I’ve come to the realization that mass evangelism is becoming increasingly less effective. I know that’s not exactly an earth-shattering revelation. It has become fairly obvious, at least here in the United States. In 1994 I attended my first open air evangelistic crusade in Raleigh, NC—the evangelist was Franklin Graham, and his father Billy made a special appearance on the final night of the event. It was huge! Over 20,000 people attended. If you’re Gen-X or older, you know the routine. There was opening music from a Christian rock band. (Franklin was considered much edgier than his dad back in the day.) Then there was a stirring sermon with an invitation to come down to pray with a counselor and commit your life to Christ. Many people became Christians or renewed their commitments to Jesus. Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, and Catholic churches (and every other Christian denomination) came together to make sure the event was a success. For this wide-eyed college student, it was a pretty awesome sight to behold.
Times have changed. You don’t see big crusades as much nowadays. 21st century ministries and churches rely more on festivals, concerts, and community outreach extravaganzas to reach the lost. And even those events aren’t as explicitly evangelistic as their predecessors were a generation ago. While many churches still do some form of the altar call, more seem to be moving toward relational and small group evangelism as the primary strategies for bringing people to Christ.
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