Over the course of 50 years, Billy Graham may have helped 12 million people come to faith in Jesus and begin a life of discipleship to Him. That is a significant number, and I thank God for the work of Billy Graham (and other evangelists like him).

But have you ever stopped to think about the hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent for those 12 million converts? The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association currently spends about $100 million per year. I wonder if there might be a more effective way of spending hundreds of millions of dollars for evangelistic purposes than Evangelistic Crusades? For example, studies say that relationship evangelism is the most effective form of evangelism. What would have happened if hundreds of millions of dollars were spent training and supporting relationship evangelists?

Evangelism Math

The estimates for the number of evangelical Christians in the world range from 300 million to 700 million. Let’s just say that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association had decided to spend their money on relational evangelism training instead of crusades, and that in 50 years of operations, they trained only 1% of the lower estimate of 300 million Christians worldwide, or 3 million Christians. Studies report that people who are trained in relational evangelism see about one friend, coworker, neighbor, or family member become a follower of Jesus every year. But let’s err on the side of caution here as well, and say it is only one every four years.

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Crusade evangelism is a strategy that has been used since the First Great Awakening in mid-1700’s. It began in England and American where popular preachers gathered together large crowds of people, and preached the Gospel to them.

Some of the leading evangelists to use this strategy include D. L. Moody, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, Charles Finney, Billy Sunday, and in more recent years, Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, Luis Palau, and Greg Laurie. And should we include Tim Tebow’s dad in there as well? Check out the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association.

Without a doubt, millions of people around the world have heard the Gospel and received eternal life as a result of these crusades. They are, and continue to be, a meaningful and effective way of spreading the good news about Jesus Christ.

Crusade Evangelism Statistics

And yet, in a 1990 interview with PBS, Billy Graham himself stated his believe that only about 25% of those who come forward at one of his events actually became Christians. In recent years, studies have shown that only 6% of people who “come forward” at an evangelistic crusade are any different in their beliefs or behavior one year later. Of course, it is estimated that Billy Graham preached to more than 200 million people, and 6% of 200 million is still 12 million. That’s significant.

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We have looked at several types of street evangelism, and found them all to be lacking in both effectiveness and Christlikeness.

So how to most street evangelists justify their actions?

Information in the Age of Jesus

Most of those who engage in street preaching find justification for it in the pages of Scripture. They notice that Jesus, Paul, and others would go into the busy streets and marketplaces of towns and cities, and proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God and eternal life. And this is true. Such methods were used.

But what few people realize today is that such a method of spreading news was commonly practiced in the first century Roman Empire. They didn’t have printing presses, newspapers, or even a postal system. So when merchants, or philosophers, or government officials wanted to spread the news about something, they would send out a herald or an emissary to stand in a busy area of town, or walk through the streets, shouting the news. This is how announcements and messages were spread back then.

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A year after my encounter with Sandwich Board Evangelism, I found myself at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. One of the core classes was a course on evangelism. As part of the course, some of the students went out every weekend to do street evangelism.

One weekend, I was guilt-tripped into joining them. (Have you ever noticed that guilt is a heavy motivator in evangelism — both in those who do it and in the message they preach? That should tell us something is wrong with evangelism.)

Street Corner Evangelism

Anyway, the approach these students used was a little more tasteful than that of Bullhorn Evangelist Red or the college campus Sandwich Board preacher. One student was a bit of an artist, and he set up a big easel on a corner of Michigan Avenue, and proceeded to draw Gospel-related images on the easel while preaching in a loud voice about the Gospel.

While he did that, the rest of us acted as “crowd primers.” It is normal street corner psychology that if a crowd is standing around watching something, you want to stop and see what is going on. So we “created the crowd.” We were supposed to walk up, acting like we were just people passing by, and then stop and watch him draw and listen to him preach.  After a dozen or so students had “stopped to listen” others would stop, watch, and listen as well.

The guy talked and drew for about five minutes, and then as he closed up, we were supposed to pull a Gospel tract out of our pocket and hand it to a stranger nearby and ask what they thought about Jesus and the message they had just heard, and if they had any questions or wanted us to pray with them.

Springing the Trap

I still remember feeling like we were setting a trap for people. It was even more strange because in my first attempt at this, there was about three students for every actual person. So when the presentation was over, each “unsaved” person got swarmed by three students handing them tracts and asking to pray with them. Imagine how they must have felt! They thought they were gathered with a bunch of other strangers on the sidewalk, only to find out that the vast majority of the crowd was fake, just waiting to pounce on their unsuspecting souls.

I don’t think we got any converts this day, but if we did, I don’t remember. I felt too dirty and ashamed to care. Some might say I was ashamed of the Gospel, but I don’t think that was it at all. I don’t think that what we had done had much to do with the gospel at all.

Does Street Evangelism Work?

So I am not a fan of any of the three forms of street evangelism we have looked at so far. They show nothing of the neighborly love or sacrificial service that are central to the biblical gospel. Granted, there’s no telling what the Holy Spirit might do, or who He might use to bring people to Jesus, but I always have to wonder when I encounter such street preachers if there might be a better, more gentle, personal, forgiving way of drawing people to Jesus Christ.

As Nathan L. K. Bierma points out, such street-evangelism techniques seem “to have found the most alienating way to talk to people (or at people), the way that involves the least listening, the least smiling, the least humility, the least possibility of getting anything but a cold shoulder in return” (Bringing Heaven Down to Earth, 136).

Have you ever done any street evangelism? What was your experience with it? What did you do? How did you feel? What happened as a result?

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