We sing that we love to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love, but Presbyterians notoriously keep the story to themselves.  So reported Eric Hoey, the associate director for evangelism for the denomination’s General Assembly Council, to conferees at the Grow the Church Deep and Wide: Evangelism Consultation at Stony Point Conference Center on Nov. 10. 

            In fact, Hoey overviewed conclusions drawn in a 1996 Presbyterian Panel study on evangelism in the denomination, repeatedly sounding the refrain, “Nothing has changed in 12 years.”

            What did they say then that they’re saying now? 

            “Presbyterians are uncomfortable with street corner or stranger evangelism.” 

            He recounted to a laughing response, “I did a workshop in Chicago Presbytery. A woman told me, ‘I don’t even believe in evangelism.’ I asked her, ‘Then why are you at a conference on evangelism?’”  She responded, “‘Because we have to learn how to do it.’”

            However, rejecting stranger evangelism need not be the end of the discussion. He acknowledged that he got so frustrated with random evangelism on his college campus that he formed a new approach, organizing the Asian-American Christian Fellowship. Sure enough, “God blessed it with real growth.”

            A second complaint voiced then and echoed today:  pastors provide little help to those members who would like to evangelize, or, as Hoey said, “If the decline of the church is so important, why are we spending so much time not training in evangelism?””

            A third, ironic complaint: pastors generally see evangelism as members’ responsibility, and members see evangelism as pastors’ responsibility. The right answer:  it is every believer’s responsibility.

            A fourth problem is the lack of consensus on what is involved in the process of evangelizing. About three-fourths of Presbyterian church members and elders agree that evangelism involves faith sharing with a particular emphasis on what it means to accept Christ as Savior. However, ministers get hung up on theological exactness. “One of our evangelism problems is a humility problem,” Hoey reflected. “Some of the best evangelism tools get dismissed out of hand because they don’t fit into our ‘Reformed theology’ frame of mind.” But, “if an evangelism program is working from another theological perspective, shouldn’t we humble ourselves enough to learn from it?”

            One other problem is that quality Presbyterian resources are not well known. Most members and elders don’t know they exist. 

            Hoey pointed conferees to the www.presbygrow.net Web site. “It was not produced by GA headquarters,” he acknowledged. But it’s really good — highly interactive with “oodles of resources.”

            He also invited conferees and other Presbyterians elsewhere to go to the Web site developed for the conference, so ideas being spurred there could expand and grow:  www.deepandwide.net.

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