Was recently at an organizational/planning/informational meeting regarding a particular evangelism team coming to our area. I do not wish to name the organization, but only to say they “specialize” in prison evangelism.
They bring atheletes, celebrities etc to “entertain” the prisoners and then hit them with the Gospel. As a matter of fact the posters they post around the prisons say nothing about the “event” being Christian. I asked about this and was told, that if they advertised it as a “Christian” event, then many prisoners would not come. So they leave that pertinent information out.
So they basily bait the prisoners to an “event” of entertianment and then “hit” them with the Gospel. Hmmm. What if, a group came and had posters put up all over that said it was an entertainment show, only to find out they were “preaching” the muslim faith? All hell would break lose!!! And rightly so.
But Christian organizations can do this with no repurcussions? In the minds of some, the end justifies the means.
I can remember when I lived in Southern California and students at the beach would hand out flyers related to free music, food and volleyball. They would draw a large crowd and then preach to them. Food and flyers would hit the ground as fast as these bamboozled students could run from there. Again for this group the end justified the means.
On many occasions groups are invited to come and speak at our public school assembly programs. Generally they tell the kids to stay off of drugs, alcohol etc. Then at the end invite them to a rally, held at a nearby church. I don’t have a problem with this. Provided the speakers at school stay away from preaching the Gospel and save it for the rally. That way the students choose to attend a rally, knowing that it is Christian because it is at a local church.
Let’s be real, on a number of occasions these same groups do preach the Gospel and that is not the place. At the same meeting I was at, someone asked if they preach the Gospel at the school assemblies they host. I said, before an answer was given, probably not loud enough, “They shouldn’t” . The host said they do on occasion, depending if the school administration approves of it. His answer was greeted with a hearty amen. I was appalled.
It is the churches responsibility to preach the Gospel to youth, not the schools. Churches that leave evangelism to the schools are taking a huge risk. Whose brand of Christianity gets preached? Could be a conservative group or a liberal group (not likely a liberal group, they are not as prone to do anything like this) or it could be a charismatic group or a ultra-conservative group who tend to teach a works system for salvation.
Prison evangelism is the churches responsiblity. So maybe to assuage our apparent guilt for having not done so, we bring in a mass evangelism organization and fork out tons of money to have them do it. Never mind that at two of our local prisons we have a hospitality house ministry that does some of the same evangelism they will be doing. Although the hospitality house cannot actually go in an evangelize, there is a chaplain in the facility. Oh, but he/she might not be “doing it right”. So let’s bring in a huge high dollar organization to do it for us.
There are lots of prison ministries that go in and do one on one evangelism, the best and most effective there is. So why this mass evangelism event, that generally has most of the “decisions” not being real. It is a fact, that many prisoners will “confess” Christ, just so it looks go on thier record when probation issues come up.
My biggest objection to this mass evangelism event is the bait and switch that is going on. It is no different than the guy who invited me to a meeting not telling me what it was. I asked if it was Amway and he said no. So I went and lo and behold it was Amway. I got up and walked out the door. He stopped me and said if he had told me what it was I wouldn’t have come. For him the end justified the means.
So lying about what we are really doing, is justified. Hmmm.
Wackypreacher's Wit and Wisdom 