The Purpose of Clear Gospel Campaign

Clear Gospel Campaign is committed to fulfilling the great commission.  But before a soul is ever won to Christ, the gospel must first be proclaimed.  We believe that the greatest weakness in the church thwarting the fulfillment of the great commission is the prevalence of false gospels within the church that have perverted or distorted the true gospel of the Bible.

The Defense of the Gospel

Therefore, the first and central mission of Clear Gospel Campaign can be summarized in Paul’s statement in Philippians. 1:9.

“For I am appointed for a defense of the Gospel.”

The Clarity of the Gospel

Our second goal is similar to our first.  If the gospel is unclear, it cannot point men toward the Savior.

“For if the trumpet give an unclear sound, who shall prepare himself for battle?”   1 Cor. 14:8

We seek not only to be accurate in our presentation of the gospel, but clear!  If the lost cannot understand the message of the evangelist, how can he place his faith in the Savior?

Equipping the Saints as Evangelists

And our third goal is to equip leaders in evangelism by instilling them with an in depth knowledge of the gospel message, that they may defend it and make it clear in their labors in evangelism and discipleship.

“And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”  Ephesians 4:11-12

We believe that the first, and most basic training for believers, is in the clarity of the cross, and the doctrine of salvation.

 14  Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

15  And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

16  Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

17  And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

For many years, when I read the above passage, my ears heard it correctly, but my mind heard “Breast plate of holiness.”  And I interpreted this verse as a call to holiness.

Certainly, the Bible commands us to be holy.  But the fact is, we are not holy.  Nor can we be truly holy while we inhabit a body of sin and death.  But holiness is not the same as righteousness.  Holiness is dependent on how we conduct our lives.  We are told to live a holy life.  Righteousness, however, is the believer’s legal standing before God in spite of how we live our lives.  We are proclaimed “not guilty” or “righteous” not because we have lived a good life, but because the sinful life we have lived was paid for by the death of our Savior.  Righteous is a key term in the salvation of mankind.  It is the legal declaration when the payment of our sins by our Lord is applied to our own personal account.  And “a man is justified by faith, apart from the deeds of the law.”  (Romans 3:28).  We will take a life time trying to live in the holy manner commanded by our Father.  But no believer should enter his second month as a new believer without a clear understanding of the work at the cross by which he was made “righteous” in the sight of God.  The doctrine of salvation is the first priority in the discipleship of a new believer.

And when I realized that the reference was to righteousness, and not holiness, I realized something else about this passage:  Virtually every item in the Full Armor of God is directed to the gospel message . . . the defense of the gospel message, and the spread of the gospel message.

First and foremost, the discipleship of a believer must root them in Christ crucified . . .  the truth and the purity of the message of salvation.  If it does not do this, discipleship is little more than misguided cheerleading.

Strategy and Goals For Equipping the Saints

“For want of a nail, a shoe was lost.  For want of a shoe, a horse was lost.   For want of a horse, a battle was lost.   And for want of a battle, a war was lost.”

It is an old axiom, and an insightful one.  A swift and strong horse in the cavalry can be sidelined for lack of a nail.

Within the church, there are many people who have believed the gospel message unto salvation, and who truly love the Lord Jesus Christ.  Many of them are even willing to try to share their faith with the lost.  But like a racehorse with a missing nail, they are ineffective in sharing their faith because of a loose nail or two in their shoe.  They present a confused gospel message because they are confused about the gospel message.  And they cannot understand why their labor sees so little fruit.  We are in the business of shoeing racehorses.

We seek to find race horses lacking a nail here, or a shoe there, shoe them, and turn them lose.  To find men and women within the church who are already saved, and committed to our Lord Jesus Christ.  To equip them to share the message of the gospel clearly, accurately, and effectively.  This is the most efficient approach to evangelism.  To produce a racehorse simply by pounding in a few loose nails.  We are cobblers shoeing race horses so they may run well and run effectively.

With just a few “nails,” a church experiencing stagnant growth can be transformed into dynamic soul winning church that experiences sustainable growth.

Evangelism Through Multiplication

The philosophy of Clear Gospel Campaign is evangelism through multiplication.

“And these things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.” – 2 Timothy 2:2

Paul, the first generation, had spoken to “thou” (Timothy), who was the second generation.  Timothy was to commit these things to “Faithful men,” the third generation of converts, who would be “able” (discipled, equipped) to teach “others also,” (a fourth generation of converts).  Paul’s plan was one of multiplication, not addition.

Those who understand the simple mathematics of multiplication will appreciate the wisdom of the Word of God.

Imagine there were only one believer on the face of the earth, and he met and discipled only one man over a one year period, equipping him to reach others with the gospel.  In the next year, each of them evangelized and discipled one person.  And the two become four.  In the next year, the four become eight.  In the next, the eight become sixteen.

At the end of ten years, there would not only be a thousand believers, there would be a thousand disciple makers.  At the end of twenty years, there would be a million disciple makers.  And at the end of thirty years, there would be over a billion disciple makers.  By thirty three years, every man, woman and child on the earth would be evangelized!

We will never reach the world for Christ through mass evangelism.  It is mathematically impossible.  We will only reach the world for Christ by multiplication.

The Greatest Hindrance to Evangelism: The Corruption of the Gospel Message

Only a small fraction of believers grasp of the power of multiplication.  Far fewer understand how multiplication is undermined over time.  Entropy undoes the progress of multiplication.

Information theory is body of mathematics that developed along with the computer age.  It mathematically quantifies the corruption of information when transmitted over various distances and through various corridors of transmission under various conditions.  As a signal loses power, it must be amplified to avoid the loss of information.  If it is not repeatedly amplified back to its original signal strength through “repeaters,” it will eventually become overwhelmed by noise.  As information is progressively corrupted, it eventually becomes meaningless.

And the Gospel message is information.  One can even digitally encode 1^st Cor. 15:1-4, or the Gospel of John or the Epistle to the Romans through basic word processor software, and store it in a computer.  For this reason, the mathematical principles of information theory relate every bit as much to the corruption of the gospel message as they do to the transmission of any other body of information.

As evangelism typically takes place, the gospel message is gradually corrupted.  Each new “generation” of believers may add a small error here, or a large error there.  As the Gospel Message becomes distorted or corrupted, multiplication slows.  A church preaching a false gospel may grow in numbers.  But the spread of The Gospel slowly grinds to a halt.  The local church becomes a confused mix of saved and unsaved persons joined in a common commitment to real estate development out of the earnest belief that the erecting of church buildings somehow advances the kingdom of God.

The Gospel Message is distorted over time, not because it is stored on imperfect disk drives, processed by imperfect microprocessors or transmitted over imperfect fiber optical lines.  It becomes distorted because it has been entrusted to imperfect descendents of Adams fallen race, and is transmitted through fallen men to a lost and dying world.  But the principles of information theory are virtually identical in computer and information transmission, and in the progressive corruption of the gospel.

Water flows downhill.  And, if not vigilantly guarded, the gospel message also flows “downhill,” corrupting into any number of false gospels over time.

The Safeguarding of the Gospel Message: The Pump

Water stored at the top of dams has power to drive massive electrical turbines, providing power for millions of people.  Municipal water towers hundreds of feet high drive water through faucets at a fixed pressure.  As water flows down hill however, it loses its potential to to work.  It has no power.  Only when raised to its original height can it have the same power as it originally had.  This is why municipalities have pumps to raise water into the holding tanks.

And so it is with the gospel message.  Multiplication can only be sustained if the purity and clarity of the gospel message is not “flowing downhill” with each successive generation.  But if successive generations of believers are not discipled to the same level as the previous generation, the message of the gospel gradually loses its power.  It becomes progressively distorted, confused, or camouflaged behind a veil of religious sounding rhetoric.

As the gospel message becomes progressively corrupted or camouflaged, great evangelistic campaigns that start with a bang invariably end in a whimper.  And the architects of campaign after campaign stand on the sidelines bewildered over their failure.

To win the world for Christ, mathematics requires that evangelism must be done at a sustainable rate.  If it is not sustainable, it cannot win the world for Christ.  And it can only be sustained if the gospel message is not gradually becoming corrupted.  Well thought out doctrinal statements that sit on a shelf gathering dust are well intended, but cannot prevent the downhill slide.  Every generation of believers must be discipled to a clarity and maturity of the gospel message.  If they are not, the gospel message is destined to gradually corrupt into religious rhetoric.  And if salt loses its saltiness, wherewith can it be made salty again?

This is the mission of Clear Gospel Campaign . . . to disciple believers to a maturity and clarity of the gospel.  It is a pump that helps ensure the power of the gospel message does not erode over time.  Only when this happens can evangelism be sustained at a constant rate over time.

A Program For Sustainable Evangelism

No evangelistic program plans to fail.  But far too many fail to plan.  Very few think beyond the first generation of converts, to a program for duplicating disciples in the clarity of the gospel, and a passion for souls through successive generations.

Clear Gospel Campaign offers such a program.

1.    The Gospel Booklet is the primary tool for evangelism and discipleship within Clear Gospel Campaign.  It was written not simply to evangelize the lost, but to offer a solid primer on the doctrine of salvation for the beginning of a discipleship program.

2.     The complete curriculum of Clear Gospel Campaign is on our web site, and is being developed in booklet form.  It is designed not simply to train men and women in evangelism.  It is designed to train men and women to the highest level in the defense of the gospel, the clarity of the gospel, and the master plan of evangelism through multiplication and sustained discipleship. Through it, men and women are equipped not simply as evangelists, but as disciple makers.  They are equipped to recognize the fine seeds of tares, the smallest amounts of leaven that might begin to corrupt the gospel.  And they are trained to defend the gospel against corruption.  And they will have a fixed, carefully thought out program of evangelism and discipleship that they can pass on to future generations.  The program was formulated to safeguard against the progressive downward slide of the gospel message over time.

The program for achieving this level of skill is the development of a fixed curriculum of discipleship that focuses on the truth of the message of salvation, the known perversions and distortions of the gospel message, the defense of the gospel message, and the spread of the gospel message.  By equipping leaders to not only train others to share their faith, but fully equipping leaders to recognize subtle distortions of the gospel, and to defend the gospel message, Clear Gospel Campaign hopes to equip the local church to maintain a program of sustainable multiplication within the local church until the Lord returns.

Our curriculum is under development.  But it is not developing.  The gospel message has not changed over 2,000 years, and neither will the doctrine or goals of Clear Gospel Campaign.  As each module of our program undergoes its final proof reading and editing, it is established as a fixed curriculum.  As you study the materials made available through Clear Gospel Campaign, you can have assurance that it cannot be edited without approval from the board of directors.  Your church can be sure that it will be the same forty years from now that it is now, and that ministers, staff, or lay evangelists of Clear Gospel Campaign will offer the same training, and provide a reliable anchor in your church program of evangelism and world outreach.

Our Vision: Growth Through the Local Church

Clear Gospel Campaign is a missions organization in that it seeks to duplicate its program in every country in the world.  However, many missions organizations limit their vision to planting new churches.  Clear Gospel Campaign seeks not only to reach the world for Christ through the planting of new churches, but through leadership training within existing churches.

Clear Gospel Campaign seek to train and develop discipleship teams within the local churches.  Although we are always open to new ideas, we believe that an effective way of developing discipleship teams is by embedding a staff member within a local church as an adjunct pastor or visiting instructor for a sufficient period of time necessary to train a discipleship team.  This may simply entail a single bible study and training session per week.  Ideally, it means that a staff member of CGC will integrate into the lives of church members, meeting with them throughout the week, often in settings that may lead to evangelistic opportunities, and real life discipleship settings.

After a leadership team has been fully trained and demonstrates skill and proficiency in the defense of the gospel, the program of evangelism and discipleship becomes self perpetuating.  It can be administered and taught by members of the local church individually, or through team teaching.

Many pastors experience the frustration of presenting the gospel at the end of a church service without an effective way to “follow up” professions of faith.  With a team of disciple makers on board free to counsel immediately following a service, or to do follow-up during the week, the pastor is free to tend to the many functions of a pastor.  And he can have the confidence that new believers are being followed up by men and woman who have not simply had a weekend of evangelistic training, but half a year or more.  And he can have the confidence that follow up will not be limited to a two-time meeting between a counselor and a new convert, but by men and women who are fully equipped to reproduce themselves in new believers, and who are committed to serious discipleship.