Throwing Evangelists a Bone

This quick post is an effort to balance what I said earlier in my post "Evangelists Feel the Heat." I must say that I thank God for revivalism and its evangelists in a few ways.

First, the passionate, powerful preaching of the Gospel, so long as the major biblical elements are included, is both necessary for the salvation of sinners and a wonderful grace of God.

Second, though revivalism has produced some unwanted side-effects, it has also been used by God to bring about the salvation of many souls.

Thirdly, many evangelists inflate their numbers and the quality of the responses at their meetings, but many do not. Those evangelists with integrity are to be commended as fruitful and Christlike members of the Lord's church.

Fourthly, evangelists focus on some of the most basic (and important) of Christian doctrines in their preaching. Not all Calvinists are like John Piper--passionate for the lost and the church. In fact, many a Calvinist church has not borne fruit, but nuts. This is a sad state of affairs, but many people who are attracted to Calvinism in our modern day do develop an un-biblical balance in their presentation of the Gospel, focusing more on the deep doctrines of the Bible (God's sovereignty/providence; God's decrees in the order of salvation; Covenant theology) than on the basic Gospel message that is continually found in the Scripture in the person and work of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, including God's holiness, man's sinfulness, the wrath of God against sinners, Christ's sacrifice for sin, the commands to mankind to repent and believe, and the importance of simple obedience and faith in practical, everyday living for average folks. Many Calvinist churches need to reclaim a sense of urgency for the lost in their basic presentation of the Gospel.

So, as with almost all things under the sun, there is good and bad in revivalism and the evangelists that support and practice it. We ought to thank God for the good and use our influence to address the bad with a Christlike mind and intention to change it.