Thesis 67- We must not confuse worship with evangelism.
All those opposed to evangelism raise your hands. It would be, if it even existed, a rather lonely clique, the “Christians against evangelism” club. Every believer believes in evangelism. And when we believers get together every Lord’s Day, wouldn’t it be a great thing to have an evangelistic service? I mean, we’ve got a band there ready to play. We’ve got a pastor there ready to preach. We even have counselors standing by to pray. Perfect timing, right? Wrong.
There are any number of good things, great things, gifts from God most high that are not designed to be a part of a worship service. Preparing a Thanksgiving feast is a good thing. But not something we should all be doing at church Sunday morning. Steam cleaning the carpet is a great thing to do. But not while God’s people are gathered for worship. Worship is family time, the people of God gathering in the presence of God, drawing near to Him in a posture of intimacy. Evangelism is the people of God being used to draw those yet outside the kingdom in. That’s a whole different thing.
Is there overlap? Of course there is. I’m not suggesting that every church install a Holy Spirit detector at their front door and only let in those who pass the test. Nor would I ever suggest that the gospel doesn’t need to be preached every Lord’s Day. Of course it does. Every mother’s son of us needs to hear the gospel, not just because we might not be saved but because it is the power of God. The goals, however, of worship and evangelism are different. I rejoice when those gathered with the church come to saving faith. I rejoice also when those in the faith, when doing the work of evangelism, are moved to worship. But those are collateral benefits, the fruit of the richness of God’s grace. They are not each other’s reason for being.
Marva Dawn has wisely and insightfully described worship as “a royal waste of time.” It is royal, of course, because we are appearing before and by the redeeming power of the King of Kings. It is a waste of time not in the sense that it has no meaning, but because it is no means. It is strictly an end. That is, we don’t worship for the sake of some other thing. Every other thing exists for the sake of worship. It is the final end, the ultimate telos, our very reason for being.
Let us never be found denigrating either evangelism or worship. Let us never be found, however, confusing them. Evangelism, like missions, exists, in the words of John Piper, because worship doesn’t. We don’t worship that people might be saved. Rather we long to see more people saved that they might worship. Remember that soteriology serves eschatology. And eschatology serves Christology. We are saved for the sake of the kingdom. The kingdom exists for the King.