In Romans 12:2, Paul exhorts the church to not be conformed to the world. This command assumes that like a giant press, the world is constantly putting pressure on all Christians—whether we consciously feel it or not, the world is trying to mold our minds into its shape.
One of the consequences of this pressure is related to how the church views evangelism, in particular, evangelism to those who don’t want to be evangelized. Modern secular humanism puts self and self-identity at the very top of values: if you love someone, you need to let them be as they wish to be. For a secular person, faithful evangelism of Christians to the Talibs in Afghanistan or to activists in San Francisco is seen as a violent intrusion and arrogant foolishness.
What do you think about the unreached who don’t want to be reached?
The Church Must Try to Reach Them
“There is no one who seeks God” (Romans 3:11). We must start with this acknowledgment: not a single person or a people group wants to be reached by the gospel, and apart from God’s sovereign work in us, we each would continue in our rebellion against God.
In God’s providence, some people grow in cultures with fewer barriers to the gospel, others with more. However, everyone, even a person raised in a Christian home, has natural walls against the gospel. Fundamentally, the difference is not whether one wants or doesn’t want to be reached, but how much one doesn’t want to be reached.
To fulfill the Great Commission to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19), some gospel workers end up tilling a rather fruitful soil, while others are tasked to till very hard, dry soil that for a long season might bear no visible fruit. We know the stories of missionaries who haven’t seen a single convert during many years of ministry—not due to a lack of faithful zeal and efforts on their part. Yet the church is called to till all the earth, and ask the Lord to graciously give the harvest.
Your Church Must Try to Reach Them
Very few of us will be called to serve in places that can be likened to a truly scorched earth where the unreached are so hostile to the gospel that evangelism can result in death. Yet every church should faithfully work among the unreached who don’t want to be reached in their city or neighborhood. Even in the most fertile land, there are dry patches that are difficult to till.
I trust that many people at your church are regularly evangelizing locally among people with whom they have natural connections. But are there any unreached people who live in your city? People with whom you and your fellow church members don’t naturally have connections? People who seem to have higher spiritual walls around them?
The question for our churches is how we can reach these people with the gospel. We must start with a regular prayer for them. At our church in Almaty, every Lord’s Day, among other things, the pastor prays for one of the unreached people groups—both in their country of origin and in our city. Then, during our elders’ and members’ meetings, we consider various ministry opportunities and partnerships that can help us reach the unreached who don’t want to be reached. Finally, we decided to focus on one or two of them as a church. However, this doesn’t mean that individual members don’t explore and pursue other ministry opportunities.
Unless the pastors guide the church to proactively labor among more difficult groups, little or no ministry will be done there.
From my ministry experience, unless the pastors guide the church to proactively labor among more difficult groups, little or no ministry will be done there. Typically, church members already have so many natural connections with unbelievers in their lives that without intentional efforts, many unreached groups even in their neighborhoods won’t get on their ministry radars.
You Must Trust God to Open Minds and Hearts
We should balance our determination to evangelize those who don’t want to be evangelized with Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:6: “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you”. The twelve and the apostle Paul used that principle in their evangelism by leaving towns from which they got expelled.
We can only talk to those who are willing to listen.
I can recount only one time when I decided to use that principle. Over a decade ago as I was sharing the gospel with a group of Muslim men, their group leader started ridiculing Christian faith without giving me any chance to respond.
So, I left without finishing the gospel presentation at that time. As much as we must want to reach those who don’t want to be reached, we can only talk to those who are willing to listen to us. To our surprise, many times people who in our minds are most closed to the gospel will end up being most interested in hearing about Jesus.
Arman Aubakirov is the Executive Director of Good News Publishing in Kazakhstan. He formerly interned with Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. He now serves as a pastor of a local church in Kazakhstan.
