Do You Have to Do Door-to-Door Evangelism?

Ignore your teeth, they'll go away.   Ignore door-to-door evangelism and you won't preach the gospel to everyone.  Does it matter if you don't preach to everyone?  If it doesn't, then go ahead and ignore door-to-door.

Churches ignore door-to-door.  They are either defying what God said or they don't believe it matters if you preach the gospel to everyone.

If churches don't believe that God wants them to preach the gospel to everyone, then what is it that He does want with that regard?  Does He want them to preach it to some people?  If some, how many?  And if we're not to preach to everyone where we live, then why go to some foreign field to preach it?

The problem, as I see it, is a lack of boldness.  And that lack of boldness comes because of a lack of the Holy Spirit or at least submission to the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit works toward boldness.  If we don't see boldness, then He isn't there to work or someone is quenching His work.

The no door-to-door people, however, usually never will say it is because of a lack of boldness.  What do they say?  The following is what I've heard recently right here.

1.    Jesus didn't preach to everyone because not everyone wanted to hear.

The full argument here, I guess, is something like this.  If Jesus went to a community and they didn't want to listen, He didn't preach to them, so that means that we don't have to preach to everyone.  Therefore, we won't preach to everyone.

I would think that "preach to everyone" would be obvious.  We preach to everyone that will listen to us.  You're not avoiding anyone when you do it that way.  But your intention, your approach, and your actions are toward preaching to everyone.

2.    Door-to-door isn't the best way to preach the gospel to everyone.

I don't understand this one.  The best way to preach the gospel to everyone is to preach the gospel to everyone.  Someone says that door-to-door isn't the best way.  But if you don't go to everyone, you won't preach it to everyone.  If people didn't have doors, only windows, I would say "window-to-window."  If people lived out of doors, with no doors or windows, I would say, "person-to-person."  The best way to preach to everyone must include preaching to everyone.  If the best way to preach to everyone doesn't include preaching to everyone, then it can't be the best way.

For instance, let's test some of the other ideas that someone might float as better.  "I talk to people who happen to be on their porches."  That is preaching to everyone who is on their porch.  What about those not on their porches?  It doesn't attempt to preach to them.  Or, "we invite everyone in the community to our building to hear."  That is inviting.  That is not "going."  It is staying and inviting.  Going means that you leave your location and go to their location.  Get it?  It's tough, but I think you can understand it.

3.    People have gated communities and you can't get into them.

This would be akin to, "there are people who live on tiny islands that have no airports and so they are tough to get to."  I'm thinking of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia.  They have lots of little islands.  If they have gates around their communities, you are going to have to find a different way to get to those people.  However, not being able to get to them doesn't mean that you don't go ahead and go to people who don't live behind gates.  Go to the gateless places and then find a way to get the gospel to the gated.  Some people are in maximum security isolation.  They're even tougher to get to.  Since I can't get it to them, do I just not go to everyone else?  Get it?  It's tough, but I think you can understand it.

4.    I've found door-to-door to be off-putting and ineffective.

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation.  If you preach it to someone, it only seems off-putting and ineffective.  Some people don't receive it.  I know of nowhere in Scripture that says that if you preach the gospel, everyone is always going to like it.  What I read is that the broad road leads to destruction.  I read that people have to want it when they hear it.  The method of going to people and preaching it to them will be unpopular always.

Going to a person to preach to him is effective at having the gospel preached to him.  Not going to him and preaching to him is very ineffective at having it preached to him.   When you do preach it to him, and he doesn't want to listen (he's "off-put"), it might be because he thinks that preaching is foolishness, that he's proud, that he doesn't see his desperate condition---those sorts of things.

When someone says he thinks it's ineffective, what he means, I believe, is:  "my church doesn't get bigger in numbers that way."  There are reasons door-to-door will hurt bigger numbers.  I've written about that here other times.  They will know your church goes door-to-door, and they don't want to be associated with that kind of boldness or fanaticism.  They want a church where you won't be expected to preach.  In other words, they aren't denying themselves.  They aren't taking up their cross.  And they aren't following Jesus.  But they still want to be saved, go to heaven, and have other neat stuff the church has to offer.  To promote the church through non-preaching is to misrepresent Christianity and the New Testament.  It will tend toward false professions.

5.    Door-to-door associates us with the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Let's say Satan had a plan to stop the gospel from being preached to everyone.  What could he do?  I know.  He could have another group do door-to-door that preached a false gospel and make true gospel preaching look bad.  Christians who didn't want to look like the false preachers would stop preaching it to everyone.

Lots of false religions have similar practices to true churches.  They have choirs.  They have the Lord's Table. They baptize.  They preach.  That doesn't mean we should stop obeying the New Testament.

6.    People who go door-to-door are just going through the motions, putting in their time, and thinking they are better than other people because they punch the time-clock every week and do their hour or two of door-to-door---it's legalistic.

You might not think that's an actual reason, but it really is a common one.  Of course, anything we do in the Christian life can be merely ritual.  That's a warning for everything in the Christian life.  It doesn't mean we should stop doing what's right out of love for God.

7.    There are other ways to preach to people besides door-to-door.

That's true.  If I say, "eat with a fork," that doesn't mean you can't eat with a spoon or even use your fingers.  Come on, folks.  Of course there are other ways to preach.  But there isn't another way to preach it to everyone that I know of.  And I've never had anyone tell me how you could do it without actually going to everyone.  And since they live behind doors, and they usually come to the door when they want to talk to you, then you'll need to go to the door.  If they're in the front yard, you won't have to go to their door.  Yah!  Hip-hip hooray!  You didn't go door-to-door to the one who was in his yard.

The Greeks like wisdom.  The Jews signs.  Americans like other things.  That doesn't mean that we should use strategies that take advantage of what people like.  We should preach.  They won't like it for the most part.  We already know it.  We should just do it anyway by faith and depend on God for the results.  That's what pleases and glorifies Him.