For much of my life, whenever I thought of the ministry of Jesus, I always pictured him ministering to large crowds of people. I imagined the “great multitudes of people” that followed him from far and wide in Matthew Chapter 4. I imagined the 5,000+ people in Matthew Chapter 14, sitting and waiting for bread and fish. I imagined the standing-room-only crowd at the house in Capernaum in Mark Chapter 2. I imagined a gathering in Luke Chapter 8 so packed that Jesus’ own family members couldn’t get to him. That’s how I used to think, but my thinking has changed.
Jesus never solicited an audience. He didn’t send fliers ahead to promote his soon arrival to a town. His fame spread by word of mouth only, and most of the people who came to him either wanted something, such as a healing, or they were groupies, if you will, hoping to see a miracle in action. As a matter of fact, when Jesus dove into some heavy teaching in John Chapter 6, many of them walked out and never came back. They hadn’t come for that.
Jesus never sought crowds. Crowds sought Jesus. Jesus sought individuals. Sure, he had compassion on the crowds, and he did minister to them when they came, but he preferred personal encounters.
In John Chapter 5, there was “a great multitude” by the pool Bethesda, but Jesus ministered to “a certain man.”
In Mark Chapter 5, Jesus crossed the sea, delivered one demon-possessed man, and then sailed back home again.
Relations between Jews and Samaritans were so strained that they didn’t even associate or speak with each other. Yet in John Chapter 4, Jesus detoured through Samaria and revealed that he was the promised messiah to a social outcast before he’d even told his own disciples.
In Matthew Chapter 15, Jesus even took time out of his vacation to deliver a pagan woman’s daughter from demon possession.
Even when in a crowd, Jesus took time out for individuals. When the woman with the issue of blood touched his clothes in Mark Chapter 5, Jesus halted the entire procession and refused to move on until she came forward. In Luke Chapter 19, he invited himself into Zacchaeus’ home, leaving the crowds of Jericho outside to probably wonder what had just happened.
To Jesus, one mattered. He talked about leaving 99 to find one. While we count heads, he numbers the hairs on each individual head. We get excited when we hear the reports of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people baptized in Jesus’ name and/or filled with the Holy Ghost at one event, and justifiably so. But in Luke 15:10, Jesus said, “…there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.”
In casting our net for great numbers, we often miss hooking that one who may be the key to many. In Mark Chapter 5, after Jesus delivered the man from the legion of demons, the locals asked Jesus to leave. The man whom Jesus had delivered wanted to go with him, but Jesus refused, telling the man, instead, to stay and share his personal testimony. When Jesus returned three chapters later, 4,000 people came out to meet him. Never underestimate the power of one.
In an age when it’s much simpler to put up a church website or Facebook page for the masses than it is to minister to people one at a time, we often opt for the easier method of the two. But technology should complement, not replace, personal evangelism, especially if we want to be like Jesus.
Take an informal survey among some of the people in your church about what brought them to their first church meeting. You will have no doubt that there is no substitute for personal evangelism.
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