Rick Warren is right on target when he says that the question isn’t how much evangelism costs, but who will it reach.  The body of Christ cannot afford to pattern itself on a business model when it comes to financing
evangelism.  This is not to say that we should not prudently handle, budget, and safeguard our financial resources, but it is to say that evangelism cannot be successful treated as a business venture. 

Evangelism is NEVER cost effective.  If businesses expended money in the same porportions as some churches do for evangelism, with the same return per dollar spent, they would be bankrupt and out of business in short order.  Monetarily, evangelism just doesn’t pay.  But, as the old, well quoted saying goes, what is the cost of a human soul?

Churches that are big into evangelism and budget considerable funds for it are looking for spiritual returns, not financial ones.  Many members in those same churches don’t agree and see their dollars being thrown down a hole, don’t participate in evangelism, and impede church efforts; it simply doesn’t make sense to them. This is a sad state of affairs.  If God Himself could leave the splendid riches of heaven to become a man in the lower social stratum of His own creation, endure rejection, ridicule, false arrest, a rigged trial, torture, and humiliating death for everyone who is lost, what indeed must that lost person be worth in God’s eyes?  Is expending $5000.00 to see five people saved a sensible expenditure of funds.  No if you’re a for profit business, but yes if you are a church or ministry committed to Kingdom business.

A recent example from our small church will, I think, illustrate my point.  In March of 2004, our church of 20 something members had the unusual blessing of having Paul Wrenn, a strong man evangelist, and Tully Blanchard, a former WCW and WWF prime time TV wrestling superstar grace our church as platform guests.  A youth home for troubled teens is located about four miles from our church.  They may be from anywhere in Alabama, are placements from some juvenile court in the state, and stay for a few weeks to a few months.  Some are black and some are white, but all are on the verge of being a police problem or already are.  I do not live in the area where my church is located, so I was not aware of this until a member mentioned it.  We promoted this event with radio announcements (Christian stations that did not charge us for this), flyers posted through the community residential and business districts, and ads in the state Baptist newspaper; we also invited the residents of the youth home.  We prepared a fellowship meal and made sure we had food for the population of that home.  We had less than 50 people, including 13 from the youth home, to attend.  Seven of those thirteen kids (black and white)plus one from our community were saved in those services. 

We gave our platform guests about $650.00 in a love offering and bought Bibles for those who were saved, had them autographed by our guests, and the boy’s name lettered on the cover. 

Within a month, those young men were all discharged from the home and scattered all over Alabama.  They have never been back to our church, likely won’t be again, and never contributed one penny to our costs.  In one sense of the word, we were out the costs of printed materials, the love offerings, the expense of the meal, the cost of the Bibles, and the manpower time promoting the event in our community.  We had no new members, no full pews, and no increase in our weekly offerings, so we concluded that evangelism doesn’t pay, right?  Wrong! 

Those seven young men were the first people to be saved within the walls of our struggling church in 20 years.  It was like a jolt of electricity to our people.  After such a long drought, we saw the reason we were a church in the first place - people became convicted and were saved as a result of our evangelism efforts!  You can’t believe what this has done for our church’s spiritual attitude!  Would it have been worth it at two or three times the cost?  Yes!  Will we attempt something like this again?  You bet! 

From a business model, this event didn’t do anything but cost us money.  It didn’t fill our building (we can seat 100), and it didn’t increase our membership or attendance, but I don’t think we could have spent ten times that amount on anything else and reaped the same spiritual blessing that we have seen.  I am convinced that the Mt. Signal Baptist Church community laid up treasure in heaven that we will continue to enjoy throughout eternity.  Rick Warren knows the costs of evangelism, and he also knows the magnitude of its return.  Spend the money.  It’s worth it.

Leonard Irvin
Pastor
Mt. Signal Baptist Church
Chelsea, AL

Pastor Leonard
Great story!  Thanks for sharing it.  I hope God continues to bless Mt. Signal.
Dennie