Posted in Locality & the Law of Residence, Missiology, Parish Theory & Practice, The Gospel & the Poor, Theology of Place, Visitation Evangelism on February 5, 2019| 1 Comment »
A fine quote by Charles Spurgeon. Chalmers could not have said it better! –
“Brethren, let us hunt up destitute localities, and see that no district is left without the means of grace. This applies not only to London, but also to villages, hamlets, and little groups of cottages. Heathenism hides away among the lone places, as well as in the crowded slums of our mammoth cities. May every piece of ground be rained upon by gospel influences!”
Posted in Authored by Site Admin, Benevolence & the Diaconate, Contemporary Parochialism, Parish in American Context, Parish in Perspective (Qualifications), Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, The Romance of Locality, Theology of Place, Visitation Evangelism on December 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »
“Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it” (Rev. 3:8).
I do door-to-door evangelism and actually believe in it – in 2018. In making that admission, I suppose I should feel like Sarah Sanders trying to tap-dance around a newly minted presidential tweet. But I simply don’t.
I’m not a JW or a Mormon. Nor am I a Fundamentalist Baptist. I’m a confessional Presbyterian, relatively well educated, and (somewhat) comfortably middle-class. So why embrace what many Reformed and evangelicals consider pointless at best and counterproductive at worst?
Since I was converted back in the early 90s, I’ve practiced a number of methods of evangelism. I do not consider any one of them ‘the’ silver-bullet, nor do I think that door-to-door is always and in every case the most ideal method. But for the last thirteen years, I’ve engaged in regular, door-to-door evangelism as key part of my overall outreach effort. I do not presume to have the final answer on all questions, nor can I boast impressive success. Do I do this perfectly? Not at all. I’m always going to be on a learning curve. And consequently, I’m open to other suggestions and critiques. But after these many years and after many, many discouragements, I still keep coming back. I still plod and hope.
Here are a number of reasons why I believe it’s worth a serious re-think.
(more…)
Posted in Locality & the Law of Residence, Parish in American Context, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, The Romance of Locality, Visitation Evangelism on December 1, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Here’s a great article in New Horizons featuring Pr. Lowell Ivey, OPC minister in Virginia Beach, Virginia, on his efforts at neighborhood, door-to-door evangelization.
Posted in Church of Scotland, Church Order & Discipline, Experimental Religion & the Cure of Souls, Family Religion, Parochial Strategy, Pastoral Theology, Practice of Piety, Vignettes from the Old Parish Way, Visitation Evangelism on November 21, 2018| 1 Comment »
X. Sess. 13 et ult., April 27, 1708.—Act and Recommendation concerning Ministerial Visitation of Families.
“. . . Seeing, for the faithful discharge of ministers’ work, they ought, besides what is incumbent to them in the public congregation, to take special care and inspection of the particular persons and families under their oversight and charge, in order to which, it hath been the laudable custom of this Church, at least once a year, if the largeness of the parish, bodily inability in the minister, or other such like causes, do not hinder, for ministers to visit all the families in their parish, and oftener, if the parish be small, and they be able to set about it.
“For the more uniform and successful management of which work, although in regard of the different circumstances of some parishes, families, and persons, much of this work, and the management thereof, must be left to the discretion and prudence of ministers in their respective oversights, yet these following advices are offered and overtured as helps in the management thereof, that it may not be done in a slight and overly manner.
Posted in Authored by Site Admin, Parish in American Context, Parish Theory & Practice, Reformed Parish Mission (RPM) Posts, The Romance of Locality, Visitation Evangelism on October 27, 2018| 1 Comment »
On Saturday, made some more progress in my S. Providence district. Hoping to get it finished before it gets too cold.
Beech St. (changed) has a lot of history for me. It was there I met a Liberian who seemed like he was just waiting for a fisher of men to come after him. In the same building now is a refugee family of the Karen tribe from Southeast Asia. One of the young Liberians in our church had invited the daughter, a good friend of hers, to church some time back and came for a number of weeks. And a Congolese family that live next door, very dear Christian people, worshipped with us regularly for some nine months. They are living stones amid the rubble of sin and misery.
Saturday was no disappointment. Above our Congolese friends is a small Somali family. The young man, a Muslim, was very polite and listened to the Gospel of the “Lamb of God” who takes away the sin of the world. Above them we met a single Iraqi woman, also Muslim, complete with prayer carpet and ornately decorated Qu’ran lying out. She was clearly needy, in more ways than one. A lonely soul who needed friends, and of course, the Friend who sticks closer than a brother. We spoke of the story of Joseph (“Yousef” as she recalled from the Qu’ran), and how he was lonely and abandoned, yet not abandoned by God. And we shared that he was a picture of the Christ to come, who would be abandoned by his friends that He might die and redeem them. We got her contact information and hope to follow up with her on some practical levels – and hopefully she continues to be open to the Gospel.
Please pray for our new Muslim friends. Pray that God would open their hearts to Jesus, the True Asylum from those on the run.
Please also pray for a special evangelistic meeting we are holding within walking distance of their homes on Nov. 3. It will be held in English with Spanish translation.
Update. It’s been a number of months since this post. During that time, my wife and I have visited our female Iraqi friend, Fatima (changed), a number of times, and had her over for dinner with another sister in the church. We were able to help her get a stable job, though she’s looking for something better. She lets us read the Bible to her with comment, and she’s come to church once. Please pray that she would see the beauty and glory of ‘Isa (Jesus) as the Son of God and Savior of the world.
Posted in Thomas Chalmers, Vignettes from 19th Century District Visitation, Visitation Evangelism, West Port experiment on September 19, 2018| Leave a Comment »
‘We remember of having the seventh successive door slapped in our face ere we had time to tell our message, and of then going to another tenement and entering house by house only to find men and women rolling on the floor of a desolate dwelling in indiscriminate drunkenness; whilst mingling with their curses and their blasphemies, the heart-piercing looks and cries of their infant children assailed us with irresistible appeals for bread to allay the cutting pangs of hunger.’
-Rev. William Tasker, 1845
This link gives an introduction to Thomas Chalmers’ West Port experiment. The above quote is drawn from it.
Posted in Locality & the Law of Residence, Moral Suasion, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, The Romance of Locality, Thomas Chalmers, Visitation Evangelism on March 30, 2018| 1 Comment »
Below is an extract from an upcoming journal article I’m writing on Thomas Chalmers’ territorial (parochial) method of outreach.
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The method also capitalizes on the power of moral influence. Now, as we have seen already, the very doctrinal keystone of Chalmers’ model was the stern, Calvinist doctrine of human depravity. Attraction might work, if men were not half bad. But as they are altogether bad – spiritually speaking – there must be aggression. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, the aggression must be gentle. The laborer must go among the people and “ingratiate” himself in their affections by his manifest care for them, body and soul, parents and children:
… he is to watch every opportunity, to go to them especially at those seasons when, through sickness or death in their houses, their hearts are peculiarly open and susceptible to impressions from one who comes to them in the character of a friend and comforter, as interesting himself in the education of their families, and by a thousand nameless offices and topics of introduction by which you may make a pretext or a reason occasion of visiting them: and you will infallibly, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, meet with a cordial welcome from this alienated population.
This aggression is the force of moral suasion, or as he wrote elsewhere, the “omnipotence of Christian charity.” That the people are thus susceptible highlights Chalmers’ convictions of a certain abiding goodness in human nature, which the territorial method exploits. It may not always result in conversion, but it should very well restore a population to regular church attendance – a more hopeful prelude to conversion.
Posted in Church of Scotland, Gospel Proclamation, Missiology, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, Pastoral Theology, Preaching, Vignettes from the Old Parish Way, Visitation Evangelism on July 12, 2017| Leave a Comment »
The following passage comes from the Memoirs of James Fraser of Brea (1639-1698). In it, we hear the heartbeat of a true fisher of men, a pastor-evangelist that all pastors should strive to be. Also, note that he urged the duty of the minister going beyond the four walls of the church into the “highways and hedges” to speak to the lost. This is the good old parish way – ministerial house to house evangelistic labor in a fixed, geographical district. Would to God it may be recovered! (Italics below mine.)
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God did not send me to baptise, but to preach. But that which I was called to was, to testify for God, to hold forth his name and 
ways to the dark world, and to deliver poor captives of Satan, and bring them to the glorious liberty of the sons of God: this was I to make: my only employment, to give myself to, and therein to be diligent, taking all occasions; and to be plain, full and free in this charge. I was called to enter in hot war with the world and sinners, to fight by my testimony against them for God ….
He is [in addition to public preaching] to execute his commission by exhortation, private and occasional instruction, whether for reproof, comfort, or in formation and direction. And this is it which I suppose I was moſt called unto, viz. to take all occasions with all persons in private discourse, to make the name of Christ known, and to do them good, and to do this as my only work; and to do it boldly, and faithfully and fully: and this to do is very hard in a right and effectual manner; to do this is harder than to preach publickly; and, to be strengthened, directed and encouraged in this, is that for which I ought to live near in a dependence on Christ, without whom we can do nothing, and of whom is all our sufficiency. In preaching there are a great many whom we can not reach, and there are many to whom we have no occasion to preach publickly; we may thus preach always, and speak more succesfully than in publick, where the greatest part of hearers do not understand the minister tho’ he speak never so plainly. This likewise we are called unto this day, seeing we are by force incapacitate: but oh how is this neglected! were ministers faithful in this, we should quickly fee a change in affairs; but, alas, with grief of heart I speak it, it is in this thing that I challenge myself most of any, it is in this that I have most come ſhort, and I suppose it may be so with others too. The Apostles went from house to house.
Posted in Church of Scotland, Gospel Tactics, Gregarious (Social) Principle, Locality & the Law of Residence, Missiology, Moral Suasion, Parish Theory & Practice, Parochial Strategy, The Romance of Locality, Vignettes from the Old Parish Way, Visitation Evangelism on June 14, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Here is a delightful vignette of old parish ‘missions,’ if you will, in 17th century Presbyterian Scotland. The minister, William Guthrie (1620-1665), labored to be all things to all men, that he might gain some.
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“After William Guthrie came to Fenwick, many of the people were so rude and barbarous, that they never attended upon divine worship, and knew not so much as the face of their pastor. To such, everything that respected religion was disagreeable; many refused to be visited or catechised by him; they would not even admit him into their houses. To such he sometimes went in the evening disguised in the character of a traveller, and sought lodging, which he could not even obtain without much entreaty, but, having obtained it, he would engage in some general amusing conversation at first, and then ask them how they liked their minister. When they told him that they did not go to church, he engaged them to go and take a trial; others he hired with money to go. When the time of family worship came, he desired to know if they made any, and if not, what reasons they had for it.
