Creating Reformed Evangelistic Tracts
Joshua Lamb
632a: Evangelism
March 15, 2017
Introduction
When most people consider the topic of evangelism, they think of either door-to-door interactions or large events geared toward reaching the unsaved. The concept of tract evangelism is often viewed as not that effective. Perhaps some of this criticism is for good reason as the content of many evangelical tracts are cheesy at best and heretical at worst. Often there is a reductionist gospel message and a quick call to believe. However, should these aberrations deter us from what could be a fruitful endeavor?
In reality there is much to commend tract ministry. After all, the Bible is in writing and people have been converted by reading God’s Word. In the Reformed tradition we celebrate preaching as the means by which God calls His elect, and rightly so. However, we cannot dismiss that many have been converted simply by reading God’s Word. So a careful tract that uses Scripture effectively is like a printed preacher, ready to tell anyone who happens to read about the Gospel of Jesus. We should not shun this medium as a way by which God may begin to draw sinners to Himself.
Hopefully you are beginning to sense that this is an area in which we may yet be faithful and effective. But before jumping on the internet to order tracts, it is important that as pastors we consider creating our own. Our cultural context for ministry is unique. We are the ones who know our cities and communities best. As such we have a special opportunity to write tracts which appeal to the wills and consciences of the people in our immediate vicinity. This paper examines the considerations we should have as we seek to produce biblically faithful, relevant, and engaging gospel tracts for our neighbors. We will look at this through three angles: the Message, the Motivation, and the Method
Message - the Gospel we must bring
The first task we have in writing a solid Gospel tract is to define what exactly Gospel content is. There are definite limits to what can be conveyed in a short leaflet or pamphlet. Yet we should desire to remain faithful. Knowing that tract size is limited, there are a few questions we have to answer. What is the minimum that we can convey and still call it a Gospel presentation? What elements elements are essential for it to be true to Scripture. Morton Smith aptly states that the basic idea of evangelism is setting forth the Gospel of Christ.1 This may seem simplistic, but needs to be our starting point. Before anything else we need to have as our axis that the Gospel revolves around the person and work of Christ. If we miss this, then no matter how pretty or engaging our handout is, it has failed the test of faithfulness. Smith goes on to say that we essentially have to balance the issues of the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man in our presentation.2 These are two big themes that should weave their way through our tract on some level.
Beyond that there are different gospel grids that have been developed by faithful reformed men. We will give an overview of them here. Firstly, there is J. I. Packer’s viewpoint. Packer identifies four necessary components in the Gospel:3 1) the gospel is about God. It is about His position as the Creator of this world to whom man is always accountable. 2) it is about sin. Mankind’s fall from grace in the garden of Eden and fractured his relationship with God and through Adam the whole race of men fell away. Every man now sins out of his nature and only heaps more judgment on himself. 3) Christ’s work of salvation. Christ came willingly to do what man could never do for himself. He shed His precious blood and remitted the sins of all God has chosen. 4) call to faith and repentance. All men everywhere are commanded to respond the news of what Christ has done and to have faith in His work alone for their salvation. They are to renounce underhanded and ungodly deeds and put on Christ. Packer’s outline is comprehensive and is right to place God at the beginning and Christ at the center of the discussion.
Secondly, J. Mack Stiles has a similar four-point outline for the Gospel message. This can be summarized under the words God, Man, Christ, and Response.4 That is, it is a message about a Creator God who made man in His image, but man sinned against Him. God sent His Son as the redeemer and we must respond with faith and repentance.
Thirdly, Will Metzger has a five-point presentation with similar content.5 He starts with God as well, in the position of Creator and Judge. He develops these themes in showing that man has a twofold obligation to obey God - He made them and also rules over them. Next he discusses the original design of mankind as God’s vice-regents on the earth who were meant to obey the law of love towards God and neighbor. This is what makes Metzger’s view a five-point view vs the four-point of the men discussed above. Metzger no doubt senses the importance of knowing where Adam could have been if he had followed God’s law. He then returns to an outline similar to Stiles and Packer in his last two points, one illustration Christ’s work as Savior and Lord, and the final about the call to repent.
We see how these three men who are all faithful reformed evangelists have exposited the Gospel in a concise manner. We can say with Pastor David Engelsma that the heart of the Gospel is teaching men their sinful guilt before God but also of Christ’s substitutionary atonement for sin that their guilt would be remitted.6 We are then to summon them to repentance, because God does not give the Gospel simply as a nice-to-hear message but as something which must be obeyed. It is not a bulletin announcement but a summons from a King.
We see again that the particular thrust of these Gospel outlines is that they are God-centered in nature. God is both the starting point and the focal point. They are focused on the objective realities of God’s character, rather than the felt needs of man. There are unfortunately many modern tracts which are unfaithful and sub par because they do not have this emphasis.
So tying this all together we could say that the Gospel is a message about who God is as Creator and Lord, who man is as sinner and rebel, and what Christ has done (specifically in His shedding of blood on the cross to atone for the transgressions of God’s elect). It is a message which all who hear are accountable to respond to. We can easily use our creeds, confessions, and doctrinal formulations such as TULIP to give a full expression to this in the tracts we produce. But this is our starting point for what must be communicated in evangelistic literature for it to be a faithful mini-portrait of the Gospel.
Motivation - the love we must have
Next we come to the motivation we are to have for conveying the Gospel, whether in a tract or otherwise. It should be the motivation for which we do all things - Love! As Jesus declared, the greatest commandment is to love God with our whole being and the second is to love our neighbor as ourself (Matt 22:37-39). One of the chief components of love is knowledge. A husband who does not know his wife very well is also a husband who lacks in love towards her. This is also important for the pastor who is producing gospel literature. We must love the people we are trying to communicate with by getting to know them.
Knowledge we need to gather
There are many types of knowledge we can gain about people in the local area. It is important to remember our advantage as a local church pastor. We have something that a big name gospel tract publisher would never have - the constant opportunity to interact with people in our area. Below are several spheres of knowledge that could be helpful in producing gospel literature.
Understand Scripture - Before any other type of knowledge, we should seek to be as shaped by Scripture as possible. This is the one non-negotiable sphere of knowledge that we must seek after. Far more important than learning how to engage our pagan world is learning the Gospel message we are to bring to them. We are the city on a hill (Matt 5:14). This means that we should know the passages well where men preached to an unbelieving audience the way of salvation (Peter in Acts 3, Stephen in Acts 7, Paul in Acts 17). Notice how they explain the history of redemption, open up the work of Christ, confront men over their sin, and call for a response. Along with this preparation we should anticipate common questions that people will ask and common objections to what the Bible teaches.7
Understand Suppositions - We should seeks to understand both the religious (Islam, Jewish, Buddhist etc) and the non-religious (athiest, darwinistic, nihilistic, fatalistic, materialistic, stoic etc) makeup of our local area. What religious groups and societies exist where I am? What are the tenants of their religions? Here is where our literature can take on a more specific character and be geared to a particular audience. Charles Bridges distinguished between six kinds of unbelievers: the infidel, ignorant & careless, self-righteous, false professor, those under natural conviction, and the backslider.8 What category would most of the people in your city fall into? When we look at Scripture we can see that Bridges is really just picking up on the type of precision that the Lord Jesus Himself used when addressing the various types of people that came to Him. In passages such as Matt 21, 22, 25; Luke 7, 8, 14, 15, and 19 we see Jesus giving a tailored response based on the heart-attitude of the person in dialogue with Him.9 Our task is harder because we cannot read hearts as Christ did and because we may not be their to explain our tracts to our readers. Nevertheless, any steps we take towards learning to target our reader will do us well.
Understand Socioeconomic Factors - We should seek to understand the racial makeup, family structure (divorced, single, separated), family life (what they value, how time is spent, how money is spent), and income distribution of our area. These are surface issues but they can help us to see how the lost people in our area think and reason their way through life. What drives them? What things do they love and hate?
Local Issues/Sentiment - What is the pulse of this area? No doubt there are political, economic, and other newsworthy subjects which are important to the people in this area. We do not have to become pundits or news junkies in order to have some awareness of our city. Lest we view this as unspiritual, we are reminded that Jesus was aware of events going on around Him, such as the fall of the tower of Siloam (Luke 13:4). A part of this should be to seek out what their impressions are of Christianity.
Ways to increase our knowledge about the area
We have just outlined many types of knowledge we can gain in order to have a better understanding of the local situation around us. Yet we still need to discuss ways of getting this information so that we are informed as we create our tracts.
Host a summer barbecue. This would be a great way for the church to get to know people who are in the immediate vicinity of the church building and would work even if the area is economically depressed. It is important that this is not viewed as the next Billy Graham evangelistic event, but rather one link in the chain of drawing others to Christ. A gospel presentation could be shared, but without gimmicks.
Run a Christianity Explored class. An evangelistic series is a great way to be exposed to the beliefs of local people who are also curious about the doctrines of the Christian faith.
Prepare lessons in a local coffee shop. Many pastors report being approached while working on catechism lessons in coffee shops and similar environments. Some have taken advantage of this by purposing to do some of their work there and be open to any doors the Holy Spirit might open. This is a great way to get local sentiment as well.
Share a hobby. Most cities have softball leagues and similar group activities. These are a great opportunities to get some exercise while forming relationships with non-believers.
Hospitality. Inviting unbelievers into your home can be one of the most effective ways of reaching the lost around us. It is in this context that they see faith lived out and many of their mental myths begin to crumble. They could be their to witness your normal habit of family worship and be exposed to the Word. You can learn much about them as well by casually discussing matters of faith.
Method - the way we should write
We have discussed the essential content of the Gospel, the knowledge we should pursue about our area, and some ways to get that knowledge. The final piece is to think through our method for producing tracts and other evangelistic literature. What are our considerations when the proverbial pen is put to paper?
Our first consideration should be true content. The Gospel message we described above should be presented in a clear and concise way. It is unfortunate that we usually not able to provide as full-orbed of a presentation as we would like. That is the downside. Fortunately, our new understanding of the people we are addressing means that we can write content which is appropriate to them. We can bring the Gospel to bear on their situation. We are not limited to only one tract. So there should be a focus on one central point that is discussed. A provocative and challenging question could be posed. A myth about Christianity could be debunked. In any case, we must be true to the Gospel message in our response. There is abundant evidence of tracts that either lost focus or come across as gimmicky. We don’t have to trust in gimmicks to write a tract, but can place full confidence in the Spirit who draws and in the unbreakable Word.10
The second goal should be a careful explanation. There exist tracts which truly point to the Gospel, but their presentation is muddied because of a mistaken assumption that the reader has the same vocabulary as the writer. This is especially true of a post-modern West, in which the cultural vocabulary for topics such as sin, judgment, atonement, and righteousness is at an all time low. Along with this are similar assumptions about knowledge of Bible stories, characters, and narrative. References to Archippus, Nehemiah, and Baalam are likely unknown to most unbelievers. Yet there are tracts which make frequent references to places and events which only someone mature in the faith would understand. It is important that an evangelistic tract consider the audience and slow down when approaching weighty concepts. Another consideration is that tracts must avoid misleading statements such as “God loves you” and “Christ died for you”. These statements are misleading11 because they make people think they are saved when they are not. Even people associated with big-name evangelical organizations make this mistake in their literature.1213 Only the Holy Spirit by the Scriptures can give assurance of faith. It is dangerous to imply that a tractwriter can pronounce this.
The third consideration is that the tract is presentable and engaging. We do not have to try to sell and advertise as the world does, because we trust in the ultimate sovereignty of God. Yet God is also the God who made a world of order and beauty. Nothing we make should be of shoddy craftsmanship, and how much more is that true for literature which commends the Gospel. If illustrations are used they should be good quality. The arrangement should be neat and presentable. Likewise the format should be engaging. It could start with a question, a story, an NT parable (perhaps modernized), and allegory (similar to Nathan’s confrontation of King David) etc. Will Metzger has a collection of Bible stories which can be used to discriminately address a certain type of hearer.14 This would be useful for tracts because it can speak directly to an individual with a certain life issue. The tract should anticipate objections of the reader and address them.15 It is safe to assume there will be objections because the Gospel is offensive to the natural man. In all this there should be a reverence for the Scripture that is cited in the tract. It should take prominence over the words of men with a larger font size, bolded, different color etc.
Lastly, the tract should have a winsome and personal tone. It should walk the line between being a man-fearing attempt to pander and an overly condemning citation. We should simply engage them, teach the Gospel, and call them to repentance and faith. There is a place to show them the law, but remember that it is God who judges and not us. We should close the tract on a personal note. It is appropriate to have some place for identifying your church and how to get in touch with you. After all, the goal should be to see this person trust in Christ and become a member of a faithful church. Studies also reveal that most people (80 out of 100) come to church as a result of a personal relation or strong pastoral leadership.16
Conclusion
In the Reformed church we place a solid emphasis on the declaration of the Word of God by the mouths of preachers, but it is also important that we declare this through our pens as well. Evangelistic tracts are a way to herald the Gospel, and the writing of them by local church pastors are an effective means of addressing the specific situations of the people around us. For many years the presses have been flooded with unfaithful, Armenian, and gimmicky tracts which fail to connect the Gospel to real people and situations. With humble meditation on the Gospel message and a loving desire to know our neighbors, we can tell the Gospel of our God on bus stations benches, corner stores, and libraries. Hallelujah our God reigns!
I certify 100% completion of the assigned readings for this course.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Engelsma, David. Evangelism and the reformed faith. South Holland, Ill: Evangelism Committee, South HollandProtestant Reformed Church, 1983.
Jones, Robert. Questions answered for the seeking soul. Shoals, IN: Old Paths Tract Society, 2000.
Kennedy, D. James, and Archie Parrish. Evangelism explosion. Rev. Wheaton, Ill: Tyndale House Publishers, 1977.
Masters, Peter. Biblical strategies for witness. London: Wakeman Trust, 1994.
Metzger, Will. Tell the truth: The whole Gospel to the whole person by whole people: A training manual on the message and methodof God-centered witnessing to a grace-centered Gospel. Rev. and expanded, 3rd ed. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2002.
Moyer, R. Larry. 21 things God never said: Correcting our misconceptions about evangelism. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2004.
Salter, Darius. American evangelism: Its theology and practice. Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Books, 1996.
Smith, Morton H. Reformed evangelism. Rev. ed. [Greenville, SC: Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary], 1994.
Stiles, J. Mack. Evangelism: How the whole church speaks of Jesus. 9Marks: Building healthy churches. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2014.
1. . Morton H. Smith, Reformed evangelism, Rev. ed. ([Greenville, ↩
SC: Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary\], 1994), 2.
2. . Smith, Reformed evangelism, 12. ↩
3. . Smith, Reformed evangelism, 23–24. ↩
4. . J. Mack Stiles, *Evangelism: How the whole church speaks of ↩
Jesus*, 9Marks: Building healthy churches (Wheaton, Illinois:
Crossway, 2014), 33.
5. . Will Metzger, *Tell the truth: The whole Gospel to the whole ↩
person by whole people: A training manual on the message and
methodof God-centered witnessing to a grace-centered Gospel*, Rev.
and expanded, 3rd ed. (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press,
2002), 54.
6. . David Engelsma, Evangelism and the reformed faith (South ↩
Holland, Ill: Evangelism Committee, South HollandProtestant Reformed
Church, 1983), 10–13.
7. . Peter Masters, Biblical strategies for witness (London: ↩
Wakeman Trust, 1994), 148–149.
8. . Masters, Biblical strategies for witness, 72–73 a large part ↩
of this volume is dedicate to answering these various types of
hearers and so I highly commend it for anyone in pulpit ministry to
read.
9. . Masters, Biblical strategies for witness, 73–75. ↩
10. . Engelsma, Evangelism and the reformed faith, 16. ↩
11. . Smith, Reformed evangelism, 20. ↩
12. . R. Larry Moyer, *21 things God never said: Correcting our ↩
misconceptions about evangelism* (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel
Publications, 2004), example of an unsatisfactory tract.
13. . D. James Kennedy and Archie Parrish, Evangelism explosion, ↩
Rev. (Wheaton, Ill: Tyndale House Publishers, 1977), 43–44 there are
some helpful practical tips in this volume but I do not commend the
gospel presentation it contains because it is too man-centered.
14. . Metzger, Tell the truth, Appendix IV, I would commend Metzger ↩
as the single best volume to read on evangelism.
15. . Robert Jones, Questions answered for the seeking soul ↩
(Shoals, IN: Old Paths Tract Society, 2000), 8, this volume contains
a great collection of God-centered tracts.
16. . Darius Salter, American evangelism: Its theology and practice ↩
(Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Books, 1996), 363.