The Church have to be willing to enter some “very dark places” to share the Good News of Jesus Christ while being careful to not compromise the Gospel, says evangelist Ben Jack.
Jack has been an evangelist for 26 years, currently working with The Message Trust within the UK, and is a former DJ. He didn’t resolve to be a DJ for its own sake, he told the World Evangelical Alliance’s general assembly, but quite intentionally – to be a missionary within the nightclubs and bars of the UK.
Becoming a DJ made it possible to enter these spaces to share the Gospel through words and actions with individuals who were “on the lookout for an escape from reality on a Friday night after a difficult week, because reality is difficult for a whole lot of people”.
Rather than on the lookout for an escape, his easy but effective message was that they may as an alternative find the very best possible reality and embrace it – Jesus Christ.
Those years within the nightclub taught him two vital things about evangelism. The first was that Christians who wish to exit into these dark places to share the Gospel must make certain about what they imagine in order that they will influence the culture – otherwise the culture will influence them.
“If we do not know the Gospel deeply, richly and above every little thing else, once we go into the world to have interaction culturally it’s culture that may evangelise us, quite than we who will evangelise into the culture,” he said.
“There are many, many well-intentioned individuals who seek to make use of the things of culture as a gateway into giving people access to the Gospel, but over time their good intention of impact and encounter people within the cultural space starts to eat away on the integrity of the Gospel.”
He said it was all too easy for Christians to begin altering the Gospel in a bid to win others, but reminded WEA delegates that anything lower than the Gospel is just not what the world needs to listen to. Meeting practical needs shouldn’t mean that Christians surrender telling people in regards to the Gospel, he went on.
“Before we realize it, we do what Paul warned us against in Galatians and we either add something to the Gospel that shouldn’t be there or, more likely, we take something away from the Gospel and we turn it into no Gospel in any respect – and there is no such thing as a point to no Gospel in any respect.
“The world has a billion and one gospels it thinks will save them but there is just one true Gospel – the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said.
Jack challenged Christians to take into consideration just how much they trust that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is enough. When this conviction is firm, then Christians can take into consideration how they will “use culture to our advantage”.
The second thing he learned from his experience of being a missionary in nightclubs was that while tradition is essential, it’s “not ultimate”, especially if it stops Christians from moving into unholy places to achieve the lost.
“If we get too trapped into our traditional ways of doing things, we’ll never go into the nightclub spaces because we’ll think ‘no, no, we mustn’t do this, we are able to’t do this, our tradition dictates that that is just not a spot for us to go and be’.”
He continued, “If we’re going to achieve the world with the Good News by 2033, we want to do two really vital things: we want to ensure that that the Gospel is the thing we commit to above all else – that we realize it, we live it, we breathe it and provides glory to the One whom it’s all about.
“And secondly, that we ask careful questions on our traditions because we would like to be rooted in our tradition enough that we will not be tossed around by the spirit of the age – that we’ve got an anchor, a firm foundation – but that we will not be so beholden to traditions which are extra to the tenets of the Gospel itself that we then fail to be faithful to the opportunities that God has for us.
“If we could recover from ourselves a little bit bit, we could go and do some things that we’re otherwise not inclined to do.”
The World Evangelical Alliance’s 14th general assembly has been going down throughout the week at SaRang Church in Seoul, South Korea. It is being attended by 850 Christian leaders from 124 nations under the theme of “The Gospel for Everyone by 2033”. It concludes on Thursday.
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