Last week I mentioned the recent Christianity Today article focusing on Calvinism’s rise in popular collective consciousness. The second post focused primarily on the red herring argument given primarily by NOBTS provost Steve Lemke that Calvinists don’t evangelize. I hate to beat a dead horse and cover ground we’ve already tread, but I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the specifics of his quote and the implications of it for evangelism. For clarity’s sake, here is the quote in question, again taken from the recent issue of Christianity Today:

�the Calvinist churches of the SBC�s Founders Ministries lack commitment to evangelism. For many people, if they�re convinved that God has already elected those who will be elect . . . I don�t see how humanly speaking that can�t temper your passion because you know you�re not that crucial to the process.�

There are many things in this quote which we might focus on. For example, has Lemke considered that if there are fewer baptisms in “Calvinsist SBC” churches, it is not because they “lack commitment to evangelism,” but because they actually take baptism and church membership quite seriously and as something more important than meeting an arbitrary quota? In a denomination with more missing than present, it might seem prudent to focus on the pragmatic focus on numbers.

However, that’s not what I want to focus on in Lemke’s quote. Instead, for the past week, I have been fascinated by the focus of Lemke’s comments rather than their actual content, primarily because my perception (and I think the perception of Scripture as well) is so contrary to Lemke’s that I am continually taken back each time I read this quote.

If pressed, we can develop this point further, but for the meantime, I will boldly say that the first part of Lemke’s quote “…Calvinist Churches of the SBC’s Founders Ministries lack commitment to evangelism” is simply false. Not only is it not true, it’s poor scholarship to even make such a claim. However, it’s the second half of the quote that I think is crucial:

“For many people, if they�re convinved that God has already elected those who will be elect . . . I don�t see how humanly speaking that can�t temper your passion because you know you�re not that crucial to the process.�

Compare Lemke’s sentiment with that of Charles Spurgeon who is here quoted as saying:

“A controversialist once said, �If I thought God had a chosen people, I should not preach.� That is the very reason why I do preach. What would make him inactive is the mainspring of my earnestness. If the Lord had not a people to be saved, I should have little to cheer me in the ministry.”

It seems as though Lemke and Spurgeon are saying completely opposite things, doesn’t it? How could two men have such differing perspectives on the same issue? Granted, I am biased in this discussion, but I would assert that these two men have such differing perspectives because these two men have an entirely different focus. One is man-centered while the other is God-centered.

One can almost hear the underlying “but what about me” sentiment in Lemke’s quote. Lemke comes from a perspective in which it is up to us to be zealous, to be passionate, to talk people into accepting the Gospel and it is man’s centrality in that process that pushes Lemke. Spurgeon and those like him, however cannot be charged with lacking zealousness. In fact, listen as Spurgeon is again quoted:

I believe that God will save his own elect, and I also believe that, if I do not preach the gospel, the blood of men will be laid at my door.

For reasons hidden in God’s good counsel, He has chosen to gather His sons and daughters from the north and the south and everywhere in between (Isaiah 43:6) through the preaching of His Word and He has chosen to use men and women, boys and girls to carry this life-giving, soul-winning message to the ends of the earth. Consider Romans 10:14-17:

But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

Lemke’s assertion that adopting an understanding of God’s sovereignty in salvation somehow means that we are not “crucial to that process” is entirely short-sighted. In one sense, no we’re not. God saves, we do not. Yet on the other hand, God has chosen to use the preaching of His Gospel through His children as His means of calling His children to Himself. Have Calvinist churches often lagged in evangelism? Yes, but I would venture that Calvinists no more lag in evangelism than do many so-called free-will churches. Most American believers simply do not engage in sharing their faith the way we ought. We must acknowledge that, but we cannot build theological straw men in the process.

I don’t know Lemke and I don’t question his heart for one second. In fact, I appreciate his zeal for the expansion of the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet I challenge him and those like him to re-examine their focus and place it once again squarely upon our God who will not share His glory with another, even those claiming to serve Him (Isaiah 48:9-11).