“There are different periods in the life of every church and now is one of those times when we just need to focus on strengthening the people who remain in our church rather than trying to share the gospel with unbelievers.”

Believe it or not, I’ve heard something very similar to this from pastors who sincerely believe that their churches should not be doing evangelism. Unfortunately, this approach is deeply flawed and pastors who chose this path for their churches are simply pouring buckets of cold water on any gospel flame that might remain in the hearts of their members.

(If you want to know what happens when the church stops sharing the gospel, check out this article.)

However, there also exists an equally dangerous mistake that many churches and church leaders fall into. It goes something like this:
“All our services and all our ministries are geared towards one goal, to bring in as many people as possible and to get them saved.”
Unfortunately, this unbalanced approach often leads to a lack in discipleship, which can do great harm to the church. Those who get saved never grow, they never deepen in their faith, they are not given the opportunity to be discipled or to be a discipler. They stay spiritual babes feed with a constant died of sweet milk, short services, and simplistic sermons. They are easily led astray by false teaching and they quickly succumb to the lightest temptations.
Yes, new people often come through the doors of churches like these but they just as often leave through those same doors. They failed to put down roots deep into the soil of the gospel, they dry up quickly and their spiritual life seems to vanish.
How can we find Biblical balance in this and avoid the unbiblical extremes?

First, I would like to identify two common mistakes in our thinking about the gospel that I believe often cause us to misunderstand the relationship between evangelism and discipleship. Second, I’d like to look at how Jesus preached the gospel and how he saw the relationship between evangelism and discipleship.

Mistake #1 We have artificially separated evangelism and discipleship

When I studied theology in seminary we systematized and sorted every theology into their proper places for ease of study and for logical order. While this is sometimes necessary and helpful in theology it can be detrimental in real practice. For instance, in theology the doctrine of salvation (soteriology) and the doctrine of Christ (Christology) are separate but we all know that in reality Christ can never be separate from this work in salvation.

It seems that we have sorted evangelism and discipleship like laundry, everything that has to with evangelism we put in the “evangelism” pile and everything that has to do with discipleship, we put in the “discipleship” pile. Some make the assumption that they can only participate in one or the other but not both. We fail to see that evangelism and discipleship are woven together in one garment. Yes, they are slightly different fabrics but together they make up the whole shirt. You can always unravel the shirt and put the evangelism thread in one pile and the discipleship thread in another pile but that’s not doing to do anyone any good!

Throughout the New Testament we see evangelism and discipleship so closely tied together that sometimes it’s difficult to determine about which one of the two the author is talking about. Let me give you an example.

Before Jesus ascended into heaven he gave his disciples “The Great Commision”

19  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy...