Crusade-Style Evangelism

We recently had a Greg Laurie crusade here in our area, and the religion editor of the Rapid City Journal contacted me to ask some questions and get my thoughts on the whole phenomenon for a religion story she's putting together for Saturday's paper. Below is my response.

Hi Brian,
I’m doing a story for this weekend’s church page on what the impact of the BH Harvest crusade was for local/area churches two months later. Was there any effect at your church? Did your churches participate in the event and did you see any new people in the doors as a result? Do you have any feelings about what those kinds of one-time events mean for long-term church growth in the cities where they are held?

Thanks for any help you can give me on that.
Mary Garrigan


Mary,

Thanks for reaching out to me. I know I've gone silent in the last few weeks and have not fulfilled my obligations to you and the Journal. I've been undergoing a very difficult time in my life, and for reasons I cannot share, I have been too mentally exhausted to write much. It's almost over, and I have almost prevailed, but I'm not quite there yet.

Your instincts are good if you were seeking the lone dissenting voice of the "Cranky Calvinist." You provide such wonderful opportunities for me to make everyone angry at me! I say that at least half in jest. I appreciate your confidence in me.

As usual, I'm going to write you a novella. Reduce it however you see fit.

We did not really promote the Greg Laurie Crusade in my church and neither encouraged nor discouraged anyone from attending. One of my elders was on his local Board, and contributed financially to the work, however. His literature was in the church, but not mentioned in the announcements. Thus, I am not aware of any impact upon my church at all.

I am ambivalent about Crusade-style evangelism for four reasons.

1. My understanding of what conversion is and how it happens.
2. My understanding of the great danger of false conversion.
3. Some reading I've done on the subject, particularly a book called Evangelicalism Divided by Iain H Murray. Rev Murray explains the negatives in a very compelling way without dismissing the truth that God can use who and what He sees fit to use.
4. My own experience with the Billy Graham Crusade in Cincinnati in 2004.

Crusade style evangelism grows out of the theological heritage of a 19th century Presbyterian minister named Charles Finney. Finney invented the Crusade as we know it today. Finney is a hero to the Evangelical movement, primarily because they do not understand what the man believed and how his methods grew out of his theology. His theology was terrible. He was actually a heretic, embracing an ancient heresy called Pelagianism. Pelagius was a British monk who was a contemporary of St. Augustine, and was the main and most powerful opponent of Augustinian theology. Augustine's disputes with Pelagius and his followers are still available today in a work called Against Pelagius. Augustine was very successful in his arguments, and Pelagianism has been rejected by literally every segment of Christendom over and over again throughout history. It is one of the few things we all agree on. It keeps popping up, however, because it fits perfectly with how sinful man prefers to see himself and God. It is a kind of endemic nonsense that humanity is prone to blunder into over and over again.

19th and 20th century Evangelicals thought they could adopt Finney's methods either in total ignorance of what he believed, or in the mistaken belief that they could separate his methods from his theology. But they can't, and the absolute circus that is contemporary Evangelicalism is the result.

I don't know Greg Laurie's statistics, but I do know Billy Graham's statistics. I imagine Greg's are similar. In one year after coming forward to profess faith in Christ, if memory serves, a full 90% of those having done so are exhibiting no life change whatsoever. They are not praying, not reading their Bibles, not going to church, not hating their sin and moving toward loving God with their whole heart and mind and their neighbor as themselves. They have not been truly converted. But if you ask them if they have been saved, they say, 'Oh yes! I went forward at the Billy Graham Crusade and prayed the prayer." In my belief they are still on the path to hell, but are now clothed in the finest armor against seeing their sin and their need of a Savior that I know of. Jesus described the psychology of true and false conversion perfectly in the Parable of the Sower in Luke 8:4-15. God's grace inexorably produces results if it is truly present. The truly saved bear at least some measure of visible fruit and are known by their fruit. If there is no fruit, then there has been no salvation.

My own experiences mirrored Billy Graham's statistics perfectly. I was an Evangelism Counselor, a Team Leader, and an Area Follow-Up Director for the Cincinnati Mission. I was given ten names to contact and to go through a followup Bible study with. It was a good study and gave good basic info for the living of the true Christian life. Of the ten I was given to contact, only one man showed any interest whatsoever. We met weekly for several months, and he was a different man. I watched him be changed and grow in a very discernable way in that time. I spent several weeks trying to follow up with the rest, but could not even get them to meet with me one on one. I do not believe any of them were soundly converted. When a man is truly born again, he knows certain things because he has experienced them, the way a woman whose had a baby knows more about childbirth than any male OB/GYN ever could. She speaks with a confidence and a quiet authority when she speaks on those things. Anyone who talks with her can tell that she has had this experience herself. It's the same with spiritual birth.

So then I did a little math. We raised and spent several million dollars to put on the Crusade (I forget how much), not counting man hours and the things they had us purchase on our own in the months leading up to the Crusade... things like thousands of cases of Coke and Pepsi to give away on street corners all around the city. I'm sure the soft drink bottlers were big fans of Billy.

I took the number of decisions recorded and calculated 10% of that number, figuring that was the rough estimate of the true conversions. Then I divided it by the millions of dollars we spent.

Basically, the Church could have just evangelized each of these people for free, as they are commanded to do in the Bible, and then we could have taken all the money we raised and bought each new convert a brand new Toyota Camry. That's a lot of money to spend just so the 95% terrified Christians who never share the Gospel with anyone can continue to be disobedient to their Lord. It was an utterly sincere waste of God's resources motivated both by fear and insecurity, and by a sincere desire to do good to the people of Cincinnati.

I see no reason to think any differently about the Greg Laurie Crusade. Sure, some were truly born again. But the invisible bad effects of this method far outweigh the visible good effects. That's a hard case to make to pragmatic, impatient, shallow, superficial, anti-intellectual, visible-results-oriented American Evangelical Christianity.

Good luck reducing that down to fit. Feel free to call me if I can help, or you need to clarify something or run it past me.