I have noticed an alarming trend in our day of pastors of churches, who rarely, if ever preach an evangelistic message in their services. They seem to have lost their zeal for souls. Perhaps they have even left their first love. In some cases, pastors don’t feel it is their calling to win souls. However, Paul, writing to Timothy who was a pastor, encouraged him to “…do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of your ministry.”
Why should pastors preach evangelistic messages regularly?

Shouldn’t they just teach and encourage?  There are several reasons.

First, when people visit a church service for the first time, a wise pastor should assume the possibility that they may be there because either they have been backslidden, and God is trying to draw them back to Himself, or they are unsaved and someone has been praying for them. Backsliders can often appear to be right with God. Having experience on how to worship as a believer and speak Christianese, they may appear to be simply someone who is new to the area, and is looking for a good Church. At the very least, a pastor should assume they need an opportunity to get things right with God, and spend the last 5-10 minutes of his preaching in preparing for a call to repentance.

Most congregations are made up of believers at different levels of maturity and skill in winning souls. But mark this down, anyone who professes to be a Christian, but has no zeal for souls is a hypocrite! He or she is only pretending to be a Christian. Those who are not as skillful, but who are full of zeal for souls will learn from the example of their pastor, and while they are learning, they will be greatly encouraged to bring their unsaved friends, family and neighbors to the Church services, knowing they can expect their pastor give an altar-call and bring them to Christ.

But, suppose they bring that lost neighbor, and the pastor neglects to draw the net, or perhaps even to throw out the net. In such a case, the believer get’s discouraged. He becomes vexed and heart broken. Perhaps it had taken him months to convince this person to attend to the preaching of his pastor. Now the service is over, and his friend is still lost.

I have seen the result when new converts are all full of zeal and love for souls. Often, with a faithful minister, there will be a kind of “chain of grace”, in which each new convert begins to bring in all their lost friends and neighbors, and these are converted. Then these also do the same, and so on. Before long, you have revival: a building filled with zealous new believers who hunger to be trained and taught on the subjects of prayer, holiness, soul winning, and all the various Christian graces.

-thatjoelguy

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