God's Sovereignty in Evangelism and 'Failure'

Not for the first time, I was having the conversation about 'failure'. Someone was talking about a particular outreach ministry that had shown little fruit despite significant long term effort. I've had that conversation in the UK many times in private, although seldom have I seen it discussed in depth from the stage of a conference or in a heralded book, unless it has been to describe what was wrong in the ministry. For example, it might be outreach to a Muslim community that has never broken through, it might be the decline of a church despite all kinds of efforts, or the failure to reach a particular estate (council, new build or whatever).

Most often we go into problem-solving mode (or at least I do). We might decide the approach was dated or culturally inappropriate. Alternatively we will root out the leadership weakness of the church or ministry. Perhaps it was down to a failure of nerve on the gospel or even an incipient theological liberalism. All of which analysis implies there must have been a problem.

A large chunk of Christian publishing, blogging and tweeting is devoted to fixing the problem. We've had encouragements to be seeker sensitive or purpose driven for example. We have books applying leadership principles and business principles to the church. We have evangelistic courses which are designed for the 21st Century and evangelistic methodologies that have been proven to be successful.

Now you can probably guess where I'm going with this, but before I do, let me put some qualifications in place. If things aren't going well, it's always worth analysing what we're doing. Asking the questions of whether something is both faithful and wise is a good thing to do. Looking at the resources that are out there is extremely helpful - we mustn't assume that we know best without even considering what wise and godly believers both now and in the past have to teach us. It is certainly true that too often we like to let ourselves off the hook when we're being neither faithful or wise.

However, having had some personal experience of this kind of 'failure' and having had a number of these conversations, I think even the most Calvinistic of us might be forgetting the sovereignty of God. The simple truth that I can't make a church bulge with people and I can't make people become Christians (perhaps for those in mixed denominations I should add that nor can I make a denomination faithful or its leadership faithful!). I can faithfully plug away seeking to tell people the gospel, teaching the Bible, praying and encouraging fellow-believers to share their faith. But the Spirit of God blows where it will and people must be born again by that Spirit.

Broadly speaking in the west, Christianity and the church are now struggling. In many ways that's why so much of our literature is addressing the question of how to turn that around. And we have a great deal of discussion, much of it helpful, about why that is the case and what the church has got wrong over the last century or so. But for most Christians, in most situations, it is quite likely to be hard to follow Jesus, because it is a minority position. It's also going to be slow and hard in our outreach and evangelism.

I think this is worth saying because it puts our 'failure' in perspective. While we all make mistakes and nothing we do is without sin, it might help us to adjust our expectations. I don't think that God has promised revival in my time or in my town. The current state in the UK looks mostly like one where we should expect things to be pretty hard work and slow-going. Too often we tend to think we're are going to be the one that bucks the trend and leads revival. But that isn't, it seems to me, what we can expect or think is necessarily likely - as a church pastor in Rochdale it's unlikely that I will suddenly turn the tide on the west's departure from Christianity for example. If we recognise those things, we are less likely to be overly discouraged and less likely to either throw in the towel and give up entirely, or throw away faithfulness and wisdom as we chase 'success'.

Now some will say that this is to doubt the power of God. I think that's a more fair criticism that many of us would like. It's perfectly possible to see the circumstances and assume that it will always be like it is, or that revival will never come. In fact, it's very tempting to think that when things seem slow and relatively 'unsuccessful'. But I don't think recognising that God in his sovereignty more often doesn't bring revival and that does is to doubt the power of God. Of course I believe God could change all the circumstances in the west, in the church, in spciety and in my town of Rochdale. A huge revival could start this afternoon. God is God, not me! But that's rather the point. God is God and I don't get to set the schedule. So, it may well be that things are slow-going, declining even, for the rest of my life.

That takes us back to what we mean by success and failure. The reason I keep using quotation marks around failure and success is that I don't really want us to define those things in terms of numbers, but the terms of the discussion above are inevitably numerical. I do recognise, especially as a new church planter, that numbers matter. Church can't happen without people, money and resources and those things are inevitably about numbers. Churches round and about are closing and struggling because the numbers don't add up any more. It is very hard not feel those things as failures.

But as I listened in my most recent conversation, I felt I was listening to a faithful brother in a faithful church that had sought to be both wise and faithful and yet God had not blessed them with fruit. It seems to me that happens much more often than we like to admit. But it also seems we must trust in our sovereign God. He is faithful. Real success is seeking to trust him and be faithful to him, even when numerical success eludes us.