Five Evangelism Realities We Must Face - Rainer on Leadership #358 [Podcast]

How much growth in growing churches is due to evangelism? Not as much as we would hope. Thom Rainer and Jonathan Howe discuss effective evangelistic churches and more on this week’s episode. Listen Now

More from Thom Rainer:
5 Insights About the Unchurched That Might Surprise You
Six Traits of a Church Disrupter

Perhaps your remember the hymn, "Rescue the Perishing." Perhaps you don't. Francis "Fanny" Crosby wrote it. I don't remember when I first heard it or from whom I heard it. I might have heard it from my grandparents , the Royal Ambassadors - a Southern Baptist boy's organization whose meetings I attended as a teenager, or my middle school music teacher, an Episcopal Churchwoman. It might have been from my first grade teacher at St. Nicholas Church of England Primary School in Stevenidge, Hertfordshire, England. She played the piano for morning assembly and taught us hymns and gospel songs from the Sankey-Moody Hymnbook.

The last stanza of "Rescue the Perishing" sums up the mission of the church:

Rescue the perishing, duty demands it.
Strength for thy labor the Lord will provide;
back to the narrow way patiently win them,
tell the poor wanderer a Savior has died.
Rescue the perishing,
care for the dying;
Jesus is merciful,
Jesus will save.

Another hymn I learned in my youth was "Throw Out the Lifeline " - again I do not remember from whom. I suspect it might have been my grandparents. Both of them loved to sing hymns, not just at church but at home or in the car. My grandfather had been the organist at a Wesleyan Congregational Church. My grandmother was a village schoolmaster's daughter whose father took his family to "church" in the morning and "chapel" in the evening. "Throw Out the Lifeline"  emphasizes the urgency of that mission.

Throw out the life line across the dark wave;
There is a brother whom someone should save;
Somebody's brother! O who then will dare
To throw out the life line, his peril to share?
Throw out the life line! Throw out the life line!
Someone is drifting away;
Throw out the life line! Throw out the life line!
Someone is sinking today.