship and not enough evan­ge­lism as well. The bigger idea of the golf course anal­ogy was simply to help Chris­tians see that God’s word clearly presents the idea of evan­ge­lism from a holis­tic per­spec­tive. Way to many Christ fol­low­ers find a club (a method) that they feel com­fort­able with and then take it to their golf course every­day. Effec­tive evan­ge­lism starts where people are in rela­tion­ship to God not where we would like them to be. My admo­ni­tion to Christ fol­low­ers is to go to their golf course every­day with a full bag of clubs. You will never see Jesus do the exact same thing with the dif­fer­ent people He encoun­ters along the way. Some­times He did a good deed, some­times He raised ques­tions, some­times He shared Good news. Appar­ently He under­stood that dif­fer­ent folks need dif­fer­ent strokes. The golf course anal­ogy is just a metaphor intended to encour­age people to bring the whole gospel to the whole person. Some days that means we will sow, some days water, and some days we will har­vest. If you would like to better under­stand my take on the whole thing go to my web­site at Gods​GPS.com. There is one arti­cle I wrote for Out­reach Mag­a­zine that might best artic­u­late what in par­tic­u­lar the way we should be inten­tional in our efforts to move the ball ahead on the golf course.

I am curi­ous as to the thoughts my read­ers have.  Did I take it out of context?  Does Doug’s expla­na­tion ease your mind on this?

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9 total comments, leave your comment.
  1. Chris
    Aug 2nd 2008

    The one thing I was orig­i­nally leery about the anal­ogy was that the Gospel was put as some­thing you had to wait on before you can bring it out. The prob­lem I see in “relational evangelism” (that is, the broader def­i­n­i­tion) is that you can too easily become more wor­ried about losing a friend­ship than shar­ing the Gospel. I always find it’s easier to share, build a friend­ship on truth, and it always, always works out just fine.

    I am very famil­iar with the rela­tional aspect of min­istry work­ing both with Bridges Inter­na­tional in col­lege, and my excur­sions to the Muslim world. I defend that and con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion very strongly on this site.

  2. Raffi Shahinian
    Aug 2nd 2008

    To all pro­claimers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The great­est evan­ge­lism tool ever thought up has just hit the inter­net. Read all about it.

    Grace and Peace,
    Raffi Shahin­ian
    Para­bles of a Prodi­gal World

  3. EvangelismCoach
    Aug 2nd 2008

    You wrote in your orig­i­nal post:

    “Peter and Paul both giving stir­ring Gospel pre­sen­ta­tions to the masses”

    When I look at Phillip and the eunuch, I see Phillip “beginning with that very pas­sage of Scrip­ture, he explained the good news about Jesus.”

    Paul com­mented on the Athe­ni­ans search for the unknown God and didn’t even lay out his sermon from Old Tes­ta­ment sto­ries.

    Each started at the place of the lis­tener and moved them for­ward.

    Like­wise Jesus started with “Repent and believe the good news.”

    I think Doug, your­self, and I would all agree about many times rela­tional evan­ge­lism being too much rela­tion­ship and not enough evan­ge­lism.

    I haven’t read the orig­i­nal con­text but am famil­iar with the illus­tra­tion. I think Doug’s answer is sat­is­fac­tory and I agree with him.

    Chris W
    Evan​ge​lism​Coach.org

  4. Keith
    Aug 6th 2008

    This has been a tough issue for me. I dis­agree with the Vine­yard church you men­tioned, but it I also dis­agree that rela­tion­ships are irrel­e­vant in evan­ge­lism. Values are trans­mit­ted through rela­tion­ships, which is why evan­ge­lism and dis­ci­ple­ship is most effec­tive at a rela­tion­ship level. I don’t mind doing street wit­ness­ing, but if I did lead some­one to Christ I would feel hor­ri­ble just saying, “Seeya!” and not making any attempt at follow-​up to make sure they get in a church. As for dis­ci­ple­ship, I have no clue how that would NOT occur in a rela­tion­ship. All of the people who impacted me the most were people with whom I had a rela­tion­ship, and I think most people who echo this.

  5. Keith
    Aug 6th 2008

    By the way, I think open-​air preach­ing is great, but I evan­ge­lists using such a method seem to be more inter­ested in preach­ing the gospel loudly rather than con­tex­tu­ally. I remem­ber a fun­da­men­tal bap­tist church “invading” the main street of my town, with mega­phones and huge ban­ners that said “Repent!” This is idi­otic, I thought, because we aren’t in a Jewish cul­ture, nobody knows what repen­tance is—nor will they find out as they drive by. The rest of the group just stood awk­wardly on street cor­ners dressed up almost to the point of look­ing like Mor­mons. The whole sit­u­a­tion screamed, “We’re not like you and you don’t really under­stand us, but become one of us anyway!”

  6. Chris
    Aug 6th 2008

    @Keith: Thanks for your com­ments. I don’t think anyone in this thread doesn’t think rela­tion­ships have a value in rela­tion­ships. My only con­cern, and it seems yours as well, is when the rela­tion­ship is ele­vated over the ora­tion of the Gospel.

    I also have sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments to you on open-​air preach­ing.

  7. Rob
    Aug 12th 2008

    The point that is rel­e­vant and appro­pri­ate is this: Jesus and the dis­ci­ples recorded in scrip­ture spoke to their fellow men with rel­e­vance.

    Often, today’s Chris­tians and churches will speak using the same terms, the same phrases and it just doesn’t have the same mean­ing. How many of you heard sheep? How many of you fish for a living? How many of us live in an occu­pied coun­try that serves the occu­pier almost as slaves? Not many.

    Here’s a story an modern evan­ge­list, I’ll call him Joe, relayed to me:
    He sat down next to a con­struc­tion worker on a public bench at lunch one day. Started up a con­ver­sa­tion by asking the man what he did. The man replied that he was a Welder. Joe with inter­est asked what that meant get­ting more details about the man’s job. The man gave a descrip­tion and Joe replied “that’s a lot like what Jesus does.” The man was a bit dumb­founded and asked Joe what he meant. Joe went on to relate how the man welds to pieces of metal together. Join­ing together parts that were sep­a­rated. Join­ing them together so well that the joint is just as strong as the two pieces. Jesus does that with us. He joined God and man – who were sep­a­rated – with a bond that can’t be broken.

    That’s how we should relate. Not preach to the people we come across, but find ways to relate. Be inter­ested in the people we talk to really care about them. Love them.

    After all, Jesus was a good speaker, but I doubt thou­sands fol­lowed him around and listen to him for hours with­out food because of his elo­quence. They were amazed at how he related to them – and cared for them.

  8. Andy Carlson
    Nov 5th 2008

    I under­stood the first in the con­text of Doug’s follow up. Doug’s rejoin­der is right on. I pro­pose that if we build rela­tion­ships based on 2 Tim­o­thy 2:23-26; 2 Peter 1:6-9 and Gala­tians 5:22-3 we will dis­cern the proper “club” for any par­tic­u­lar course. Fur­ther, that “if we focus on living in the light of the Chris­t­ian mes­sage and explain­ing that mes­sage to non believ­ers rahter than on sharp­en­ing our the­o­log­i­cal prowess” (from: The Dic­tio­nary of Early Chris­tain Beliefs) (or cut­ting folks with with the “sword of truth”) , many will come to know Christ from our rela­tion­ships in love with them.

  9. Chris
    Oct 3rd 2009

    @Keith: Thanks for your com­ments. I don't think anyone in this thread doesn't think rela­tion­ships have a value in rela­tion­ships. My only con­cern, and it seems yours as well, is when the rela­tion­ship is ele­vated over the ora­tion of the Gospel.

    I also have sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments to you on open-​air preach­ing.

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