Jesus: Too Confrontational?

We have been looking around for a place to hold evangelism classes. After leaving applications at some of the local churches, today I got a call from one of the pastors in town. He told me that after consideration and review of our website their board has decided that they would not like to see this confrontational evangelism approach taught in their church.

I asked how their church did evangelism, outreaches, etc. He said they were really not too involved (translated = nothing!) but they prefer a friendship and relational type of approach. | asked how that worked for them in getting out the Gospel and he did not say much except they really encourage a relationship to be built. I then asked “during this relationship building, the person dies and goes to Hell – then what?” I did not get an answer. I did check out their website and see all of their ‘outreaches’ involve church meetings with church people and church dinners with church people. I think that expression is “preaching to the choir” but I wonder what is preached…….

I went on to explain this was the way that Jesus approached people and that it was 100% Biblical. All of the instruction we provide is scriptural and not a man-made instruction. The pastor continued to call it a “method” and I gently corrected him. Telling him that I did not like the term ‘method’ as what we teach is right out of scripture. Other methods he may be used to are EE, Romans Road, etc. but this is about Biblical principles. They are the same as Jesus used with the woman at the well and the rich young ruler.

Additionally I spoke about the events recently attended in the community and how sad it is to see so many people say they are going to Heaven because they have Jesus in their heart. When these same people were asked how to get to Heaven, they could not answer with anything except – “open your heart to Jesus”. NOTHING about the redemptive blood of Jesus Christ and repentance.

In closing, I told the pastor that we clearly follow scripture by explaining Gal 3:24, James 4:6 and Romans 3:19-20. I could tell throughout the conversation he did not care – his mind was made up and was waiting for me to hang up. He was not very seeker friendly to me.


We ended our conversation after I explained that we teach our students that it is not our job to pray a person into salvation with a rote prayer but rather that is the Holy Spirit’s work. When a person is ready to surrender to Jesus, the Holy Spirit moves in and takes over. We have presented the True Gospel as commanded by The King.