The Sunday Evening "Gospel Service''

Rev. Angus Stewart

In many churches in the British Isles generally and in N. Ireland in particular, it is the custom that the Lord’s Day evening service contains a "gospel sermon.'' Occasionally, the morning speech is also largely, or even especially, addressed to the unbeliever. Sometimes churches which do not hold Sunday night "gospel services" are criticised for this. There are, however, problems with this practice of Lord’s Day evening "gospel services," especially with regard to exegesis, the "potted gospel," doctrinal preaching, worship, Arminianism, hawking Jesus and the nature of the church.

(1) Of the two testaments, obviously, the New Testament is more interested in evangelism and the growth of the universal church of Christ. Of the 27 books in the New Testament canon, 13 are epistles written by the apostle Paul, either to believers corporately (the churches of Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, etc. [9]), or to individual believers (I & II Timothy, Titus and Philemon [4]). Thus Paul, by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, writes, for example, "to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse" (Col. 1:2). Hebrews was written to Jewish believers, referred to as "holy brethren" (Heb. 3:1). James wrote to his "brethren" who hold "the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory" (James 2:1). I & II Peter are addressed to those who are "elect," sanctified and redeemed (I Peter 1:2), who have obtained "like precious faith with us" (II Peter 1:1). I, II & III John were written to John's spiritual "little children" (I John 2:1), "the elect lady and her children" (II John 1) and "the wellbeloved Gaius" (III John 1), respectively. Jude was addressed to "them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called" (Jude 1). Revelation was originally penned for the "servants" of God in seven churches in Asia Minor (Rev. 1:1, 4). Of the five remaining New Testament books, two of them (Luke & Acts) were written to a particular Christian, Theophilus (Greek: "friend of God;'' Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1), in order that he might "know the certainty of those things, wherein [he had] been instructed" (Luke 1:4). We are not told to whom Matthew or Mark were originally addressed, but amongst the purposes for which the Gospel According to John was inspired, the evangelistic is certainly included (cf. John 20:31).

In short, the Scriptures are written for the church and simply do not contain enough texts to preach exegetical sermons for unbelievers 52 times or more a year, year in and year out, in the public worship on the Lord's Day. This results in the preacher engaging in forced, and thus flawed, exegesis. As a former lay preacher entrenched in this system and as one who has heard many such sermons, I know whereof I speak. Since often the text does not lead where the preacher wants it to go, it must be compelled to yield the desired evangelistic sermon. As well as grieving the Holy Spirit who breathed forth the Holy Scriptures (and the child of God who understands what is going on), this practice fails to teach the congregation to interpret the Bible rightly.

(2) This forced exegesis results in the "potted gospel," which always contains what the minister considers the bare essentials of the gospel (and often not much else) and frequently finishes with an appeal of various length tacked on at the end. After a little exegesis at the start of the sermon, the message often consists of something little more than an expansion of the "five spiritual laws" with a concluding exhortation very like that of the week or month or year before. Yet the vast majority of those present are professing Christians: "We’re forever hearing that people need to be saved, but we’re already converted. In at least half of the sermons we hear, the holy God of heaven and earth has little or nothing to say to us by way of doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness (cf. II Tim. 3:16)."

(3) It is evident from all this that the congregation is not properly fed by such a system. With at least half of the church’s public worship services devoted to preaching the potted gospel, there is simply no way in which the minister can proclaim "all the counsel of God" (Acts 20:27), something necessary for the great work of "edifying ... the body of Christ" (Eph. 4:12). Those who engage in the Sunday evening "gospel service" have lost the lively sense of the gospel as a sacred deposit of truth (II Tim. 1:13-14) that must be passed on to the succeeding generations (II Tim. 2:2). The Holy Spirit has led the church into the truth over the last 2,000 years, and the church’s calling is to declare that knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. By this means, the elect grow in grace (II Peter 3:18) and the body of Christ is edified (Eph. 4:11-16) and built up into an holy temple in the Lord (Eph. 2:20-22). This requires expository, doctrinal preaching (Neh. 8:8; I Tim 4:13-16), by a divinely called and equipped teacher (Matt. 28:19; Acts 13:1; 14:25; Eph. 4:11; I Tim. 2:7; II Tim 1:11; 2:2). But where 50% or more of the church’s Lord's Day services are given over to "gospel services'' the congregation will never grasp the riches of the Reformed faith. Various subjects are insufficiently covered in circles where the evening "gospel service'' reigns, including the doctrines of God (His Being, Persons, attributes, revelation, names, decree and works), sovereign grace (unconditional election and reprobation; particular, effectual atonement; total depravity, excluding "free will;" irresistible grace; and the preservation and, therefore, perseverance of the saints) and the church (its nature, election, gathering, attributes, marks, sacraments, worship, authority, government and discipline). This results in serious ignorance of God’s truth and weakness in the church’s members, which leaves them susceptible to further errors. In various Brethren assemblies, this problem is particularly acute because they not only have an evening ''gospel service'' but they also have no ordained and few able speakers. Thus they need special weekday "ministry" services through which some of their more capable men provide a supplementary diet.

(4) This all-absorbing focus on evangelism—what John Kennedy of Dingwall would call "hyper-evangelism"—is not only to the detriment of the church's edification but also of her worship, for it shapes the whole evening service. Uninspired poems (called "hymns" in popular parlance) are sung instead of the God-breathed Psalms, in part because the Psalms simply do not serve the purpose of the "gospel service'' for they do not create the right "atmosphere" (cf. articles and quotes on Psalm singing). Besides, the Psalms include imprecations on the wicked! Enter too the "ministry in song," whereby one or more singers, male or female, entertain the audience while seeking to sing the sinner into the kingdom of heaven. Personal testimonies in the worship service thrive in this environment, as does topical preaching filled with "wee stories." There is no basis in the Word of God for such practices and so they constitute "will worship" (Col. 2:23; cf. audio sermon, "Will Worship"). Thus the ethos of the "gospel service'' moulds the church’s worship and hence the members’ ideas of the church. Instead of these man-made worship practices, the Reformed faith, on the basis of the second commandment, has always maintained the regulative principle:

What doth God require in the second commandment? That we in no wise represent God by images, nor worship him in any other way than he has commanded in his word (Heidelberg Catechism, Q. & A. 96).

... the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture (Westminster Confession 21:1; cf. Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. & A. 109).

(5) The Sunday evening "gospel service" scene is rife with Arminianism, with many preaching, "God loves everybody; God wants to save everybody; Christ died for everybody!" Even in congregations and denominations claiming to be Calvinistic, such teaching is tolerated, despite the fact that Arminianism proclaims a false Christ (cf. Steven Houck, "The Christ of Arminianism;" Robert C. Harbach, "Calvinism ... the Truth [Arminianism, the Lie];" David Engelsma, "A Defense of Calvinism as the Gospel")!

In his Paisley: The Man and his Message, Rev. Ian Paisley, N. Ireland’s greatest exponent of the Sunday evening "gospel service,'' includes amongst those who "primed [his] pulpit pump" noted Arminians, John Wesley and R. A. Torrey! The evening "gospel service" approach and the Arminian hymns in his church's hymnal (cf. "Our Own Hymn Book Versus God's Own Hymn Book: a Critique of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster Hymnal") mean that Arminianism is tolerated so that Arminians in pulpit and pew will not be disciplined. Thus confessional, Reformed Christianity and sound, doctrinal preaching enforced by church discipline are ruled out. Fundamentalist revivalism thereby excludes biblical reformation. Moreover, hyper-evangelism readily leads to lay preaching—a great scourge in the British Isles (and elsewhere) which is condemned by the Westminster Larger Catechism: 

By whom is the word of God to be preached? The word of God is to be preached only by such as are sufficiently gifted, and also duly approved and called to that office (Q. & A. 158; cf. "Against Lay Preaching"). 

Those who forthrightly oppose Arminianism, and do not practise the Sunday evening "gospel meeting'' which it foments, are then dismissed as hyper-Calvinists! Never mind that Calvin and all the Reformed fathers taught antithetically sovereign and particular grace and would have had no time for the modern innovation of the Sunday night "gospel service'' with all its trappings!

(6) Arminian terminology, such as "accepting Jesus," "deciding for Christ," "deciding grace," "commitments" and "letting Jesus into your heart," finds ready acceptance in Sunday night ''gospel services.'' Herman Hoeksema, in his "Jesus Saviour and the Evil of Hawking Him"—a pamphlet well worth reading in this connection—speaks of "hawking Jesus" as "one of the most sinister" of "the evil tendencies of our age" (p. 1). He explains,

By hawking Jesus I mean all such preaching as leaves the impression, directly or by implication, that He is impotent to save unless the sinner first wills and gives his consent. This is done directly by the denial of predestination, by the preaching of a Jesus for all, and by the teaching of the freewill of man by which the latter is able to accept or to reject the proffered salvation. But it is also done indirectly, when preachers change the grace of God into an offer of God to all and present Jesus as a poor beggar, standing outside the door of man’s heart, begging him to let Him in and give Him a chance to save the sinner. It is done in various forms and degrees. But all such preaching as finally leaves the impression that it is at all up to man, to the sinner, whether Jesus will save him or not, is hawking Jesus, or rather, it is an attempt to hawk Him (pp. 19-20).

As John Calvin put it, ''It is evident that the doctrine of salvation, which is said to be set apart for the sons of the church only, is abused when it is represented as effectually available to all'' (Institutes 3.22.10). Another man referred to this as "making a begging bowl out of the Son of God." This is rife in N. Ireland, especially where the Sunday evening "gospel service'' has gotten a hold.

(7) The Sunday evening "gospel service,'' with its forced exegesis, potted gospel, shallow preaching, will worship, Arminianism and hawking of Jesus, proceeds from, and thus reinforces, a misunderstanding of the nature of the church. 

The glorious body of Christ is "the house of God" and "the pillar and ground of the truth" (I Tim. 3:15) and "an assembly of those who are saved" (Belgic Confession 28). The Westminster Confession presents the Bible's teaching on the church:

The catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.

The visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children; and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.

Unto this catholic visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints in this life, to the end of the world; and doth, by his own presence and Spirit, according to his promise, make them effectual thereunto (25:1-3).

Next, it sets forth the three marks of the church as the test by which the degree of faithfulness of a church may be discerned:

... particular churches ... are more or less pure, according as [1] the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, [2] ordinances administered, and [3] public worship performed more or less purely in them (25:4; cf. Belgic Confession 29).

The Sunday night "gospel service," however, has its roots in an Arminian, revivalist, fundamentalist, baptistic and individualistic conception of the church. It does not proceed from, teach and reinforce the biblical and Reformed doctrine of the church of Jesus Christ, consisting of believers and their elect seed (Westminster Confession 25:2), labouring for "for the gathering and perfecting of the saints" (25:3) and showing the three marks of the church (25:4).

(8) Instead of the Sunday evening "gospel service," which was not the practice of the Reformers or their successors, the church should return to the better way, the preaching and worship of the faithful church through the ages. 

Hughes Oliphant Old, in his magisterial, multi-volume work on the history of preaching, has some insightful remarks on what is commonly called II Clement (c. 125), which "is frequently claimed as the first Christian sermon [outside the New Testament] to have come down to us" (The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, vol. 1 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998], p. 278). A lengthy quotation is merited: 

This sermon is also interesting because of what it tells us about how the second-century Church approached evangelism. It is preached to a Christian congregation and yet it is also a witness to non-Christians. That the sermon is to be understood as having an evangelistic purpose is clear from the auxiliary text chosen from the Gospels, "I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Matt. 9:17 and par.). We see here that the Church of the second century did its evangelistic preaching in the midst of the worshiping congregation, and it was the worshiping congregation which did the evangelism. This is not an evangelism based on some sort of theology of decisional regeneration, nor one based on a theology of baptismal regeneration. It is rather an evangelism based solidly on justification by faith, on the confidence that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. But this evangelism also puts a strong emphasis on sanctification. The Christian life is lived out of gratitude to God for the gracious gift of salvation. Non-Christians are present in the service of worship, both Jews and Gentiles, and non-Christians as well as Christians need repentance. Our sermon ends by calling all who are present to repentance. The preacher begs his listeners to repent from the bottom of their hearts that they might be saved. Evangelism did not require a special message preached for the unconverted, different from the one for the converted, nor did it mandate that the faithful hear and enthusiastically support again and again evangelistic sermons that were not really directed to them. Rather, when Christ is proclaimed as Lord and Savior, when God’s promises are proclaimed and a witness is given that God is faithful and that in Christ those promises have been fulfilled, and will yet be fulfilled, then evangelism is done. Whenever the way of life which Christ taught his disciples is shown to be the fulfillment of the Law and the prophets, then evangelism is done. Whenever the beauty and the power and the sheer joy of holiness are proclaimed and God’s people see that this is something for them, evangelism is done. When Christian preaching is done the way it should be done, then it is evangelistic (vol. 1, p. 283).

This sermon is typical of preaching in the early church, including that of Augustine, and of the preaching of the Reformers, such as Luther, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, Calvin, Knox, Beza, etc., and their successors (cf. sermons by John Calvin). It is not the way, however, of the modern Sunday night "gospel service," which has its roots in Arminian, baptistic and revivalistic fundamentalism.

"Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein ..." (Jer. 6:16).

For more, see Ron Hanko, "What is Reformed Evangelism?" (Covenant Reformed News, vol. 6, issues 3-8).