Sequential Evangelism and Witnessing
Memory Text: “I fed you with milk and not with solid food;
for until now you were not able to receive it” (1 Corinthians 3:2, NKJV).
Our Quarterly defines Sequential Evangelism as a strategy
based on the understanding that people will move from one church program to
another when the programs are arranged in the right sequence. This, however,
has to be done correctly or else it can do more harm than good.
Here is an extreme of what they mean: Imagine that it is
your first day of school ever. You are excited, yet nervous about your upcoming
experience. Walking into the classroom, you are greeted warmly by the teacher,
who invites you to sit at a desk loaded with books. After a loud bell rings,
the teacher tells you to open your physics book to the chapter titled “Quantum
Mechanics and Path Integrals.” Because you haven’t yet learned to read, it’s a
little hard to find the right page. You begin to wonder if maybe you’re not
smart enough to be in school.
Consider This: While we would never expect a first-grader to
do college-level work, how often do we, in our well-intentioned eagerness in
witnessing, try to get to the “meat” of the Bible with someone before first
establishing a personal relationship and an understanding of basic Bible
teachings?
However, Sequential Evangelism is more than just giving
information at the right time.
Sequential Evangelism is an adaptation (or cooptation) of an interaction
marketing technique called progressive disclosure. In this technique you take a person through a
series of steps, disclosing information on a need (or want) to know basis. The idea behind it is that as you disclose
information you also disclose yourself, thus creating a bond between you and
the person seeking information. The more
information is disclosed the greater the bond and mutual identification. Unbeknownst to the seeker the “discloser”
could use this technique to manipulate them emotionally to make decisions that
otherwise they would not make. The
“discloser” needs not to truly identify with the seeker, but give an appearance
of it.
One way to start this process is with the felt needs
approach. With the felt needs approach
you find out what the person feels they need so: if they are hungry feed
them. If they lack clothes, clothe
them. If they need consoling, you
console them. You become the solution to
their immediate problem. This in turn
hopefully makes the person sympathize with you so they can trust you.
To Seventh Day Adventists the Health Message is a way of
addressing felt needs. They use the Health
Message as a way of getting someone interested in what we have to say, so that
they may join our church. This is using
the Health Message a tool to open the door to indoctrination. The goal is to gain a new member.
Are there problems with this approach? Let us start with felt needs. Our feelings change. They are not consistent. So, if my needs are based on how I feel, so
will my needs. Once a need is met, then
I must find the other need, and so on.
More often than not, the needy one is often suggested what (s)he needs
so we can meet that need. This can
become and endless process that will never address our biggest need of all: a
Savior. Our deepest and most important problem
is Sin, whether we know it or not, whether we feel it or not. And, Christ is the only solution to that
problem. In fact, if it was not for Christ we would not
know we have that problem and have a need to fix it.
Christ may have disclosed information progressively, but His
identification with the people was not progressive. He identified with sinners from the
beginning. Not with their sins, but with
their pain and suffering. Remember, He
took our Sinful nature (2 Corinthians 5:21) (yes, He did not Sin – Hebrews 4:15). He was the last Adam (1 Corinthians 14:45). He understood what they were going
through. He is after all the High Priest
that can sympathize with us because He is touched with our infirmities (Hebrews
4:15). This is why He was able to have
compassion for the people, He identified with them. He wanted to help them. This is why Ellen White says about that,
“Christ's method alone will give
true success in reaching the people. The Saviour mingled with men as one who
desired their good. He showed His sympathy for them, ministered to their needs,
and won their confidence. Then He bade them, "Follow Me." {MH 143.3}
You realize that what Christ accomplished by coming in
contact with these people was to change their misguided misconception – some
call it picture – of God. The People
were told by the leaders that they suffered because God was not on their side,
and that God was not on their side because they were sinners. Christ came to show them that only part of
that statement was true. They suffered
because of Sin, but the Lord was on their side attempting to do all He could to
relieve them of their suffering and of Sin itself, the cause of their suffering. Jesus believed in and used the personal
touch. He dealt with the people one on
one and face to face. He did not create
institutions with activities and programs.
He always had physical contact (at the least eye contact). He spoke directly to the people. It was known that He was the source of the
grace that healed made many whole.
To Jesus, relief from physical suffering was relieving from
the consequences of Sin. Sin caused
their physical maladies, Sin caused their physical needs, Sin caused their
mental anguish, and Sin caused their Spiritual darkness. The grace of Christ healed them, fed them,
gave them hope, and gave them Spiritual light.
Christ sought to relieve all from their suffering. Ellen White says,
“Christ drew the hearts of His
hearers to Him by the manifestation of His love, and then, little by little,
as they were able to bear it, He unfolded to them the great truths of the
kingdom. We also must learn to adapt our labors to the condition of the
people—to meet men where they are.”—Ellen G. White, Evangelism, p. 57.
To truly meet someone where they are you must identify with
them. Christ loved and cared completely and
unconditionally from the start, the information came as the people were ready
to receive it. Many were not ready or
unwilling to receive more than what Christ did for them in the beginning. They wanted their physical needs met, but
nothing more. That did not stop Christ
from loving them. The disciples that
left in John 6: 54 - 66, were offended by Jesus language. As it says in our quarterly,
Many who had witnessed, and
benefited from, the feast on the mountainside the previous day followed Jesus
in order to be fed again. As Jesus attempted to turn their minds to spiritual
things by using the illustration of His body and blood, many turned away. It
wasn’t that they could not grasp the truth of salvation through Christ alone;
it was that they refused to accept it. It was a testing time, and when their
personal wants were not met, they chose to walk away.
Of the 12 disciples Jesus said, “I have yet many things to
say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now” (John 16:12). Paul went through the same experience with the
Corinthians. That is why he said to them
“I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to
receive it” (1 Corinthians 3:2, NKJV). Ellen White says of these,
“…those addressed in these words
had not been feeding on Christ, and therefore they were not advanced in
spiritual knowledge. Paul said, ‘I have fed you with milk’—the plainest, most
simple truths, suitable for converts young in the faith; ‘not with meat’—the
solid, nourishing, spiritual food suited to those who have made progress in a
knowledge of divine things. They were living on a low level, dwelling on the
surface truths which call for no thought, no deep research.”—Ellen G. White,
Manuscript 70, 1901.
At the surface it seems it is just about knowledge, but on a
deeper level Christ and Paul were saying something else. Generally, those who drink milk but not eat
meat are babies. When asked to describe
a baby, positive things come out first: small, cuddly, innocent, cute. When there are no more positive things to
say, there is an awkward silence, which is broken by somebody suggesting that
the cry a lot, they require too much attention.
They awake at inopportune times.
They require a lot of feeding, a lot of diapers, and cleaning after
them. In other words, babies are
selfish, self-centered and unconcerned for the needs and wants of others. However, you would expect this of babies.
Evidently, we would expect a grown-up to be different. You expect them to be concerned about others’
concerns and needs, to an extent self-sufficient, self-providing and able to
communicate. However how many grown-ups
do you actually know are like this? You
can probably count them with your fingers.
These adults are in a figurative sense still drinking milk; because, in
many ways they still acts like babies.
When Paul spoke to the Corinthians he told them that,
“I fed you with milk and not with
solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it” (1 Corinthians
3:2, NKJV).
As mentioned above, we often think that Paul was referring
to theological knowledge. And, yes
babies know nothing compared to a grown-up.
But, there is the other factor expressed above that is often ignored,
which goes along with the comparison above.
Paul was telling them you act like Spiritual babies. Paul is in essence saying, “It as if you
think that salvation is about you: What you are spared from and what you
rewarded if you join the church. But,
there is no concern or consideration for the One who saved you. How do you feel about Him? How does Christ feel about not yet receiving
what He purchased with His precious blood?
Although He is in Heaven does He still feel compassion when we
suffer? Is He suffering now, when we go
about our lives only concerned about us and not Him and others? Do you long to be with Him, whom gave His
life so that you could be with Him forever?
Are you still a Spiritual Baby? “
Ellen White seems to confirm this line of thought,
“Those who think of the result of hastening or
hindering the gospel think of it in relation to themselves and to the world.
Few think of its relation to God. Few give thought to the suffering that sin
has caused our Creator. All heaven suffered in Christ’s agony; but that
suffering did not begin or end with His manifestation in humanity. The cross is
a revelation to our dull senses of the pain that, from its very inception, sin
has brought to the heart of God. Every departure from the right, every deed of
cruelty, every failure of humanity to reach His ideal, brings grief to Him”
(Education, 263).
Many act like the Shulamite Woman when her Lover came to see
her. Let us read in Songs 5: 2 – 3,
Songs 5: 2 I sleep, but my heart
waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister,
my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks
with the drops of the night.
Songs 5: 3 I have put off my
coat; how shall I put it on? I have washed my feet; how shall I defile them?
Full of self-concern, her comfort and convenience were
more important than her lover’s need to be intimate with her. He left disappointed. She called Him lover. But, she demonstrated that she did not love
Him enough to open the door for Him.
This Shulamite woman represents us, the Laodicean church. The writer of Revelation says that we believe
we are “… rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing” (Revelation
5: 17). Christ in the meantime is
standing at the door knocking. Crying out, “if any man hear my voice, and open
the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me”
(Revelation 3:20). Will we let Him
in? Or will we like the Shulamite woman
send Him away because we do not want to inconvenience ourselves? We have milk in the house, but He brings meat. Which one do we want most?
