“Who’s Your One” is now a one-year-old emphasis in the Southern Baptist Convention—calling on individual believers to reach out to a person without a relationship with Jesus Christ. All over Birmingham and across the Convention, individual believers are focusing on a single person with their prayers, acts of service, love, and verbal witness of the Gospel. This invest and invite strategy works. We see the results in the BMBA. People are being transformed by the Gospel! Baptismal waters are stirring. Personal evangelism is being reborn for a new generation.
Think strategically with me about evangelism for a moment. No one can better help us to think about evangelism better than Ralph Winter. Billy Graham once said, “Ralph Winter has not only helped promote evangelism among many mission boards around the world, but by his research, training, and publishing, he has accelerated world evangelization.” Winter (1924-2009) was a trained civil engineer, cultural anthropologist, and gifted missiologist who helped to shift the global mission strategy from a focus on political boundaries to a focus on distinct people groups. One of Winter’s mottos was, “Nothing that does not occur daily will ever dominate your life.” He was especially passionate about evangelism.
Winter helped church leaders and missionaries get a perspective on evangelism by categorizing groups to be reached on a scale: E-0, E-1, E-2, and E-3.
E-Zero (E-0) Evangelism is used to describe reaching out to nominal church members to engage them in a real understanding of the Gospel or a more in-depth level of discipleship. In E-0 Evangelism, the church does not increase in the number of members on the church roll but honors the Gospel and increases in health. Perhaps your church keeps members on roll who are not committed to the church or growing in their relationship with Jesus Christ. What is your church doing to take responsibility for the care of these souls? Peter admonished us, “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight” (1 Peter 5:2a).
E-One (E-1) Evangelism is reaching non-believers who are in the same cultural group as those doing the evangelism. This is when Christians focus on reaching lost family members, their co-workers, and others with whom they may already associate outside of the church. E-1 Evangelism isn’t cross-cultural evangelism. This is fishing within your own cultural aquarium.
E-Two (E-2) Evangelism is reaching out to those who are of a different culture. Its most significant focus is not on bringing people into your church but instead bringing the Gospel to a new place or people group. Most churches experience this on short-term mission trips. Sometimes believers experience this when they leave their state or area of the country. Most Southern Baptists experience this when they board a plane and leave the United States and visit a Western nation where people share some forms of cultural heritage.
E-Three (E-3) Evangelism describes reaching non-believers who are very different in culture. This is unquestionably cross-cultural outreach. Language, customs, and lifestyles are entirely foreign. There are usually no examples of this in local church practice, except in the commissioning of missionaries or in sending of mission teams.
Ralph Winter believed that most churches—in the United States or abroad—never get beyond E-0 Evangelism. He once said, “Risk is not to be evaluated in terms of the probability of success but by the value of the goal.” No higher goal is achievable in the work of the ministry than proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Evangelism is worth the risk! Another motto that Winter lived by was, “Never do anything others can do or will do when there are things to be done that others can’t do or won’t!” He charged the church to be faithful to the task of evangelism because Jesus Christ has charged no other organization on earth with the Great Commission. Is your church stuck at E-0 Evangelism, or are you all the way to E-3 Evangelism—reaching the nations? Who is your “one?” You will never reach your “one” if you’re stuck on zero.