Sneakin’ Up On ‘Em With The Gospel


by Jerry King

 

 For a long time churches have tried to use secular bait to attract the world’s masses to spiritual things. Many years ago they began offering food and clothing as incentives to get people inside the church house with the idea that, once inside, then they might be able to interest them in something spiritual – feed them bread, and while you have them, feed them the bread of life.
 
 Then churches began to get more creative, offering recreational activities and the kind of classes one would expect to find at the local community college – get them playing volleyball, and while they are playing, serve them the gospel. Recently, I have heard of churches beginning to use technology to attract the masses, with tweet and twitter schemes that are too intricate to explain in the amount of space allotted for this article.
All of these have one thing in common: attracting the world to the spiritual by baiting them with the material. They are all ways of sneaking up on people with the gospel. And, I have to tell you, such schemes have no support from God’s word.
 
 Someone asks, "But didn’t Jesus feed people to get them interested in spiritual things?" And the answer to that is, "No, He didn’t." On the two occasions when Jesus fed multitudes, He fed them because they were hungry. Mark’s account of the first feeding notes that Jesus had been teaching the multitude many things before He fed them at the end of the day (Mark 6:34f). Matthew’s account of the second feeding notes that the multitude had been following Jesus for three days before He decided to feed them, and that He fed them with a miracle only because He feared they were too faint to return to their homes for something to eat.
 
 Jesus fed people, but He never fed them as a device to get their attention. He only fed people whose attention He already had. And note in John 6:26-27 that Jesus chastised those who continued to come to Him because they thought they would get a free meal. "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you," Jesus told the crowd. In the context, their "labor" was searching intensely for Jesus. Jesus is telling them not to seek Him for food which perishes, and yet so many churches use the food which perishes as a bait to snare an audience for a word or two about Jesus.
 
 But is it so bad to kind of sneak up on folks with the gospel? Paul did not think much of that approach. Note his words in 2 Cor. 4:2: "But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God." Paul saw manipulation of the unlearned with material things as a tactic of those who opposed the truth, not those who had it. He had renounced sneaky methods and had determined to be straightforward in his handling of God’s word.
 
 That word "manifestation" in 2 Cor. 4:2? It means "to make visible, to leave open to the sight." Paul was forthright with the gospel, never hiding the message of the cross behind a veil of secular interests, always transparent and aboveboard in what he was doing. Paul certainly did nothing to off-put the lost from listening to the gospel (that’s his point in 1 Cor. 9:19-23: "I became all things to all men, that I might by all means save some."), and yet he also did nothing crafty to bait the lost into listening to the gospel. Neither should we.
 
 About ten years ago an unwise preacher told me, "We have a lot of visitors who come to our services because of our food pantry program; we can’t preach about their moral shortcomings too hard or they won’t come back." A wise preacher told me, probably forty years ago, "If you get them with coke and hamburgers, you will have to keep them with Perrier and caviar." History has proved him correct, and that is why so many churches are so involved in so many things that they have no business being involved in. In the end, "sneakin’ up on ‘em with the gospel" does not work.