There's Clearly a Difference
By John Gavazzoni

The difference I'll be dealing with in this article, is the difference between the mode of apostolic evangelizing, and what is thought to be normative in (especially) evangelicalism today. Just from a natural perspective and experience, I might have some advantage over most folks, in analyzing said difference, in that, from age 16 on (at the time of this writing, I'm into the second year of my octogenarian decade), I have been occupied mostly as a salesman and preacher, except for brief interludes like driving big rigs, and grilling hot dogs and hamburgers one summer at a Jersey shore resort.

I was sent out "on the road" by my father as a salesman for the family wholesale business almost the very day I got my driver's license. I was only 16. I set about largely opening up new territory by introducing our company's products and service to new prospects, convincing the new prospect that Keystone Leather Company had the goods and service he or she deserved, getting that first breakthrough order, and especially evoking from that person, a sense that I could be trusted. Selling became second nature to me.

I had, you might say, learned salesmanship, by a sort of process of osmosis, going along with my dad on some of his sales trips, watching the old master at work. He was best at gently and tactfully getting the most out of every order from existing customers, where my forte lay in opening new accounts, by almost instantaneously evoking confidence in new, prospective customers. There was also an extended time providing for the family selling pots and pans door to door to young working girls as a start toward them accumulating the items for their hope chests. THAT added immeasurably to my sales training.

My preaching days began that same year, within weeks of the Lord calling me to himself. Though experiencing the to-be-expected nervousness as the day approached for that first sermon in my home church, once I got behind the pulpit and opened my mouth, I took to it like a duck to water. I've come to realize from my experience in sales, that to a great extent, modern evangelistic preaching has more of the character of selling-- of pitching a product and/or service, when it is compared with the apostolic mode. In apostolic preaching, the power of persuasion--which leads to the "assurance of faith"--lay in the simple declaration of Jesus as Lord, raised from the dead, and of the impending kingdom of God.

I like to point out especially the experience of Peter preaching to the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius. Peter was a fisherman by trade, and called by the Lord to be a fisher of men, but any analogy between the two broke down that day. Allegorically speaking, Peter never even got his net into the water. While he was speaking, the "fish" began to jump into the boat. While he was still preaching those Gentiles began to speak in tongues and prophecy. No lead up to an "invitation." No, "let's everyone bow their heads in prayer, and not looking around, if you want to receive Christ tonight, raise your hand, and at the singing of the invitation hymn, come forward as a public confession that you're receiving Christ."

None of that. Transpose Peter's experience of long ago over a contemporary scene of gospel invitation, and you'd have folks leaping over the pews in front of them to get to the front, not to "be dealt with," but shouting forth their already imparted assurance of sins forgiven and the thrill of feeling the first sparks of Holy Spirit life igniting in their souls.

Whereas in sales, the natural persuasive skill of the salesman is front and center, in the "kerygma," (the apostolic heralding of good news), it's about the very virtue of Christ crucified and risen, being transmitted to, and supernaturally infused into, the hearer, "not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit saith the Lord." It's little understood today that Christ, AS crucified, AS risen, AS He to whom all authority and power in heaven and earth is given, is imparted to the hearer inclusive of the living dynamic of His crucifixion, resurrection, and lordship.

The Reality of that dynamic is within the living Word. Further explaining: The Lord Jesus is the objective Word of God, which Word when preached in the apostolic mode, becomes the subjective Word in the hearer, and the dynamic of the Christ Event begins its process of crucifying the old man, raising him up in newness of life, and summarily subjecting that one to Christ's lordship. That's normative gospel preaching with the complement of a normative response.

This follows also re: how one is "led to Christ" today. It's more about salesmanship than supernatural conversion. I was trained from age 16, on how to lead a person to Christ, chosen even at age 17 to be a counselor for a city-wide evangelistic crusade, because I knew how to take an inquirer through a process from one verse to another, to another, and another, and then "clinching the sale." I'd become religiously what we call in sales, a good "closer."

The process almost always was along this line: open to John 1:12 and show the person who had come forward to receive Christ, that the Bible assured him that "as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the sons of God." Ask question, "have you come forward to receive Christ?" Usual answer, "yes." Next step, ask the person to repeat a prayer to receive Christ into his/her heart." They do. Next, go further into John's gospel to point out that Jesus said, "if any man comes to Me, I will in no wise cast him out." Ask the inquirer, "did you just come to Christ by your prayer to receive Him? Sometime a rather halting answer, "yes."

Leaf further along in that Gospel, and assure that dear soul that they were now in the hand of Jesus, and Jesus was in the hand of the Father, so no one can pluck them out of those hands. Give them some "follow-up literature," encourage them to find and attend a good Bible believing church, and the deal's done. Well, you won't find any scenario like that in the pages of the gospels or the Book of Acts. Long after my period as an evangelist in the conventional sense, I found myself looking back on that training, as "leafing a person into the kingdom." Was no one genuinely regenerated by that mode? I would never claim such a thing. I know better. God uses us even when we engage others about Christ in what amounts to subnormal, or even abnormal evangelizing.

A final perspective on the difference: The standard contemporary appeal has the evangelist appealing to the hearer to "make YOUR decision for Christ, " compared with the thick, strong thread of apostolic witness which heralds that God, in Christ, has made HIS decision for us all. Rather than the "closer" being about what we must do to get our sins forgiven, it must be the announcement of the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.