Evangelistic urgency must start with the leader. Phil Colgan argues that church leaders must personally bleed for the lost if they want to see their churches grow in evangelism. It’s not merely about strategy and vision. Culture flows from the top, and that includes zeal.
Churches that burn for the lost are led by pastors who bleed evangelism—personally, visibly, and relentlessly.
Phil Colgan is the Senior Minister at St George North Anglican Church in Sydney.
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TRANSCRIPT:
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
I’ve been looking forward to this week.It’s going to be a great week and it’s already been a great but heavy morning this morning.But a big part of this week is going to be these plenary sessions.I must admit I’ve been coming to reach Australia for I don’t know how many years now and I still don’t know what the word plenary means.And now I’m doing 1.
0:40
I looked it up online and I’m none the wiser, but I think it means practical rather than theory.And so over the, the plenary sessions, we’re going to be hearing from some people like Greg Graham Fuller, Dave Jensen, people like that.And they’re going to push us to think about the practical things we can do to help our churches be more focused on mission and evangelism, first of all, but especially more effective in mission and evangelism.
1:06
And to use the, the metaphor that often gets used in reach circles, they’re going to really help us think about the plumbing of our churches.I must admit I, I struggle with the plumbing metaphor.I’m not a very practical person.People who know very well know this.A few years ago I decided I’d save the church some money and I would replace the washers in our house rather than play a pay a plumber to do it.
1:29
And I thought I’d done a good job.I turned the water back on and when I turned the tap on, a jet of water came out of the wall and knocked me back into the glass.And I thought, oh, I can fix this.And then I heard from downstairs one of my daughter’s screaming because water was coming out of the ceiling.Needless to say, it cost the church a lot more to get the plumber in.
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So what my hope is, is that these sessions are more helpful for our metaphorical plumbing for our churches.And my prayer is a simple one.It’s that we are all humble enough to actually critique ourselves and critique our churches to make practical, even substantial changes out of this week so that we can be more effective in leading our churches in evangelism.
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That’s my prayer.But we know it’s not just about the plumbing, don’t we?This is not a McDonald’s franchise convention.We don’t run a business where we just come along to work out how can we sell more hamburgers.Because you can be the number one seller of hamburgers in the world and be a vegan yourself and hate hamburgers.
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It doesn’t matter.You can fix the plumbing of your store and and sell a lot of hamburgers, but that is not us, is it?We are not in a business where we’re separated from the product.And the reality is that a key part of a church that is effective in evangelism is what you might call the poetry as well as the plumbing, and a key part of the poetry.
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And what I want to focus on just for these few minutes this afternoon, a key part of the poetry is a leader who loves the product, a leader who longs to see the name of Jesus glorified in all the world.A leader who, when you cut them, they bleed concern for the harvest field, they bleed concern for the lost.
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By the way, I, I should say you don’t need to be a leader like that to grow a church because there are plenty of ways to grow a church, easier ways to grow a church than by evangelism.And it’s easy to grow a church that doesn’t have evangelism as it’s beating heart.
3:31
And in fact, if all you’re on about is growing churches, I’d encourage you to go the no evangelism route.I think it’s much, much easier.But that is not the type of churches we want to see grow, is it?The reality is though, the churches where there is an absolute priority to seeing the lost saved.
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Churches where the congregations are turned outwards rather than turned inwards.Churches where God is adding new believers to their number regularly.A key part of that under God is a leader who is transparently driven by his own love for the lost.
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A leader who feels the weight of the reality of what we heard this morning, that people are going to hell, that God is returning to judge and Christ is the only hope for our world.And so when you combine that, if you combine the poetry, if you like, of a leader like that with effective plumbing.
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That’s what we want to see out of these plenary sessions this week.But and just one more thing here.What we don’t want though, is what I call affected zeal or manufactured zeal.Poetry is not just another part of the plumbing to get right.
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I want my church to grow.I better work on my zeal and that’ll that’ll help my my church grow.Or even worse, I better work on sounding zealous.Jesus did not have much time for Pharisees.And there’s a danger that you can hear what I’m saying, say I I need to sound more zealous.
5:00
That’s not what I want.I want you to be more zealous.We want our hearts gripped by a zeal for the gospel because we know the love of the Lord Jesus ourselves, because we believe the things we were hearing from God’s Word this morning.It’s then a wonderful added benefit that a leader like that flows through and impacts their church.
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So all of that is to say, before we think about the church and the plumbing, which is absolutely essential and what we’re going to focus on, let’s think about us just for a little moment.Let’s think about us as the leaders of God’s people because, and to reinforce that point, you need to realize you more than anyone else, set the culture of your church more than anything else.
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The reality is over time, the past, and I’m talking about senior ministers here, but it flows down through the chain as well.We are the biggest influence on the culture of our church.That is experientially true, but I would argue also it’s the pattern mandated in Scripture.
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That’s why Paul is so focused on the the character and the example of pastors and elders.So one Timothy chapter 4, they’re going to come up on the screen.I think it will.Maybe it’s not.I’ll read it out.One one Timothy chapter 4, verse 11 says command and teach these things.
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And then what does Paul say?Set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and impurity.But I think it’s really important to remember that that example is not just, oh, he doesn’t swear, smoke and drink it.
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It’s not just he doesn’t do ungodly things.There is an all of life reality to the example of who we’re meant to be.And a massive part of that are the priorities that people see you living by are the priorities that people see in your life, in your family’s life, in the way you conduct yourself all the time.
6:55
This, this just flows out of the apostle Paul.It’s amazing how often Paul points to himself as a model.I did a bit of an experiment.I went through all the New Testament in preparation of his talk, and I just pulled out.Every time Paul says follow my example with those words or other words.
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But what really strikes me is how often those calls are about following his example in the radical nature of his life in order to see people saved.So the great example of that, and you’re probably thinking of it already, is at the end of 1 Corinthians chapter 10.
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As you come to 1 Corinthians 11 verse one, he’s been talking about how we should be willing to give up our rights, give up our desires to do anything so that one Corinthians 1033 people will be saved.And he then adds that one Corinthians 11 verse one, follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.
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The way God has set up his church is that the appointed leaders job is to be the model that others must follow Our Calling.A way to think of it, I think is to be the disciples we want other people to be, to be the disciples in our priorities in our manner of life that we want people in our church to be.
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If people look at my life and priorities, what do they see?And that’s the question I want you to take away just from this brief talk, if you like.If people look at my life and priorities, what do they see?That’s what I want you to think of.
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Which brings me to my next point.I hope they see a heart after Jesus’s own heart.Andrew gave us a wonderful insight into the heart of Jesus this morning, didn’t he?Jesus came to seek and save the lost.
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That’s the reality we’re preaching through Luke’s gospel at the moment.On Sunday, we got to Luke chapter 5, where Jesus calls Peter to follow him.And he then says to Peter, I want you to be a Fisher for people.And as I prepared that sermon, it sent me back to Sunday school.I grew up moving around a lot, went to all sorts of different Sunday schools.
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Some taught the Bible, others didn’t.But my memory is that every second Sunday school when I was a kid, we did that story.I just remember coming home with a fishing rod craft and a net craft and a never a spear fishing craft.But anyway, it seems in the early 80s that was the story that you taught kids, which is pretty good, isn’t it?
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See.So when I became a Christian a few years later, that idea was just ingrained in my head.What is it to be a disciple of Jesus?It is to be a Fisher of men and I I think that is just the absolute transparent reality When you read through the Gospels, what is it to be a disciple of Jesus?
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It is to be a disciple maker.It’s of the essence of our discipleship.And so that same theme dominates the gospels as Andrew showed us this morning.Just uses so many agricultural metaphors, different parables to make the point.
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But the picture is our world is a harvest field.There is a judgement coming.Jesus’s mission is to reap that harvest.And so to be a disciple of Jesus is to be involved in the work of the harvest.The smallest child can grasp that from Luke chapter 5.
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But I think for many Christians, including ministers like me, what happens over time is that we lose some sense of that absolute fundamental priority.We don’t stop thinking that that evangelism is important, but it becomes one thing out of many important things rather than the thing that drives everything.
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And I’m not just talking about church programs here.We’ll talk about that later on.I’m talking about our hearts.I’m talking about in me.And so I want to ask, how do we stop that happening?How do we maintain Jesus priority as our priority?In many ways I think this is just a substance of the question.
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How do you maintain your zeal for Jesus?Isn’t it because a zealousness for Jesus will flow through in Jesus priorities?Now in a moment I’ll think about this in our leadership, but I want to start with the more important one, just in ourselves, in our own lives.As I thought about it, I think the key is to recognize that it is a constant battle to keep that zeal for Jesus and to keep the urgency of the gospel in the front of our minds.
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We need to recognize other than for that 1% of great evangelist amongst us, you know, the, the, the friends with frontal lobe injuries sort sort of thing.For, for, for most of us, there is an inexorable inertia towards comfort.For most of us, there is an inexorable inertia towards the easy path.
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And the easy path never involves evangelism.That’s the reality.See, we often worry that we will slide in our doctrine.I find the more real challenge is that I slide in my zeal.Of course, I need to be careful lest I fall.
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But my main danger, I don’t think, is liberalism.It’s comfortablism, if I can coin a word.I think I have this inertia towards being faithful but comfortable, which is of course not truly faithful at all.
12:12
Faithful but comfortable rather than the zealous radical life the gospel actually demands.I’ll talk about this in our leadership in a moment, but here, I mean just in my life.I’m talking about my spiritual state.We have an inertia towards loving the things of this world, don’t we?
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I’m still faithful.I’m still a faithful preacher.I’m still a faithful pastor.But Gee, other things are attractive and and I can still look like a radical because so many people in our world are so unradical.But but actually I love the things of this world.How do you fight that?
12:47
As I said before, I think the key is to recognise the inertia, to recognise that you have to fight it.But how else do we fight it?Well, I have a few thoughts, but my hope is that you’ll go away and cover it with 20 thoughts together on this, the first years.And it seems like motherhood and apple pie.And I have to put it first, but I want to put it first that the best advice I ever got at Bible college is do not mix your quiet times with your teaching preparation.
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It’s the best advice I ever got.Always be reading something in the Scriptures that you’re not reading because you got to teach it to someone.Be reading it because it is your loving Father speaking to you and to your heart and to yourself.And in your prayers, do not just pray for your church, pray for yourself, pray for your witness, pray for your family.
13:31
As I said, it’s so obvious we forget to say it, but to be a mission hearted hearted pastor, you need to be a zealous child of God.That’s first thing.Second thing I want to say is I want to encourage you to remember that whatever your job description, you are called to do the work of an evangelist.
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It’s not an optional part of being a pastor.So go and read to Timothy 4 later on, you know the passage I’m sure where, where Paul gives Timothy his final marching orders.That great summary.Preach the word in season and out of season.All these things you need to do Timothy to fulfil your ministry.
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Then right on the end, it’s sort of like he tacks it on.Paul says do the work of an evangelist.I am convinced that Paul says that on the end there because he knows the inertia that every pastor feels to turn inward.
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It’s just a part of being a pastor that you turn inward.So I think he says to Timothy, yes, your job is to care for the flock.Yes, your job is to maintain sound doctrine, all those things, but do not be so focused inward that you lose sight of the thing that drives me and should drive every disciple.
14:44
Don’t forget the harvest field, Timothy.Keep your eyes outward.Timothy.Personally in confession, I think this is my greatest problem and so I’m going to project it onto you.I am so busy running a church I don’t know any non Christians anymore, especially since my kids have got out of school age and I don’t have the friends of their the parents of their friends as my mission field.
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Praise God, plenty of non Christians come to our church and I get that mission field.But we must not become people who just tell other people to evangelize.We must not do the work of an evangelist.
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Third thing, find people with evangelistic zeal to challenge you and rub off on you.For me I am blessed that my wife is more zealous and a better evangelist than me.One of my most humbling moments was at a dinner table at our family dinner table when Sophie, our youngest just innocently asked why does mum have so many more non Christian friends that she talks about Jesus to than dad does from the mouths of children.
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But my point is, fine brothers and sisters who are radical and zealous people think I serve on the board of Reach Australia to help run this sort of thing.No, it’s I get to just hang around with Al Stewart and Andrew Heard.It’s great.Find people who burn with passion for the lost.
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There are plenty of people, including brothers and sisters in ministry, who will push you to comfort.There are plenty of people who will push you to security and focusing on this world.Find the people who make you radical.That’s what I think the beauty of Reach Australia is, if I can say that to bring us together to provide like minded brothers and sisters for us, we need them because the inertia is always the other way.
16:38
I’m sure we could talk together about 20 other things we can do to maintain that zeal and priority in yourself, but I’ll leave that for afterwards for us all.Now I want to talk about how we maintain and communicate that zeal and priority in the leadership of our churches.So how do you do that?In a way, I think it’s easier to turn this question into the negative.
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So that’s that’s what I’ll do.Why?Why is it that even if we maintain our zeal and our priority, why do we struggle to translate it into our churches?And why do we struggle to translate it into the life of our churches?I think generally it can all be summarized into two reasons.
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The 1st is because we stop feeling the pain.We stop feeling the pain of not making radical changes in our churches to reach the lost.We all know one of the reasons church plants often grow faster is because the 40 people there know I’m going to be putting out the chairs every week if we don’t grow soon.
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That that is reality.But but once you hit a certain number, we and the church get comfortable.It’s what we do.We focus on the fact that the barns are pretty full, as our brother said before, rather than the limitless fields out there that have not been ripped.
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We judge our success on the indicators that are about all about how well church is going, rather than how we’re going at reaching and winning the lost.We stop feeling the pain of the fact that actually, despite our comfortableness, people out there are going to hell.
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We need to feel that pain and we need to communicate that pain constantly.Whatever stats you keep, whatever numbers you count, don’t just ask.Is the church growing?Keep asking.Are we reaching non Christians?
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Are non Christians hearing the gospel?Are non Christians being saved?So we stopped feeling the pain.The second problem though, I think is that we want to avoid the pain of making the changes we need to make to prioritize reaching the lost.I don’t think you can be a Christian and not want people to be saved.
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So it seems to me if there’s someone in your church who who actually explicitly says, I don’t want people to be saved, you need to convert them.You need to preach the they’re not a Christian.But there is a reality though that for many Christians that does not translate through to wanting to mess with their life priorities to see people saved or in particular wanting to mess with their church to see people saved.
19:10
There is a reality that once you reach the comfort mark, and I don’t know what that number is, I make up every statistic I’ve ever quoted, but but there there is a reality that once you you reach the comfort mark, your church members often don’t want church to change.
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They’ve got a wonderful community already.In fact, that’s probably why.Do you ever notice how for church members, often the part they love in the vision statement is loving community?It’s a painful task to keep a church focused outwards.
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It always faces opposition.So we have to be willing to keep feeling that pain.And I’ve been in one place 21 years and I’m in a place where people are on board.But that inertia towards comfort is inevitable.You have to be willing to have pain.
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I’ve got a diagnostic in my preaching if I’ve gone several months and someone hasn’t been offended by a sermon.I get very worried.You think I’m joking, but I’m not.I think that says I’m probably not preaching faithfully.And I think if no one’s offended by your sermons, you’re not preaching faithfully either, because God’s Word is meant to stir people up.
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It’s what it’s meant to do.If no one is being offended by your preaching, your preaching is bland and unbiblical.I think.Well, in the same way my other rule is if no Christian complaints to me every once in a while we’re too focused on the outsider and you don’t care enough about the insider, I get worried.
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I get worried because if a few Christians aren’t thinking that, then we obviously aren’t being clear enough in our priority of reaching and winning the lost.So how do we fix that?How do we lead our churches and to be willing to do the hard things, make difficult changes, to prioritize reaching the lost.
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In many ways, that’s what all these plenaries are about.And I’m going to leave that to the other guys.I’m just the warm up act, but I’m going to finish on just one.Just one.It has to bleed out of your preaching.Whatever part of the Bible you’re preaching, it has to bleed out of your preaching.
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We need to make sure that our preaching and for that matter all of your public ministry, the prayers you lead, the amount of the announcements you make, the way you introduce your parish council, your elders meeting, the way you introduce the link missionary support night, but especially the week in, week out preaching of the Word of God to the gathered people of God.
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That passion, that urgency of reaching the lost must bleed out of you.The imminent return of Christ and the reality of hell and the priority of the harvest field must just bleed out of your preaching.And I don’t mean having regular sermons where you tell people to evangelize.
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I mean that that unbalanced focus you have in your life on seeing people, one for Christ must then flow out of you.It should flow out of you in all your conversations.So of course it’s got to flow out in your preaching.Does your passion for the lost bleed out of you so that people can see and hear and feel it?
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I’m going to say what I don’t mean is you’ve got to be a yeller.Like our brother said before who was introducing the session.You don’t know.It means in a way that is appropriate for your personality and who you are to.People tell from everything you say and everything you do that the most important thing is saving people from hell.
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What under God creates churches that are on fire and effective for evangelism?Firstly, pastors who feel and live the urgency of Christ to see the lost saved.That is a great start.Secondly, when you then put that together with pastors who are able to communicate that urgency and that passion and that priority in their model of life and in their teaching, that is wonderful.
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If we also then get the plumbing right.Well, that’s what we want to see out of this week.All three of those things together.Let me pray.Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the wonderful news of the gospel, that we have been saved by the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus.
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But Father, give us the eyes of Jesus.Help us to see the world the way Jesus sees the world.Father, we pray that we might not have eyes that look inward, but eyes that look outward.And Father, we pray that we would not slide in that inevitable inertia to comfort, but instead our zeal would grow, our passion for Jesus would grow, and so our passion for the lost would grow, and that we will then be able to communicate that to our churches.
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And Father, we pray that as people look at us, they will be able to see what is our priority.And we pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
