One primary problem I have with Crusade Evangelism is that I am not sure the Gospel can be fully or adequately preached in a mass-evangelism setting.

In other words, I am not sure that the typical message which is preached at an Evangelism Crusade is actually the Scriptural gospel. The Gospel message of Evangelistic Crusades is not biblical.

The Crusade Evangelism Gospel

The Crusade Evangelism message usually focuses on these points:

1. God loves you.
2. You are a sinner.
3. The penalty for sin is death and eternal separation from God.
4. You can never be good enough to return to God.
5. God created a way through the death and resurrection of Jesus for us to be restored into a right relationship with Him.
6. If you believe in Jesus, you can be saved.

Point number six, of course, is stated in about a dozen different ways, with people arguing over what the actual requirement should be (repent and be baptized, confess your sins, say this prayer, etc, etc), but for the sake of this blog post, I don’t really care about that.

Here is my point: These six points, in this order, are not biblical.

By this, I do not mean that they cannot be found in Scripture. They can.

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There are lots of people who become Christians at Evangelism Crusades. There is no denying it. I believe that the number of conversions reaches into the millions. I have argued in previous posts that despite such numbers, personal relationships might be a better and more effective way of reaching even more people.

But there are additional problems with Crusade evangelism. The first concerns what we are teaching these new converts. When a person becomes a Christian at an Evangelistic Crusade, what is the first thing we teach them about Christianity and following Jesus? What theological ideas about God and church are we affirming?

The Gospel of Crusade Evangelism

The typical message at an Evangelistic Crusade follows this structure:

God loves you, but you are a sinner. As a sinner, you are alienated from God, and can do nothing to correct that alienation. If you continue in that state, you will suffer eternal alienation from God in everlasting hell. But God, out of His great love for us, created a way of escape from eternal punishment—you must be born again.

There is little agreement among evangelists about the method of being born again. The requirements often include raising a hand, coming forward, saying a prayer, signing a card, confessing Christ, repenting of sins, believing in Jesus, and getting baptized, which is altogether a separate issue…

Holes in the Crusade Evangelism Gospel

The message itself is not exactly wrong, it just leaves out a huge portion of the Gospel. The message is too otherworldly. It is a message about the afterlife only, about heaven and hell and what happens to us after we die. The message rarely has much application or relevance for life here on earth, unless it is some vague notion that God wants to help us with our needs if we will just pray, obey, and go to church.  I understand that the evangelist can only say so much, and that the message of eternal life is the most vital, and that the ministries encourage local churches to do the follow-up discipleship.

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I have been to a few evangelism crusades, and I always got the uncomfortable feeling that people were coerced into converting. These crusades reminded me a little bit of the “evangelism techniques” of the Middle Ages when Christian soldiers went on the Crusades to retake Jerusalem from the “heathens” and in the process “converted” many people at the point of a sword.

We don’t use swords today. We have other methods of persuasion.

Many of the techniques used in crusade evangelism were learned from the fields of marketing, sales, entertainment, and group psychology. The carefully crafted appeals to come forward at a crusade are often emotional in nature, based on success stories of people who converted, or tales of woe about people who did not. Sometimes these stories contain vivid portrayals of heaven and hell, where those who come forward can enjoy eternal bliss with God, while those who do not will suffer eternal torment in the flames and blackness of hell.

Barrel of Fluff or Barrel of Fire

I once saw a speaker at a teen rally have all the high school kids write their names on a piece of paper. Then, up on stage he had two barrels. In one, he put fluffy cotton, a Bible, and some gold (fake, of course). In the other barrel, he started a raging fire. Then he told the kids to come forward and drop their name in the barrel which signified where they wanted to go when they died…heaven (the fluffy barrel) or hell (the fire barrel). Not surprisingly, this speaker was able to go home to his church and report that every single teenager at this camp “made a decision for Christ.”

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