District, door-to-door evangelism done right is distinctly Reformed, being a distinctly household-oriented approach to Gospel outreach.
Follow me here. Doesn’t God administer His grace to individuals as well as to households? Doesn’t it start with the head and flow to the members? Isn’t it interested in reconciling the father to the son and the son to the father? Abraham, Joshua, Cornelius, Lydia. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:31). We aim for the heads of households; and if we get them, we get the family.
One of the sweetest experiences I’ve relished is helping to kindle the holy fire of a family altar. In one house which I had visited, I met an old Liberian woman. She welcomed me in, we spoke, and I eventually read the Bible and prayed with her. I eventually returned. At some point, I brought my family. How she loved the kids, especially our little curly blonde, whom she dubbed “Beauty.” After some social visiting, we basically had family worship with her. She didn’t get out much because she had a bad hip. So we were thankful when her daughter and children came from Liberia to live with her. We spent many evenings there with that group, reading Scripture, discussing, singing psalms – our family and theirs. We did invite to church many times, but it took awhile before they came. But came they did, right down to my little buddy, who loves to be chased by pastor. The point here is that while each of their souls is important, they are a family unit. And the Gospel comes to bring grace to them as families too. And where will you most often find families as families? You guessed it.
Covenant theology means more than getting the plan of redemption right, more than rightly coordinating the Old Testament with the New, more than baptizing babies. Our federalism should have a bearing on how we do evangelism. Door-to-door (with all its awkwardness) is a means to an end. The end is the soul — both that of head and of house.
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Try also “An open door? Re-thinking door-to-door evangelism“
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