A worldview based approach to evangelism
In the context of Post-communism

Methodological Crisis

The failure of the mass evangelism campaign in former Soviet Union countries after the communism collapse is the result of the methodological crisis the Church in general and Eastern European church in particular faced at the end of twentieth century [1]. That methodological crisis involves the traditional methods failure on the one hand and the new methods’ shortcoming on the other.  

Traditional Methods Failure

The twentieth century traditional methods of spreading the Good News did not produce the expected harvest in the long run [1]. The seed “fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root” (Mark 4:5, 6). The soil was not prepared for planting, and the sprouts were not rooted in the biblical worldview properly [cf. 2]. In the transformed social environment, the traditional methods were not biblical anymore.

New Methods’ Shortcomings

The outcome of the postcommunist awakening [1] demonstrates that the revision of the methods of evangelism that are not working anymore is required. That revision could potentially go in two directions. On the one hand, right on the surface of the problem, the evil age of rushing after everything new inspires the Church for development of newest methods. Maybe they would be not be biblical either, but “strong or stark or courageous” [3].  The false approach of imposing God [cf. 4] is especially dangerous in the context of rising consumerism. The majority of the suggested “strong or stark or courageous” methods of evangelism reek of marketplace promotional technologies. Evangelism is becoming not about salvation of the lost and the gift of eternal life as much as it is about recruiting the largest number possible of followers into an organization. Programs and methods (often manipulative ones) become the center of attention, not the person and the News, not the Savior and the one who needs salvation. The evangelized ones are of no importance to the evangelist; they become considered an impersonal object of evangelism.

The endless run of catching everything new is not a novelty actually. It does not vary much from the interests of the ancient Athenians who “spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas” (Acts 17:21).

Return to the Biblical Methods for Worldview Persuasion

On the other hand, the Bible gives to the Church a mandate for worldview persuasion in evangelism within certain methodological limitations and under the guidance of Holy Spirit. The Scripture provides the model for proper evangelism both in the ministry of Jesus and of the apostles, which is incarnational by its very nature, as well as involves logical persuasive elements and the tests for truth application [4]. 

If twentieth-century traditional methods of evangelism do not bring fruit, that could be just because they are not biblical anymore, at least in that culture. They were proper biblical applications and worked well in the time and culture in which they were developed, but the transport of its appearance into a different worldview environment separates those methods from their biblical origin.

For instance, in the cultures where making a decision does involve the worldview persuasion element traditionally and resonates with the concept of metanoia, a radical change of thinking, a traditional call for making the decision for Jesus does reflect biblical requirement of the response from one who hears the Good News. On the other hand, in the cultures with worldviews grounded in relativism and where decision making is based on personal preferences of what is better instead of admitting what is right, the emotional factor becomes exaggerated. The emotional part of the conversion is important, but as one can see from Scripture, the decision is made sometimes despite the emotional tendency (e.g., John 6:68).

The return to the biblical principles of worldview persuasion is vital, and the greatest lesson that the Scripture provides is that both Jesus and the apostles always addressed each person individually, on the level that the person was currently at.

Worldview Scale Development

Various authors insisted on understanding conversion more as a process rather than a one-time event and, therefore, on a different individual approach in practical evangelism. All of them agree that listening to the interlocutors is essential for finding where the person is in his or her spiritual journey in order to know where to begin the persuasion. Some authors even undertook purposeful attempts to develop a scale as a practical tool allowing the evangelist to determine a starting point for the conversation  [cf. 5].

Scale Approach for Finding a Starting Point of Evangelism

The scale approach proved to be effective in the particular uniform worldview environment and looks promising in general. Nevertheless previous attempts mostly focused on the estimation of a person’s knowledge rather then worldview. Their goal was to find to what extent a person is informed of the basics of the Good News. Those attempts traditionally treat conversion as a decision-making process and neglect the need for worldview persuasion at the level of Gentiles [1]. Therefore developing a worldview- based evangelism scale seems essential. Using such scale one could find a specific point, where right beliefs of an adressing person could be used an effective weapon for challenging his or her own wrong beliefs.

Scale Approach Development for Worldview Persuasion

Among all evangelism, conversion, and discipleship scales Engel’s classical Evangelism Scale [6] could be used as the most suitable model for developing a scale for finding of the proper starting point for persuasion in various worldview contexts. In order to meet the need of worldview persuasion it should be rescaled in accordance with basic worldview types as presented at [1], as well as expanded to cover the area of the Gentiles. The resulting scale I offered is represented in Table 1. The up-to-down progression of the table is correspondent to left-to right progression of Figure 3 at [1].

The table has four columns. The first one is the scale per se. A person’s worldview relative position is designated by a conventional number. The special points on the scale are 0 (conversion to Christ), +1 (commitment), and –1 (conversion from a Gentile to a Jew, conventionally referred as agnosticism—not in the philosophical meaning of the term, but as a reminder that this is a turning point from belief that no God exists to belief in God’s existence). A person before (above) the –1 point is a Gentile according to his or her worldview; someone between –1 and 0 points is a Jew; someone between 0 and +1 points is an infant in Christ; and, finally, beyond the +1 point is faithful.

The second column of the table lists the role of a communicator, the one who performs the ministry of the worldview challenge. Third column is the person’s response to the worldview persuasion.

Table 1. Worldview Change Progression Scale

The Role of God in Worldview Persuasion

Some critics of the scale approach rightly pointed out that underestimation of the role of God in a conversion process. Last but not the least column of the table represents God’s work in the worldview transformation for avoiding that misbalance. One definitely needs to remember that the transformation of a person’s worldview is God’s business:

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. (1 Cor. 3:5-10)

If Christians are going to fulfill the divine mission with their own efforts, they are destined to fail no matter how advanced or “strong or stark or courageous” their programs are, because only God through his Word and with his Spirit brings people to repentance, creates a pure heart, and restores the righteous spirit. Jesus told in the parable:

This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come. (Mark 4:26-29)

Thus, the seed of the kingdom of God bears fruit without anyone’s participation, “all by itself,” automatically as one may say [7]. The only our task is to remove obstacles in this process. Following the agricultural analogy, if there rocks, one have to remove them. If some needed elements are missing, one have to add fertilizer. If there lack of water, one should water the field, etc. The rest is God’s business.

Gentiles’ Persuasion Approach.

Biblical classification of the worldviews represented in [1] determines a variety of evangelism approaches required for people from different worldview categories. The area of Gentiles is below –1 point. It represents the diverse worldviews variety that does not involve an idea of only one absolute personal Supreme Being. Preaching Christ crucified is foolishness to them (1 Cor. 1:23). This status does not mean they know absolutely nothing about God:

Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. (Rom. 1:19-20)

Being without excuse, anapologhtov, Gentiles respond to the general revelation by suppressing its truth by wickedness, holding it in the captivity of sin (Rom. 1:18). They build up ideological strongholds in order to protect their cozy worldviews, to which the truth is an obvious and immediate threat. The role of a persuader at this stage is to break down those strongholds:

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Cor. 10:4-5)

This ministry, traditionally called apologetics, is the preparation of the soil for sowing. The way to prepare a particular type of soil is determined by what is wrong with it. Important to make a diagnosis first of all of what specific types of strongholds keep a certain individual from accepting the truth. If the soil is overgrown with the weeds of false ideas, picking up pebbles from between these weeds will only encourage the lush growth of the weeds. If the ground is covered (or, which is worse, methodically paved as it was in communist Soviet Union) with rocks of unbelief, no use in crawling around with a magnifying glass hunting out shoots of weeds and then removing them with tweezers. In order to effectively prepare soil for sowing, one needs to analyze first what the exact problem with the soil is. Only then will efforts to break down strongholds not be in vain.

If a person, say, from childhood believed a school teacher who said humans evolved from apes, one needs to demonstrate where the teacher and the textbooks had been wrong. If one considers the Bible as a compilation of myths and legends, such a person needs to be told about the origin of the Bible, and the origin of humans could wait. If the problem is “If your God is so good, why is my life so bad?” would be of little effect to refer to scientific and historical evidence.

Very important to discern what exactly hinders an individual, to figure out where the strongholds of the false beliefs that he or she uses to fence off from God are located, and purposefully try to break it down. The persuader who performs this ministry acts primarily as an apologist. 

Jews’ Persuasion Approach

When a person according to his or her worldview becomes a Jew, the role of the persuaders becomes more of evangelists. Here their task is to sow the seed of the word by proclaiming the Good News. At the same time the work of the Holy Spirit is convicting the person of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment (John 16:8).

Even after entering that worldview category, an individual continues the consecutive progress of the worldview transformation however. At first, on a –0.9 level, a person believes in God only as an abstract supreme being. A friend of mine, passing the agnostic stage, stated one day: “I understand two things now: the first is that God exists, and the second is that I am not him.” It is hard to say it in a better way. A Gentile is his or her own highest value. After becoming a Jew, one understands that something higher exists, and that is God, who is the Absolute.

Discovering the nature of that Absolute, a person later reaches the  –0.8 level, where he or she starts to become acquainted with the personal attributes of God—love, goodness, justice, etc. Here, at the next level, –0.7, the first acquaintance with the essence of the Good News occurs—not just with the gospel stories (one may have known them before) or the various interpretations the world provides, but the message of salvation personally for him or her.

The next stages are –0.6, knowing the Good News; –0.5, understanding the Good News; and –0.4, agreeing with the Good News. Having reached this stage, one comes to the –0.3 level of recognizing personal problems he or she is not capable of solving without God.

Here the critical moment comes: realization of the need to act, level –0.2. This point is the only place where the call for repentance is going to be appropriate; only here can it play a positive role. As long as people have not reached this point, any efforts to push them toward repentance will either be unproductive or, which is worse, can produce an opposite effect. As soon as an individual starts getting the first initial ideas about God, the person understands God’s appreciation for freedom, and the extent of the freedom given by God to him or her personally. When evangelists start pushing such people toward making a decision, it gives rise to natural internal resistance. Partly it happens because sin continues to work inside of the person; innate rebellion makes departure from God natural. On the other hand, the person tends to resist a coercion, which one perceives as a coming from the persuader personally. The person realizes manipulation is against the will of God, who wants everyone to come to Him freely, on his or her own will. Therefore calling one to repent before the person reached that level usually hardens the soil only and produces an opposite effect.

Even at this point, being prepared for the radical worldview change, one can choose to reject the Good News. Often it is what happens; one rigid mechanism for everybody does not work—that is why the guidance of the Holy Spirit is so important in the entire process. People are free to choose, and this is up to them to choose either life or death, either blessings or curses (Deut. 30:19). If the rejection happens, the person, instead of converting toward God, goes back to stage –0.6, knowing the Good News. Internalized information will not go anywhere, but the relationship takes a set back. A person may keep going forward and back, circulating within the range from –0.6 and –0.1 throughout life and never move on to the next level. That is why so important at this stage not only challenge one’s worldview, but also to call the person to surrender to God who breaks the captivity of sin, as well as pray continually for the divine intervention.

Infants’ Persuasion Approach

If a person makes a step toward God, rejects oneself, and turns into a 0, the most important metanoia of the life takes place. The new convert gets baptized, and God justifies the sinner by grace through the blood of his Son. God does not count the person’s sin, but gives the person the righteousness of Christ, and makes the him or her the object of adoption.

All of these immense changes happen in the invisible spiritual realm, but outwardly the person remains the same. He or she, an infant in Christ, still drags the worldly experience and habits of the past life. Changes are not seen right away often. A person is just starting along this road. Sometimes new converts even resist the work of the Holy Spirit inside of them. One young man in my congregation remained especially long at the infant in Christ stage—he dealt with a serious problem: addiction to gambling. One day he came to me and said: “I don’t get it! I was playing the way I always do, but the tricks that always worked didn’t work anymore! Why is God not helping me?”

“Why do you think he is not helping?” I responded “Of course he is helping! In the past he allowed you do these stupid things because of your ignorance (Acts 17:30), but now you entered into a covenant with him. You know that this kind of stuff is inappropriate in his eyes. That is why you are going to get punished for the same thing that unbelievers go unpunished for. God loves you so much that he accepts you the way you are, but he loves you too much to allow you to remain the way you are! ‘The Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son. Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons’ (Heb. 12:6-8). God is dwelling in you through his Spirit, and he will make efforts to see you change. If you want to get a beating all the time and avoid his blessings, you can resist him. Again, it is your choice, but God promised not to leave you alone, and you can be sure he will keep his word. He will constantly be drawing you to himself.”

Paul sees this process as a part of God’s work of sanctification. At this stage, edifying is what persuaders should do. Here they play the role of mentors; however, good teachers also cannot afford the luxury to have one lesson only for everybody they speak with on everything that happens in a life. As everybody else, infants grow and change little by little. That is why important for the mentor to understand where the disciple is at a given time.

At first new converts live through a period of time when they evaluate their decision outcome. They compare the reality with the expectations they used to have, and the mentor needs to direct this process by helping the disciples to analyze again their expectations in accordance with God’s will, and not in accordance with the carnal nature that gave rise to those expectations before conversion. Otherwise, the neophyte can become disappointed. That is exactly what happened to those who seeped out of the carburetor in Figure 7 at [1]. Because a limited number of ministers ended up with too many infants in Christ, the latter either got disappointed in their expectations or did not find their place in the congregation. Nobody was there to either correct their views or help them discern their gifts and find a ministry for them.

At the next stage the believers become rooted in the local congregation. They spend more time reading the Bible, praying, and fellowshipping with their new brothers and sisters in the faith. Through all of this and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, their behavior changes, their understandings change, and so do their values. Here a person approaches the next worldview conversion called commitment.

The Faithful Ones’ Persuasion Approach

Reaching commitment, individuals become mature Christians, the faithful ones. They learn to give sacrificially, understanding that “it is more blessed to give that to receive” (Acts 20:35). They have sufficient motivation for ministry. They can not be stopped from witnessing. Finally, they are ready for spiritual reproduction, that is, to be able to play purposefully the persuasive role of an apologist to Gentiles, of an evangelist to those who seek God, and of a mentor to believers, both the infants and the faithful.

Note of Reservation on the Scale Approach

The scale approach is just a generalization. It reflects the average situation in the society, but should be applied to groups and individuals within the society with a certain measure of skepticism. It is very general, relative, conditional, and speculative; it does not mean that everybody necessarily goes through all of these stages, or that passing through the stages that are equally removed from each other on the scale always takes the same amount of time for different individuals. One person may wander for a long time back and forward, another one can pass several stages in one day. For instance, Dionysius, Damaris, and a number of others from Areopagus (Acts 17:34) became believers (at least—infants) after, most probably, starting off as Gentiles. Nevertheless, the offered scale could be a useful tool for evangelists, missionaries, ministers, or whoever, allowing them to figure out approximately where a certain person is standing in the spiritual journey, what is his or her worldview, “that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel” (Eph. 6:19).

The Complex Approach Importance

The scale described above helps to restore worldview as a missing dimension of evangelism. It demonstrates what the primary role of a persuader is at a given stage of a person’s spiritual journey. When the person enters another stage, the primary role becomes secondary, but does not lose its significance altogether.

Every disciple of Jesus is called to be involved in the ministry he or she is purposefully equipped for by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:11), but this specific calling does not mean other ministries are not needed. For example, the Scripture talks about faith as a special gift given by the Spirit to some believers (1 Cor. 12:9), but this gift does not mean those who are given different special gifts of the Spirit should not have faith (they could not be called believers otherwise). In the same way the commandments to teach (Matt. 28:19) and to spread the Good News (1 Cor. 9:16) are given to all believers, no matter whether the gift to teach and evangelize is their special gift or not; but serving in the area of one’s giftedness is a person’s main calling.

In a similar way, while working with believers, the role of a persuader as an evangelist is not a primary role, but it does not disappear altogether, because believers are to be always rooted in the truth they received. The apostle writes: “So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have” (2 Pet. 1:12). The role of an apologist is primarily in the work with Gentiles, but it does not disappear at further stages. What remains after the strongholds are broken down is just a hole, a crater. Any trash can fill it up, but it should become a foundation pit for building a worldview correctly representing the truth.

While working with Jews, the evangelist also works as an apologist when laying in this pit a foundation of beliefs upon which a new worldview will be built. A person may come to God under the influence of emotions, or while in a state of excitement, or, on the contrary, while being in a depression and sensing the despair of his or her pitiful life situation; but the laying of a firm worldview foundation will be the security behind the firm establishment of a new convert in the faith.

While working with infants one builds up the construction of a biblical worldview on the foundation that was laid. Here mentoring is the main role of the persuader; however, there still room for the work of apologetics to root a person in the faith more, as well as for the work of an evangelist to develop the person’s proper understanding of the Good News and ability to communicate it to others.

Work with the faithful ones is the completion of the building project, roofing over. Here the primary role is equipping the faithful for service to all who are at the previous stages. All previous roles are focused on reaching that main goal. Thus, the higher the position of a person at the scale, the more multifaceted the worldview persuasion ministry should be.

Conclusion

The Fruits

The mass invasion into the missionary field of the former Soviet Union with the traditional methods was analogical to the roofing over the place where not even a foundation pit existed yet. All available resources were aimed on the numerical harvest, but the fruits the church is reaping now are not the fruits of the Good News, but of the approach, where believers without radical change of the worldview are not prepared to give apologia, the answer (1 Pet. 3:15), but themselves are anapologhtov, without excuse (Rom. 1:20).

The former Soviet Union countries are post-atheistic society now. After several generations of systematically imposed godlessness, the majority of people still believe that the Bible is a collection of fairy tales, myths, and legends and that Christianity is just a one of various popular beliefs, which is not worse and maybe not better than others. On the other hand, people have come to know from experience that atheism is a dead-end road to nowhere. This stronghold has collapsed, and various false beliefs rushed immediately to fill the crater of emptiness that remained after it, resulting in a mass fascination with formal religion as well as with the occult, magic, and variegated oriental spiritual practices.

Construction workers know that if the foundation pit is flooded with runoff water, one cannot lay a foundation until he or she pumped the water out. Presenting the Good News as a certain alternative ideology, instead of trying to solve the problem at the level of worldview, evangelists boil down the transition to Christianity to memorizing some doctrinal formulas: Christians believe this and this; who does not believe the same—the one should be declared an anathema on. Capitalizing on the majority of believers’ lack of clear and accurate ideas about Christian worldview basic elements, the evil one goes all out to convince people that the Word of God is compatible with other beliefs, that is, superstitions. As a result, false ideas rejected by the church for two thousand years today are accepted by the postcommunist believers as a matter of fact, and sometimes are even preached from church pulpits.

The Challenge

Impossible to build a skyscraper by gradually remodeling a dilapidated log cabin—the foundation will not be able to support it. Before building something new, the old needs to be destroyed. Of course, more pleasant to create than rake away piles of rubble, but this dirty work is the guarantee of a successful building project in the long run. If a foundation pit is not there at the first place, no strong foundation there either; the rain will come and rivers will rise up, winds will blow, and the house will be destroyed. That is why the ministry of the worldview persuasion is so important, especially in the present situation, when the fuel tank is empty, and the Church needs to catch up with what is lost.

Twenty years ago peoples of the Soviet Union experienced an amazing exodus from the Egypt of communism into the desert of democracy. They are halfway through, and the national churches are responsible for brining the next generation into the Promised Land of the kingdom. The atheistic state monopoly on education had hardened and paved the soil of the people’s worldview during three generation of communism however, and to fix it is not an easy task, especially, keeping in mind that the textbooks are the same, making sure that only the communist slogans are removed. The teachers of the teachers of those who teach Ukrainian children in the schools now never heard any other ideas, and development of an alternative private system of education will take much more then a decade or two, especially a Christian one in a pagan society suspicious of any religious claim of exclusiveness.

Foreseeing a similar situation half a century ago, C. S. Lewis put into the mouth of his literary character, an experienced demon, a declaration, that very soon “[w]e [demons] shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin will do it for us. Of course, this would not follow unless all education became state education” [8]. The soviets made Screwtape’s dream come true. The seed of the Word of God falls on the rocky soil of postcommunist state atheism and sprouts up fast, because the ground is not deep, but the expected harvest dried out with very few real fruit produced. Now one can tell a person about God, but if no strong foundation laid, if the soil is not prepared, if the obstacles are not removed, one should not be surprised that faith has become so shallow in these days.

The evil one wages a constant war with the truth. Often it is a mine war, a spy war, a guerilla war. He will not calm down until the very end. The task of the Ukrainian church is to oppose his intrigues, transform the soil spoiled by the father of lies during the decades of communist slavery, prepare it for planting the seeds in a way that it could produce a proper harvest.

The Story

Hearing a piece of good news, everyone hurries to pass it on to others, to be the first one to tell it, because to share good news is the greatest joy. The same is much more true for Good News of Christ, the best news one could ever pass on. Nevertheless any message has meaning only in the context, and if the context is not known, the news itself loses its significance. For instance, the news that a baby is born is really a pleasant piece of news, but the listener does not know how pleasant it is without some background information: where it was born, to whom, when, and what distinguishes him from others. The words “for to us a child is born” (Isa. 9:6) tell nothing if the listener is not acquainted with the rest of the story. 

The Christian worldview is rooted in the story. Not without reason, a good old Christian hymn says, “Tell me the old, old story.” The Good News is a whole story. It includes the story on the creation of the perfect world, on the fall, on the covenant, on Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. Only through the context of that story can one adopt a biblical worldview, and from that story one can see what God expects from him or her personally.

Like reading just the table of contents of a book does not replace reading the book itself, in the same way a short summary of the Good News does not make one comprehend the Good News. Any condensed form of the gospel, for instance, “Four Spiritual Laws” or “The Bridge,” can only be a preface or prologue to the Good News, but will never be able to replace it, will not give listeners a chance to live it through and feel its magnificent simplicity, and will not result in a changed worldview. “[F]aith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17).

No one can say that compressed statements of the Good News are illegitimate. Paul often uses them in his letters to remind the disciples the essence of the gospel (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:3-7; Philip. 2:6-11; 1 Tim. 3:16), but they are not the only contents of his sermon. At first glance it may appear that, depending on the audience, Paul preached different ideas, but when one takes a broader look, the apostle always tells one and the same story. He just shows its different parts to different listeners. Following the example of the Lord, Paul always starts with the place of the story that is well known to his audience, and then continues to give them exactly as much as they can take in [4]. As in a jigsaw puzzle, one can put together a full version of the gospel according to Paul from different pieces of this story—sermons written down in the book of Acts of the Apostles. The story is told in its fullness by the combination of the sermons written down by Luke to the Gentiles in Athens (17:22-31), Jews in Antioch of Pisidia (13:16-41), and to the faithful in Melitus (20:18-35), finding out every time how far the listeners have explored that story.

Traditional methods of evangelism during the awakening were engaged in telling only the last part of the biblical story, reducing the cosmic drama to its happy end only. People who do not know the beginning of the story can not appreciate that end; they can not see what is happy about it. The Good News does not make sense without comprehending the bad news. The cosmology of Genesis is foundational for a biblical worldview in general and for the gospel of Jesus Christ in particular. 

The lack of the worldview dimension in evangelism led to the most widely spread mistake made by the church in Ukraine, a shift of the focus, when the Good News turns from something that the perishing person needs to hear into something that the evangelist needs to share. The difference does not seem that big, but still it is dangerous: in that very way the church forgets about those for whose sake it is doing its triune ministry—“the ministry of [original emphasis] Jesus Christ, the Son, to [original emphasis] the Father through [original emphasis] Holy Spirit, for the sake of the church and the world” [9]. That loss of focus turns ministers into doers, witnesses into agitators.

If the concern of the church is not with being busy with something important, but with the fate of people who are not reconciled to their Creator, then it ought to go back to the biblical methods of preaching the Good News; it should restore the missing link of worldview persuasion in accordance with the evangelism methods of Jesus, of the apostles and of the early Christians, who, after all “lived in a world more relativist and more pluralist than our own” [10]. The persuaders should find out what level of relationship with God the person they communicate with has; what part of the gospel he or she has already received and accepted; and, rejecting their own ideas, habits, and traditions, should talk with people using the categories of their notions, concepts, values, and priorities.

Perhaps—if we have the courage to face into this future rather than hankering after a fading past, if we resist short-term strategies and pre-packaged answers, if we learn to be cross-cultural missionaries in our own society, and if we can negotiate the next forty years—whatever culture emerges from the ruins of Christendom might offer tremendous opportunities for telling and living out the Christian story in a society where this is largely unknown [11].

Only through the restoration of the worldview persuasion element, the missing dimension of evangelism, will the church be able to be God’s transformational agent in the fallen world, to share in the blessings of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:23), to become a part of great redemptive story and to bring to the Lord’s throne a rich harvest of people saved by him.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Golovin, Sergei. “Worldview: the missing dimension of evangelism in post-communist society” http://www.scienceandapologetics.org/engl/g12.html
2. Golovin, Sergei. “The Grain-Growers (A Parable)” http://www.scienceandapologetics.org/engl/g14.html
3. Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. New York: Macmillan, 1961. P.8.
4. Golovin, Sergei. “Biblical Foundations for the Gospel Persuasion” http://www.scienceandapologetics.org/engl/g13.html
5. Golovin, Ñåðãåé. Ìèðîâîççðåíèå [Worldview]. Ñèìôåðîïîëü, Óêðàèíà: ÄèÀéÏè, 2008.
6. Engel, James F., and Norton H. Wilbert. What’s Gone Wrong with the Harvest? Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975. P. 45.
7. Schwarz, Christian A., and Christoph Schalk. Natural Church Development. Carol Stream, IL: ChurchSmart Resources, 1996. P.12.
8. Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. New York: Macmillan, 1961. P.168.
9. Seamands, Stephen. Ministry in the Image of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005. P. 15.
10. Green, Michael. Evangelism in the Early Church. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. P.21.
11. Williams, Stuart Murray. “The End of Christendom.” Paper presented at Global Connection Interface Consultation. May 2004. 12 pp. 24 Dec. 2007 http:// www.nextreformation.com/wp-admin/resources/end_christendom.pdf.