Should We Do Evangelism In Gathered Worship?

So we just finished this four week series on evangelism as we walked through the story of Jonah (look for the post-game interview from yesterday's gathering later this morning), so I thought this was interesting:

...Even if we acknowledge that there will be ‘gospel’ things happening all over the place in church, it is also important to say that evangelism is not the purpose of Christian assemblies. It is certainly not their focus. In the New Testament, churches are characteristically the fruit of evangelism, not its agent. Evangelism usually takes place outside the assembly—in the marketplace, the synagogue, the prison, and in daily gospel conversation.

More to the point, theologically, the Christian assembly is a fellowship of the redeemed. It is a manifestation, as well as an anticipation or foretaste, of the great assembly that Christ is building—the assembly of the firstborn in heaven that will be revealed on the last Day (Heb 12:22-24). The purpose of our earthly assemblies, therefore, is to fellowship together in what we already share—our union with Christ—as we listen to and respond to him together, and build his assembly by the words we speak.

This runs counter to the common (although often unspoken) assumption that one of the main aims of a church gathering is to be attractive to non-Christians—to draw them in, to intrigue them, and to evangelize them. Perhaps it's a legacy of the parish model, where those attending the Sunday assembly were often not Christians at all, and evangelism consisted of preaching the gospel to them. Or perhaps it is the influence of the seeker-service model, where the main aim is to attract and win over unchurched Harry. Or maybe it's a bit of both.

There is an important difference, it seems to me, between running a Christian gathering whose focus is on evangelizing the outsider, and running a Christian gathering that is welcoming and intelligible for the outsider, but where the focus is on fellowship with Christ, in speaking, hearing and responding to his word.

(Tony Payne - HT: JT)

Here are some things I wrote down in response as I was reading:

• Worship is the goal of gathered worship - specifically, we gather to take part in a covenant renewal ceremony that God initiates and oversees.
• We have no interest - and see no need - to remove or minimize elements of worship that are nonsensical or unattractive to unregenerate people.
• We have regenerate and unregenerate people in our worship gathering every week. Some people know they're not Christians, some aren't sure, and others are deluded into think something otherwise.
• We do not believe that unregenerate people can worship God - there is biblical warrant, however, for having them in the room as God does a work of grace among his people. Because of that, we work hard to make our gatherings as intelligible as possible.
• There is a sense in which we could call this evangelism, given that those who are unregenerate are hearing the gospel spoken in word, song, and sermon and seeing it displayed in the sacraments.
• The reason that gospel is spoken and made visible is because the gospel is the 'word' which Tony refers to in his comments above. This needs to be made clear - the message that non-Christians need to hear is the very same message that Christians need to hear. Yes, it will be applied differently but this is a basic fact and reality that gets missed by more than a few churches.

This comes down to an issue of text and context - what do we have to say and how do we say it? Will we believe that the only thing we have to say to anyone in gathered worship - Christian or non-Chrisian - is the good news of the gospel? And when we speak those words will we shape them in anticipation and expectation that unregenerate people will be in the room?

This is one of the reasons we make the distinction between being missional and being evangelistic:

And then the difference between being missional and being 'seeker-sensitive':