When it comes to evangelism, outreach and mission I think there is a really important question that we often fail to meaningfully ask: is this actually accomplishing anything? More specifically, can we realistically expect this to accomplish anything?

I can already hear the howls and responses coming.

God can use anything!

Indeed, he can. But that doesn’t mean he will use anything. More to the point, he has given us some pointers as to what he will typically use in his Word. We also have our good sense to ask the (in my view, entirely legitimate and appropriate) question: if nobody has ever been saved through this, or we have almost no examples in the history of mankind of anyone being saved by this, why do we think this is a good idea?

But we’re called to be faithful!

Indeed, we are. But that argument only works if doing this is specifically what God has asked us to be faithful in. If this particular means is not explicitly commanded in scripture as the only acceptable means, we haven’t been called to be faithful to this.

The faithfulness argument is only legit when it is arguing for faithfulness to specific commands of Christ. For example, Jesus has called us to make disciples. It is unfaithful, then, not to be about the business of disciple-making. However, it is not unfaithful to reject certain means of attempting to make disciples in favour of other means. It might be unfaithful to press on with particular means of making disciples which show little to no evidence of ever working because we are then not making disciples. We are confusing faithfulness to things we want to do with faithfulness to what Jesus has specifically commanded.

The results aren’t up to us!

Again, true. Nobody will move one iota closer to Christ through anything we do in and of itself. The Bible is very clear, unless the Spirit moves a person, they cannot and will not believer. Few (though, looking at you Gospel Standard) take this to mean we can bin off disciple-making altogether and leave it up to the Spirit. We have to deal with those pesky scriptures about faithfulness and the command of Christ to make disciples. Nevertheless, though the results are not up to us, the means we choose to employ are and we can’t use our inability to impart spiritual life as an excuse for engaging in the most terrible and ineffective means. In effect, unless God overrules our terrible means, we are going to have problems.

It is a bit like needing a plumber to hook up your boiler for gas, which you choose to set to ‘off’ despite wanting to heat your home. If he hasn’t connected the gas up yet, your boiler won’t heat anything. But if you’ve set it to ‘off’, even if it was connected it wouldn’t achieve anything. The ultimate reason it won’t fire is a lack of gas, but your turning it off is going to cause it’s own problems. Of course, the plumber could turn up and connect the gas and switch the boiler to ‘on’ for you, making you think it is heating your house even though you set the switch to ‘off’. But all that has happened there is the plumber overrode your terrible approach to heating your house! If you go back and switch it to ‘off’ again, the heating won’t work unless and until the Engineer overrides the little job you have been given to do (which he doesn’t promise to do in the ordinary run of things). Let the reader understand.

I knew someone who was saved by that

Maybe so. But that doesn’t change the fact almost nobody else will be. And again, if there is little to no chance of it being effective – unless Jesus has specifically said we must do this particular form of outreach – why persist with it? Which brings us back to the original question: if this isn’t accomplishing anything, why are we doing it?

I am convinced that we have so convinced ourselves that nobody will become a believer that we settle for arguments to faithfulness despite any evident effectiveness because we don’t really expect anyone to believe at all. Though we might make some wistful reference to the parable of the Sower, we frequently seem to forget – although I accept three out of four types of grounds were not genuine – three out of four types of people initially respond positively. Whilst I’m not convinced we should take it mathematically literally and expect 75% response rate, I do think we can infer an expectation of greater response than we seem to often have. Jesus said the harvest is plentiful. He pegged the main issue as lack of workers to rake in the massive harvest. The fields are white (that is, ready) for harvest. Yet we seem to have convinced ourselves that just isn’t the case. And expecting nothing, we don’t always question our methods – we just assume the problem is that the fields aren’t white and the harvest is meagre. But Jesus doesn’t say it so!

So, again, we must ask: what is this accomplishing? If it isn’t accomplishing the making of disciples, it begs the question why we’re doing it at all. If we only hope that it might accomplish some disciple-making, we probably need to do some work in explaining how without a hand-waving reference to ‘God can do anything’. Realistically, if we want to see true disciples made, we need to ask whether this will accomplish that and some understanding of exactly how what we’re doing actually works toward that end. If we aren’t seeing disciples being made, it is worth questioning our methods and asking ourselves: are we really being faithful to what Jesus has commanded or are we just being faithful to this means he hasn’t specifically called us to do? In the end, if it isn’t accomplishing anything, we probably want a rethink.