volume 12, number 21, May 23, 2013

When they heard this and were filled with rage, they began crying out, saying, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” Acts 19:28.

Making Jesus an Issue

I recently had the privilege to be with Scott Smith, Mike Stockwell, Sye ten Bruggencate Don Karns, Ken Fleck, and Cody May in street preaching at Yale University and the University of Connecticut; and this made several things more clear to me—for one, we need street preaching more than ever. As we preached at Yale and UConn hundreds of students at each campus heard the gospel. Take UConn for example. We began preaching at the Student Union building at 11 a.m. and were still going at 4 p.m. when I had to leave for an appointment. I know of at least two male students who were there the entire time. There were hecklers, resisters, and seekers. Be sure of this—for five hours on those two days Jesus was an issue at Yale and UConn. Certainly the abuse we received was nothing compared to what Paul faced at Ephesus when a riot broke out and people screamed “Great is Artemis” for two hours, trying to kill Paul. Peter Kreeft has observed that most people have no problem with nine of the ten commandments. It is the sixth commandment that brings out their ire and hatred—”Thou shalt not commit adultery,” (Exodus 20:14). The great idol in every culture, including our own, is sex. People hate being told to restrict their sexuality to heterosexual, monogamous marriage.1 While we were preaching two young men and two young women stood right in front of us and displayed their perverse sexuality in a brazen manner. One young man put on a dress, high heels, a wig and stood on the corner across from us with a sign, “Honk, if you love drag queens.” The honking was incessant.

Others were very angry at us for “judging” them. Several wondered why we were “screaming” at them and standing on a one foot platform when preaching. One girl, who says she is a Christian, was weeping because she felt (and felt, not believed, is the operative word here) that Jesus is love and that what we were doing is hateful. One sweet, gentle Yale Christian woman told me that she thought we were doing more harm than good. I told her that we were not doing anything new, that this kind of thing has been going on for three thousand years in the history of the church, that we were simply doing what the Old Testament prophets, Jesus, the Apostles, and Yale alumnus Jonathan Edwards did—lifting up Jesus in the open air, calling people to repent and flee from the wrath of God which is to come and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Another young lady from UConn, a member of an evangelical church in Connecticut that I know well, said that she is rethinking her position on homosexuality, that a monogamous homosexual relationship is acceptable to God. I challenged her on that but she said times have changed and so must the church.

Another thing that has become clear is the utter inability of students to think and communicate in a logical manner. The students at Yale are supposedly the “best of the best.” If this is true, then we are in real trouble. Most students for at least thirty-five years have been fed a steady diet of relativism, and this, coupled with their rejection of objective truth found in Scripture, has rendered them unable to reason. David Brooks, in a New York Times op-ed piece2 cites a study by Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith in his book Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood, that describes young people’s lack of vocabulary and categories to say anything intelligible about moral issues, “ . . . what’s disheartening is how bad they are at thinking and talking about moral issues. . . when asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at the parking spot.”

Seeing Scott, Mike, Sye, Don, Ken, and Cody (and I have been with many others just as gifted and anointed) at work was beautiful. I am a novice. These guys are really good. They know how to bring out hecklers who, in turn, unwittingly draw a bigger crowd so that others can hear the gospel. It is also interesting to see how those who protest the most are the ones who stayed the longest. Perhaps God is already working conviction in them. These street preachers are bold, uncompromising, articulate, and they don’t back down. They preach sin, hell, the blood of Jesus, repentance, and faith. We need, more, not less of this kind of evangelism. Twenty somethings instinctively know they live in a different world than their parents, that they are likely to see far more carnage through terrorism, that they likely will never have the wealth of their parents (we have saddled them with unprecedented debt). They have no clue of absolute truth. They have been coddled and they know it. It is time to challenge them. I believe, by the grace of God working by the Spirit, that many will respond positively to the hard-hitting, straight up gospel message. They have no where else to go and they are beginning to know it. This is not the only thing we should do. We need to lift up Jesus in other ways as well, but this is foundational. Could it be that many Christians are ashamed or embarrassed by street preachers? I know—there are some who go too far and talk about “God hating fags.” Others are Arminian and legalistic. This, however, is not what we are doing. We need to champion these street preachers. Not all of us are gifted or called to engage in it, but we certainly ought to pray for them, support them financially, and stand with them in our communities when they are preaching Christ.

Let’s face it—Jesus is rarely an issue in our communities. The world does not care if we “do our thing” in the privacy of our church buildings. The moment, however, that we “come out of the closet” is the time the world’s vitriol is spewed upon us. And the modern means by which many churches seek to do evangelism is backwards. The gathering of the saints on the Lord’s Day is for worship and the edification of the saints. It is not to be the major venue to reach the “seeker.” The moment the pastor and elders decide that Sunday morning is the primary means by which we reach the lost, that’s the day when most pastors will water down the message and “cave in” on worship and preaching style. Rare is the man who will preach uncompromisingly in that setting. And besides, while he is trying to reach the lost with his preaching, the saints are languishing, the sheep are being malnourished. How did Jesus and the Apostles evangelize? They went to the streets. They did not wait for the people to come to them. The believers did not wait for the “professionals” to do evangelism. They all went about evangelizing (Acts 8:4). The church is the base of operations where training and equipping are to take place. From there evangelists are to take people with them out into the world—door to door, street preaching, questionnaires in public places, one-on-one, or any number of other means. These kinds of efforts will make Jesus an issue, and this in turn will breathe life into the church. Jesus is a polarizing figure. Always has been, always will be. It is time that we followed in the train of Jesus, the prophets, apostles, and the street preachers of today and go into the world with the bold proclamation of Christ crucified. Some will love it. Some will hate it. Some “will hear us again concerning it.” And some will be converted.

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¹ Cited by Richard Simmons in his book, Reliable Truth: The Validity of the Bible in an Age of Skepticism, page 96.