Don’t Change the Message

By Larry Rosenbaum

The following is the message I gave on August 8 at the Jesus Movement Now Conference, which held at Promised Land Fellowship in San Francisco:

I was a hippie. I first came to San Francisco in the summer of 1967 to be part of the summer of love in the Haight-Ashbury. I was saved in 1970 at a Christian commune near Portland, Oregon. I lived in Christian communes in several cities for 4 ½ years before returning to San Francisco in 1975. Since then, I have been working with other believers in an effort to mobilize the church to preach the gospel in the streets and parks of San Francisco and Berkeley.

What will it take to see a significant change in San Francisco, our nation, and our world? First, Christians need to get very serious about prayer. This is starting to happen. We are seeing the beginning of a wonderful new prayer movement. But we also need to get very serious about evangelism. That hasn’t happened yet. Very few Christians witness for Jesus on a regular basis. Until that happens, we will not see a significant change in our world.

Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, said that “successful witnessing is simply taking the initiative to share Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, leaving the results to God.” What kind of evangelism is effective? I believe that all evangelism is effective as long as we are speaking the truth about Jesus in love.

Some Christians, quoting St. Francis, say that we can witness without using words. Jesus needed to use words. We do as well. Jesus preached loudly enough that thousands of people could hear him – and he didn’t even have a PA system.

What does it mean to “share Christ”? There are two parts to our message – repentance from sin and faith in Jesus. A person needs to see that he is a sinner, that his sin is serious because one day he will be judged by a holy God, and that he needs to turn from his sin. He needs to put his faith in Jesus Christ, trusting Him to forgive him and give him a new life centered on living for God instead of living for self.

I believe we should present the gospel message in the most tactful and loving way possible. However, we cannot avoid offending people. Many people will get upset when we tell them that they have sinned, or that they need to trust in Jesus in order to receive forgiveness. People got upset at Jesus. They crucified him. The apostles also suffered severe persecution, and most were put to death. We must not think that we are better than Jesus and the apostles – that somehow we can devise a way to preach the gospel without getting persecuted. “If only Jesus and the apostles had used our new 21st century evangelism method, they could have gotten lots of people saved without suffering persecution.” The only way we can avoid persecution is by not preaching the true gospel. Paul said, “All who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”

I believe God has made us all unique, and He will lead us differently in terms of the methods and style of evangelism we use. The important thing is that we all make a serious effort to bring the gospel to those around us who don’t know Jesus and are headed for Hell. We need to overcome our fear of rejection and persecution, and speak God’s word in love, with great sensitivity, but also boldly and without compromise.

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