Chapter12: Proclamation Evangelism and the Modern Church

Religious Humanism

Returning from the annual Christian Education training seminars in Uganda in the summer of 2002, having checked my luggage in at Entebbe airport, I went upstairs in the modern terminal building to the departure lounge. I was a bit behind the rest of the team and wandered into the wrong doorway; I found myself in a marvellous Club Lounge with very smartly liveried waitresses and waiters, in a superb Club atmosphere with beautiful furniture, restful decorations, delightful pictures on the walls of colourful African scenes, and a huge bar offering all kinds of delights. One wall of the room was a large picture window looking out on to the apron where the aircraft stood below. I could see out over the lake and the hills behind - it was a lovely, sunny evening. We had had a wonderful month with the inspiration of being with the African clergy and I began to feel marvellous; the low music in the background instilled a sense of tremendous peace and well-being ... until I got chucked out! This was of course the Prestige Lounge for holders of American Express credit cards or Business Class airline tickets.

Turning on the radio yesterday (February 6th, 2003) I found myself in a similar situation. It's the largest church in California, 19,000 people attend each Sunday: this beautiful glass building in the rolling countryside, the continuous low music, the coffee bar and doughnuts given to everyone as they enter, the modern decor with ultra-comfortable seats, and a special message for you from a God who loves you so much, he wants to meet your every need - he wants you to be rich, he wants you to feel good about yourself, and the mesmeric tones of the preacher assure everyone that God's services are all offered free to those prepared to "be loving, or super-nice". They have certainly found a way to make people feel good in a pleasant club atmosphere and the God who wants to serve you will make everything about your life really successful ... will you support our church?

The super-nice church has arrived: any kind of jarring influence is removed from the service, like the Gospel for example. "Seeker-friendly" messages are designed to remove any kind of godly requirement from the individual: skillful preachers allude to the doctrine of salvation as a non-comprehension of what Jesus really meant. "We have moved on from there" is what they say. It is not about our doing something in response to what God has done, like repenting, for example, it is about "being", joining in with our group and being nice to everybody. The service is more in the nature of a floor show than a real worship session - the whole thing backed by continuous soothing music - the tones of the preacher have much more in common with those of a hypnotist than a revivalist preacher like Billy Graham. The entire programme is designed to please the consumer - and those in the congregation become consumers. Participation takes the form of being a good consumer, joining the club.

The salaries offered to ministers able and willing to function in this kind of environment sometimes exceed $140,000 a year. It seems to me that some of these features may tempt some of our Church leaders to move in this direction. What we regard as "success" becomes confused when certain courses of action lead to larger numbers of people attending our church, effectively voting with their feet and accepting the much lower demands made on them. It becomes easier to understand why so many of our leaders are willing to compromise with the world on quite serious matters of morality, for example. Seeker-friendly messages which leave out the offence of the cross are likely to lead to larger numbers in our group, but not necessarily bring them to Biblical faith.

These sort of fellowships are in fact exceptionally successful businesses. I happen to know one of them quite well. Even with a congregation of 6,000 the building is one of the largest Church buildings in the United States - a Mega church in every sense of the word. There is a large book stall open every day, together with several large creches which care for toddlers for working mothers, a Primary school, two Bible colleges, two huge auditoriums, and various facilities used by a number of local social clubs for their activities. This is a going concern every day, dawn 'til dusk, generating an annual turnover of around $19 million. Going to this Church is a wonderful experience: the back-drop is impressive, with a stage set of Biblical street scenes provided each month by the Disney Corporation (two articulated trucks are housed in garages either side of the stage out of sight, where they can be loaded and unloaded conveniently). In this particular Church, Bible teaching is of a very high standard and the eldership exercises strict control of every activity. Employees are expected to be at their desks 9-5, which restricts activity outside the Church building. Other Mega churches are maybe not quite so fortunate and tend more towards being social clubs - several have Starbucks cafes open all day long on the premises with gymnasiums, swimming pools, singles clubs, old people's socials, and generally mirror the tendency to do everything big, seen everywhere in the newest American Malls.

Many of these Mega churches are far more influenced by the principles of sociology than any Biblical imperative. One Pastor reports that on any day you go to his church, there will be 1,000 people having cook-outs, playing baseball, fishing, walking, enjoying the nature trails - this kind of church concept is spreading very rapidly and is becoming the dominant social force in middle class suburbia in the USA. Indeed the Mega church's approach to social issues can often influence the agenda of an entire community. It is a kind of religious Walmart. The policy will often be to avoid taking a position on controversial issues such as abortion, gay rights, creation, Darwinism, various moral issues. The policy seems to be guided by a desire to avoid any kind of offence to anyone. The Hartford Institute for Religious Research says

"They are playing on a whole different understanding of religion. It is not something that looks anything like your parents' faith, they are tapping into the 'Bigger is Better' Mall-like mentality of America, and it is not going to go away any time soon."

Sometimes the historicity of Scripture is an issue which drives humanistic tendencies in the modern church. My daughter was astonished on attending Bristol Cathedral at Christmas 2003 to be told that "The Christmas stories do not pretend to be history as we know it. They are stories designed to convey religious truth." This was on the carol service sheet handed out. Dr. Tom Wright in his books on the New Testament refers to statements like that as the result of historians breaking every single rule of historical analysis! He says that what made Judaism and Christianity so different to anything else in the ancient world was the fact that their Scriptures spoke of a God active in human history and whose Scriptures are accurate reports of historic events. Clearly the writers of the Cathedral service sheet had no knowledge at all of the Magi or who they were, of the shepherds or what they did for a living and why, or even why Joseph and Mary took such tremendous trouble to be in Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus at about the worst possible time for their family.

Tom Wright, in his book "The Resurrection of the Son of God", gives a detailed analysis of the events surrounding the Easter story. Judging by what he says, few believers have much idea of the enormity and uniqueness of the resurrection of Jesus, or of what it means today.

The upshot of all this is a deep sense of dissatisfaction with what the church is teaching, in the hearts of the spiritually awake, hungry for spiritual fulfillment and "renewal". Articles in the secular press highlight the alarming decline of traditional religion and the spectacular ascendancy of "designer spiritualism". All kinds of spiritualist cults are growing; these can be based on the Kabbalah, a kind of philosophical cult in Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and ancient therapies such as Reiki and Crystal healing. We are living in a multicultural pluralistic society featuring illiteracy in Christianity, but we have not lost our desire for spiritual fulfillment. The mass appeal of some of these philosophies has taken the place of the hippie trail East to Nepal in search of The Truth. We no longer have to go abroad, it's all in our local village hall Yoga centre or possibly even our gym. Many Westerners, particularly women, will master Buddhist chanting in a meditation class, learn about ancient Hindu philosophies during a Yoga class, light an aroma-therapy candle, and say a prayer to some nameless god, in search of inner peace and physical well being.

The Pastor's Dream

The objective of most church Pastor/Managers is to see more people coming to church, and anything likely to achieve that objective will be acceptable, even if the effect is to attract people from other churches rather than the local community. In fact the largest churches tend to be eclectic, where most of the congregation come from elsewhere. Three of the most successful churches in England, All Souls Langham Place (John Stott's church where I myself became a believer in 1951), Holy Trinity Brompton, which now has a worldwide ministry with its various training programmes, and Christchurch Clifton, here in Bristol, are all eclectic churches. They represent the highly effective face of Anglican evangelicalism today. However, Paul Berg, retired Rector of Christchurch, three of whose curates were to become Bishops, and a great friend to me over many years, really did not see the work of the church as extending outwards by proclamation evangelism to the wider community in Bristol. He saw evangelism as the means of introducing someone to his fellowship, not someone else's. His question was always "Korky, how many have you brought into my fellowship this month?". Ed Reis, one of the senior evangelists with The Navigators in Ohio, told me recently that one of the local Baptist churches had stopped his support because he was working to win converts who went to another Baptist church the other side of town. The whole concept of the missionary movement in seeking to win converts to the Kingdom of God has now been lost at local level - someone we know from our fellowship who has gone on the mission field will attract some support from those who know them in the fellowship, but by and large the fellowship as a whole will raise only a couple of thousand pounds a year. There are of course exceptions to this and Kensington Baptist Church in Bristol has a wonderful record of supporting missionary couples, and over the last 20-30 years has generally provided for between 15 and 17 couples. Pip'n' Jay is the only Anglican church in Bristol with a record anything like this, and has given £1 million to mission over the last 15 years or so.

As set out in Chapter 3 of this book, Pastor/Managers and Pastor/Evangelists are categories of Church Manager where very little interest in evangelism is likely - only the Evangelist/Pastor of the kind you sometimes meet church-planting on the mission field has a vision for the whole of the potential harvest. It is only those with a vision for all the people groups beyond the reach of the local church in their local community who are likely to understand that proclamation of the Christian message is the only way a breakthrough can be made. No attempt is being made in our Training colleges to equip students with the skills necessary for this kind of ministry and most ministers become so completely convinced by the evident logic of the teachings of the church growth movement as to discount the proclamation of the Gospel as a serious means of reaching the lost. Sometimes OAC evangelists working in countries like France find street preaching such a tough proposition that they are drawn into little local French fellowships where twenty believers can be won in twenty-five years. The rough and tumble of presenting the Gospel out on the street to large numbers of people is a draining experience but it is how the Scriptures describe we should present the Gospel to the lost.

The Modern View

Sometimes I meet people in front line ministry without formal training in street preaching, who allude to the fact that the people they are preaching to simply do not understand that they are sinners, and do not accept the whole concept of sin being a barrier between us and a relationship with a Holy God. Their experience of quasi-Christian national institutional churches where these issues are papered over in their religious cult practices innoculate them against seeing a need for reconciliation with God, and so heavily innoculated as they are, it is extremely difficult for them to catch real live Christianity. Surely the response of the preacher should be to find a way of presenting the Gospel in a relevant way, making it understandable, rather than to emasculate the entire message by leaving out the key elements to make what is left acceptable and "seeker-friendly"?

It is increasingly clear that proclamation evangelism is so low on the list of priorities in the modern Church as to make it extremely difficult for those with such a local ministry to survive. Deliberately marginalised as irrelevant, the evangelist and the Gospel message will need to find new ways to survive. The evangelist must stand on his or her own feet financially, encourage their own prayer support group, and gain most team members and trainees while out doing the work, when potential trainees can see the role model that inspires them into action, and receive their call from God to this pattern of ministry. The evangelist can no longer function as a recognised part of the local fellowship leadership team as envisaged in Paul's instructions regarding church management. The evangelist wishing to survive in the real world needs to have a regular local ministry pattern, and to be able to minister as a professional with his or her own dedicated management team. There are so few parish evangelists that they did not even rate a "tick this box" category in the Christian Research survey of church staff or positions held, a few years ago.

As the huge and widespread local shopping Malls fill up with thousands of people on Sunday mornings, and fewer and fewer people find themselves in church, the relevant ministries are those able to function where the people are. A marvellous local initiative by the ASDA /Walmart directors is to invite the members of the local clergy to be in attendance in their stores as Chaplains to assist people with family problems and other counselling needs. It is interesting that this initiative should come from business rather than the church. The Salvation Army have found an opening in offering a Sunday School children's hour, within the shopping mall area, providing parents with a free hour to shop while their children are looked after.

The initiative for our schools ministry, which inspires substantial numbers of the Christian education team to go into their local schools, came from school teachers themselves - it was not an approach from us. Teachers perceive the need to educate young people in Christian faith and life and they insist on the highest standards - it will be increasingly difficult to find people in our congregations with the motivation for this kind of work, and the commitment required to achieve an acceptable standard of skill, as the church moves into being a body of consumers.

The Way Forward for O.A.C. in England

Lots of people have gone through our training programme here in Bristol to various levels of competence, and a number have gone overseas and established national ministries. These tend to take slightly different patterns as situations in different countries vary, but most of those we train are able to see these different situations as opportunities rather than problems and their training has instilled what I regard as quite a unique level of adaptability. Most have been very successful in presenting the Gospel to large numbers of people. Always the measure of success is our effectiveness in engaging with the hearts and minds of those we are addressing, not in the number of converts, because in Scripture we find that the evangelist is a teacher of God's message rather than a reaper of souls. In three cases (Colombia, Albania and Holland) our local ministry has led to the establishment of a number of churches, as that has been the need in those particular areas.

So - these are the four main areas which have helped us most to be effective:

1. A really effective training programme: most of us in the work agree that Snowball programme devised by Mark Howe and Paul Hazelden with help from Steve Poulard, contains everything an evangelist needs to establish a viable ministry. Taught at Degree rather than Diploma level, it is unique in this field. See Chapter 11.

2. It is essential for an evangelist to establish a long term local relational ministry out in the community seeking opportunities to present Christ among all the people groups. Evangelism cannot succeed as a poor relation dependent on opportunities to preach provided by a disinterested local fellowship.

3. There must be a properly established leadership team consisting of a board of management of very experienced believers with a vision for the wider ministry of the Gospel; these are likely to be people from the fields of education, business, and possibly law. There must be a proper accountability group for the Evangelist to report to on a regular basis, with proper management of the accounts.

4. Those involved on the team under the leadership of the local evangelist must have proper recognition and participation in the local ministry. Those involved in schools work, for example, need to share ideas, pray together, and learn from each other's experiences. Street evangelists are most likely to be part-time and need to share stories of their most recent experiences so that those who have had a tough week can be part of the success that someone else has enjoyed. Sharing our experiences and being together, praying together and enjoying a meal together as a combined team at our home every Tuesday evening, has been a source of tremendous strength to us all. People on the team must be valued, appreciated and encouraged.

Each trainee joining our work is encouraged to set about finding a" Timothy " immediately - someone who can accompany them, learn what they are learning, and be the beginnings of each individual starting their own team. Paul and Sue Blocksidge who have joined us recently have probably been successful in recruiting their Baptist church in Clevedon and Paul's experience with us over the last year has led to his being invited on to the church Evangelism Committee, made him leader of the church's Open Air team, and has greatly encouraged one middle-aged man who never quite succeeded in getting things going on his own. Paul and Sue have terrific people skills and really draw others into what they are doing - one of the important gifts we should look for in an evangelist.

Anni and I have found it an absolute joy to be part of such a fabulous group of people: preaching in churches as I often do, I always have lots of stories of the wonderful things that they are all doing - like our favourite Colombian, Farid Lozada and his wife America, running their street church in Bogota and caring for the hundreds of victims of the terrorists out in the countryside, feeding them, preaching to them, encouraging them, and maybe beginning to turn the tide, as only Christ can bring peace through repentance and faith.

In 1266 the Great Khan, Kublai Khan, ruler of almost the whole of Asia and the greatest empire of the mediaeval world wrote to the world head of the Christian church, the Pope, in Rome. He requested a team of 100 priests to visit his country "To teach the true religion". Apparently the Great Khan was aware that his people, who practised their mainly Shamanistic religion, were deeply dissatisfied with it and wanted to know the truth. Kublai Khan's grandson wrote a similar letter 19 years later to another Pope. Sadly, both letters were ignored, the Pope having more important issues to hand. Time passed. Certain Arabs - natural enemies historically - were interested in the people of Asia and vast areas of that continent are now Islamic.

Today maybe several thousand very sincere and impressive young Muslim evangelists, male and female, are ready to evangelise Europe and Africa. These are fine young men and women, well trained, totally committed to the task. They are already having a considerable impact on impressionable young people in Greece. Will history repeat itself? The prognosis today is not good. Most missions and evangelistic agencies do not train their people to preach the Gospel to the lost. Most in fact are involved in Christian aid of one sort or another. One of the world's greatest mission agencies is being expelled from Thailand right now, having spent 80 years building hospitals and schools - now the Government acknowledges their help but wants them to leave "because we are a Buddhist country". The Apostles did not go around tacking the Christian message on the back of some other sort of activity. This was one of the major reasons they were so successful - the Gospel was so important, and the Resurrection so vital, that it simply could not wait for various other activities to take place.

Judging by attendance at European missionary conferences, there are far fewer people in our churches in England interested in mission and evangelism than there are in Spain, whose church is comparatively tiny. The vision simply does not exist in the greater part of the Christian church today. One church with a budget of around $20 million allocated $125 for a struggling group assisting the persecuted church in the Sudan. That was their annual budget for that particular group. Similar amounts were paid to several hundred other groups involved in missions and evangelism around the world, which means that they can have a long list of supported groups on their notice board at comparatively low cost to the church. This sort of thing is a pretty good indicator of the consumer churches' burden for the growth of the Kingdom of God. In England, the Vineyard churches, as well as a number of other more recent groups, display similar attitudes in some ways. The key seems to be that the church group has become the message, rather than the Gospel.

The People of God?

The peculiarly European concept of the Church as the State denomination and the political necessity for the State Church to be inclusive of every member of society begins with Constantine in around 320 AD. The mass baptisms by both the Eastern and the Western Church led early on to Church membership being the key factor rather than the preaching of the Gospel leading to salvation by grace. Church membership implied rectitude and acceptance by society with all sorts of very important social implications which generally affected one's employment. Religious observance and nominalism on a massive scale now defines "Church". In Greece even Nationalism, "being a good Greek", requires membership of the Orthodox Church.

Inclusiveness requires compromise on a wide range of quite important issues. To pick out just two:

1. Liberalism rejects the historicity of a lot of the New Testament and sometimes even large chunks of the Old Testament. This idea is based on so-called scientific analysis from the University of Tubingen in Germany which has now been shown to be anything but scientific, and is based on an analysis primarily of the Gospels which breaks every rule of scientific historical analysis - yet this nonsense is still taught in our Bible colleges. The consequence is that a large number of clergy are not believers in the Biblical/traditional sense. This is actually destructive of faith for many. Another problem is that there cannot be a Bible-based consensus on quite major issues such as the one that Rowan Williams is struggling with at the present time - morality.

2. Morality. To thinking people the Church now presents a very odd picture. Right from the beginning of the Bible, the people of God are called to be "a peculiar people", called to live a holy life in accordance with God's laws. This now no longer seems to be the case. Lack of Bible knowledge, that is to say a real understanding of a lot of the things that Jesus taught, within the context of his culture, has led to the belief that to be loving means to compromise with immorality and sin. This is simply not the case. Luke's Gospel particularly makes it very clear that those he had fellowship with, ate meals with, partied with, were repentant and had left the life they had previously lived. Large sections of the church simply do not understand this today because a lot of the teaching they receive is so incredibly shallow.

With God's help the people of God, his Church, can recover themselves. One of my students, writing from the grinding poverty of his remote parish in Central Buganda, has produced a beautiful essay on what the local Church can do to be the people of God again. I set out the letter below exactly as he wrote it, so that you too can catch the flavour of the vision of this great man?

Rev. Livingstone Mayambala,
College of Theology
1007b Central Buganda University
To Professor Korky Davey

EVANGELISM AND MISSION

FINAL ESSAY

TO DESCRIBE HOW THE LOCAL CHURCH CAN PLAY ITS PART IN THE EVANGELIZATION OF UGANDA?

Statistically Uganda is a christian Country Consisting of different denominations. Generally speaking 86% are baptized christians, with 4% Traditionalists and 10% Muslims.

When christianity came to Uganda a Century ago the missionaries started teaching the people the good news of Jesus Christ. There were no church buildings. Sometimes they gathered under big trees. Those who found the Message interesting and had something to do with their life, stayed, asked questions, and those who were satisfied, were converted. They were registered for catechumenism. Thus they obtained a wonderful name "Abasomi" (Readers) Because they were learning the Gospel. It was the burden of a missionary both to teach and explain, not forgetting to ask questions to find out whether a catechumen is really accepting Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Gradually the converts were baptized.

After baptism the Teaching continued, for every baptized person was sent to extend the good news to neighbours and relatives. We can trace that to the early christian families in Uganda, where a head or prominent member of a family became an Anglican, the whole family was planted in Anglicanism, and vice-versa. The early converts after gaining Knowledge and skills were sent in the country to evangelize people. They did it quite well and they were known as "Ababuulizi benjiri" (evangelists). These are the ones who built churches everywhere. Also they built schools at every mission station. They had the New Testament as the source of information, especially the Gospel according to Matthew which was the first translation of Scripture in Luganda. Later on when the first whole Bible was translated into Luganda it was very enjoyable. Through Bible study christians learnt more of their faith and the church became very strong, useful, helpful, and the church became a source of civilization and Life, both physical and spiritual.

The church built schools, introduced Western civilization and made many changes in the life of her members. The missionary hospitals introduced new medicines and treatment which superceded the ordinary African medicines and treatment. These among the many were the major factors which attracted and trapped many people to become converts.

The most outstanding tools of evangelism in Uganda were the local trained people. Nearly 97% of the present church stations were planted by the natives.

Every thing became christian in those early days. But the dangers which affected and destroyed christianity in other Countries were not far from here.

Educated people were appointed to good jobs, got salaries, their ways of life changed. This led very many people to join missionary schools in order to obtain good jobs. It became a policy to baptize whoever joined a missionary school.

After surveying the beginning and the growth of the church we can easily ask ourselves whether the church in Uganda today is still faithful to her mission of evangelizing all people.

It is easy to note that today a big number of people do not hear the Gospel and a proportion of those who do hear it hear a Gospel different from the basic teaching of the Apostles. A big percentage of baptized people do neither go to church nor read the Bible. That has created a big number of nominal and lukewarm christians. Apart from those there are those who are both baptized and still have another leg in the Traditional beliefs. And also the Muslim community with its influences.

At this juncture, we can begin answering that important question: "How can the local church help in evangelizing Uganda?".

As noted earlier, Uganda is a christianised country. We see this practically wherever there is a state function. Church ministers are invited to lead prayers and bless the function: and that is all. This means that in one way or another christianity is becoming a culture!

In His Ministry, Jesus, soon to be followed by His Apostles, started His Mission with and among the local people and from such people the good news reached the topmost people of the governments of the world. What is needed in Uganda is A FRESH REVIVAL to awaken the nominals, lukewarm, backsliders and reach the unreached.

I come down to grass root, my local church. The first thing to do is to engage myself in prayer with fasting asking Almighty God to send the Holy Spirit, the helper, enabler, Guide and greatest teacher, re-establish his work in the church starting with me.

Like the Apostles in the first century, and great missionaries of the following Centuries, we must start where we are, not necessarily at Nnamirembe Cathedral or any other big church. We must go to the people wherever they can be found. Those who come to church, commit their lives to Jesus, must be trained, thoroughly, to learn not only reading the Bible, but also learn what the message to proclaim is. We are not to preach religions, for there are many religions, but like Paul to the Corinthians "We preach Christ crucified" (1 Cor.1:23). Our small group, after making sure that the Holy Spirit has directed us to go, we will march out.

The principles before us are exactly the same as the Apostles used. We are to emphasize "One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism". The weather changes, people grow and die, colours fade, but Jesus is the same. At this point we must bear in mind that there are people with different understanding of Jesus Christ. Some believe Jesus to have been a great teacher and wonder worker and deny his Divinity. Others, like some Jews, still believe Jesus to have been a blasphemer, a criminal, who was crucified for his own fault, and end there.

Some still wait for a political liberator in order to become on the top of all humans etc. But the true teaching was, and is, and will be, that the Messiah has come and appeared in the Life, Ministry, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. He fulfils the O.T. prophecy. In other words, God's plan of salvation, through Isaac, Jacob and the Patriarchs, was sealed by Moses who taught the children of Israel God's ways and laws; that plan is clearly seen in God's dealings with Israel - come to a climax in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Thus he is Lord of all the creation as Peter says "Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified" (Acts 3:36).

The second point is the emphasis on "One Faith". Paul teaches that "We who are many are one body". In understanding of that teaching our team work should not be directed or limited to people of our own church. We are to reach and include all who are willing and are ready to receive, accept and carry on the basic teaching of the Gospel as recorded in the Four Gospels and preached and taught by the Apostles in the other books of the New Testament. And not forgetting that that Faith was planted in the Old Testament. So the Old Testament and the New teach one Faith.

Thirdly Baptism is the outward sign which indicates the inwards Grace received by a convert. It is the Admission to the Family of God - the Church. Equipped with that Basic Teaching of the Gospel we face the disturbed confused world. It is important for our trained team members to study and assess the situation, because wrong approach always results in failure. For Instance, it was reported in the Press that in November 2003 born again Pastor in Eastern Region wanted to convert Muslims in the area, his methods were to use miracles. He told the Muslims that together with his brethren they were going to pray for their (Muslims') miraculous conversion and set a deadline. The miracle failed to happen and the mission failed. We must avoid such ways. What we should do is to:

Go to school, arrange with teachers to meet children at school instead of waiting for them to come to Sunday school.

This can be more effective bcause it enables us to meet many youths. Also we must take christian Education to schools. We must encourage parents to buy Bibles for their children. And also we must contact helping organizations like the Present World Home Bible League which distributes Bibles in various languages and probably include them on our team so that we may have something to offer to our converts. Using different methods of evangelization we want to reach as many people as possible. Let us go on Open Air Services, use door to door, family to family method, which I think to be more effective in the rural areas but street evangelism is more applicable in towns and big cities. We want to work for the salvation of each individual and deal with his/her personal problems and failures. Last but not least we have to train local leaders of the congregations we establish.

Experience has shown the following weaknesses:

(1) Many people come to Jesus, accept Him as Lord and Saviour, but they do not grow to maturity, because they are neither nurtured nor cared for.

(2) Every year young christians get confirmed by the Bishop, they disappear because there isn't systematic follow up at different stages.

(3) Elderly members' rigidity discourages the converted youth to express their joy in Christ. As a result, the youth leave the traditional church.

(4) Mass christianization, baptising for the sake of acquiring large numbers is a grave danger, because such people cannot withstand the opposition and influence of both Islam and Traditional beliefs.

(5) Generalisation. Taking for granted that every baptized is a full member of the church is not good. It has led many team Leaders to quarrel and complain with the absentees instead of sharing testimony with the present;

Family Prayers, Fellowships, Bible study groups are very very important if we are to succeed.

Conclusion

This is a very important and useful essay. It is in the middle if not the heart of our ministry. It is important for me because it reminds me of my role as an evangelist. I have learnt what true evangelism is. Secondly we are not the only evangelists, there are others in other corners of the world, who face problems which are not in our country.

Thirdly we have the work and testimony of those great missionaries who went to the toughest areas such as Robert Moffat, David Livingstone, and the first Church Missionary Society members to Uganda whose ways of life, work and persistence made the church take roots in Uganda and other parts of the world.

Today Ugandan Christianity needs a revival different from all the previous ones. A Revival which sees the need to reach all people, rich and poor, old, youth and the infant, learned and illiterate, famous and despised. A Revival that crosses barriers and discrimination. If we reach that state we will be able to overcome the problems which prevent the children of God from enjoying the famous relationship conferred upon humans at the Creation.

We want to see Uganda regaining new life in Christ. The on-going misbehaviour will vanish away and we will always praise God for his unceasing Love which endures for ever.

Bibliography: Prof. Korky Davey - Lecture notes
Stephen Neil - History of Christian Missions
Current Affairs - Bukedde Newspaper
Bible Quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version