TOOTH PICKS AND TELEPHONE POLES

This is for my reformed brethren (and I am reformed).

The toothpick (splinter) in the eye of Rick Warren, Adrian Rogers, Charles Stanley, the majority of the Southern Baptist Convention, and many other contemporary evangelicals:

-Their methods of evangelism are more often than not misleading and not conformed to the Scriptures.

The telephone pole (log) in the eye of a great part of my Calvinistic brethren:

-We completely neglect the command to evangelize.

I am not saying that some of the abuses and excesses in the seeker movement are mere splinters. Many of their approaches are unbelievably dangerous and need to be addressed (see my posts on 1 John and 1 John Part II). However, unless you are doing the work of evangelism yourself, you have no business picking the evangelistic toothpick out of your brother’s eye.

As one fine preacher once told me, “I like how they are evangelizing wrongly better than how you are not evangelizing at all!”

The greatest thing I learned from Jim Elliff (in KC, MO) was how to not merely knit pick the evangelistic short comings of contemporary Christianity, but how to better and reform the short comings of contemporary Christianity. Unless you have tested and tried practical alternatives to the crooked ways of evangelism in our present situation (and neglecting evangelism is not a viable alternative) then you ought not speak as an authority on it.

This is a rebuke to myself as much as it is to anyone else.