At our Saturday evangelism meetings, I often get paired up those who are taking part in street evangelism for the very first time. It’s likely that for many members of our church, they first experience evangelism at GVC. Most people have a negative view on street evangelism. I’ve heard many times that only cult organisations engage in this activity in Korea. Every time I hear this, I’m curious to ask the following question. If cults evangelise on the streets, does that mean that the churches need to remain passive and do nothing?
Is it because we think, ‘Surely, no one will believe a stranger preaching on the streets’? Or as much as we’d like to deny it, is it because we are not interested or concerned if other people end up in hell? If that’s not it, shouldn’t we also be on the streets to warn those who are being approached by cult organisations not to listen to them?
Why do people from cult organisations evangelise on the streets with such enthusiasm? Of course, one obvious reason is that their false doctrine teaches them they need to evangelise to be saved. But surely, they are also doing this out of strong conviction of their faith, and because they are actually able to win over some people whilst evangelising on the streets. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be doing this with so much zeal for such a long time.
Cult leaders strongly push their members to engage in many forms of evangelism, from street evangelism to organising community or cultural events. The biggest reason is because otherwise, they won’t be able to survive. Which cult organisation would grow their influence and power by just staying inside their buildings and waiting for people to turn up? To put it another way, who in their right minds will go to a cult organisation voluntarily by themselves? Because cult organisations are in the minority and not mainstream, they cannot grow if they do not actively go out and seek new members.
Ultimately, the reason why churches in Korea do not actively engage in evangelism is because it has become mainstream in today’s Korean society. We’ve been living through a period where people still go to churches, even when it wasn’t doing much. From the late 1970s to 1990s, God blessed the Korean churches in a remarkable way. Churches would be well-attended as long as it had a sign of a cross outside, even if it was in a damp basement of a building. It may be true that as our country became more developed, people began to prefer larger churches rather than the basement churches. But even so, as long as churches were in nice buildings with decent sermons and were running various discipleship programs, church membership could be maintained at steady levels. But this blissful period where churches were growing despite being passive is now over, both in the US and in Korea. Most people think it’s great when new daughter churches develop as offshoots from an existing mother church. However, if those who are being sent out with these new churches do not have the boldness and passion to evangelise, it will be hard to even maintain the existing church members.
From the very early days, Christianity grew through evangelism amidst persecution. We can clearly see this from the first chapters of the Book of Acts. Over the recent decades, churches in Korea were especially blessed by God’s blessing and grace and experienced exponential growth. Nowadays, people say that evangelism doesn’t work well because the general public’s perception of churches has materially deteriorated. However, is that a valid reason for not evangelising? No, it’s just a lame excuse to shift the blame onto others. Evangelism has now become so unfamiliar to us because we did not have to actively evangelise for a long time. But the time has come for church leaders and members of the congregation to boldly engage in evangelism. If not, churches will shortly decline to become a minority. I encourage you all to participate in our Saturday street evangelism meetings, until evangelism becomes more familiar and natural. ‘Holy Spirit, please come on us and make us to be Your witnesses’.
