I can remember the television game show from the 70s, Family Feud, hosted by Richard Dawson. When a contestant gave an answer, he would turn to the display board and call out loudly, “Survey says…!” after which the answer would appear.

Consulting surveys might work on a game show, but should we consult them to determine the validity of a Christian practice as important as evangelism?

I came across a blog today that spoke in favor of friendship evangelism, defending it on the basis of a survey that found, as the blogger stated, “80 percent of people said they came to faith in Christ through a friendship.”

While I understand that surveys have a certain weight of authority, I find it disconcerting that one is trusted so much. Can it have more authority than inspired Scripture? After all, surveys are only as good as the reliability of the people who are being questioned, and those people are fallible. They may say they came to faith, but how can we be certain that they have not been misled into thinking that they have genuine saving faith? Were they truly converted? How do we know for sure? We cannot just take somebody’s fallible word for it. We have to rely on Scripture as our sole infallible authority, interpreting all human findings in its light.

When we do turn to Scripture, we see that the use of friendship as a tool to win the lost is not even hinted at in the Bible. The blogger I mentioned made the point that Jesus made evangelism some sort of discipleship process, using relationships as the conduit through which he taught the truth. A certain aspect of this was true in the case of his disciples, since he did in fact teach them throughout his relationship with them. Having said that, it must be quickly pointed out that nowhere in the gospel accounts are we told that Christ pursued pre-teaching, pre-evangelistic relationship-building–either with his disciples or with anyone else he preached to. The same is true of the apostles: Preaching was the chief priority for them, as Paul made clear about his ministry in 1 Cor. 9:16 and the other apostles made clear by their examples in the book of Acts. When they pursued relationships with people, it was with those who were responding favorably to their preaching.

So, there is a contradiction between the survey and the Bible. The survey implies that friendship evangelism is spiritually effective while cold-contact evangelism has very little effect at all. The Bible, however, says nothing about the former while speaking of preaching and cold-contact evangelism favorably throughout its pages. Which, then, should we trust? They both cannot be right. If we believe that the Bible is inspired and because of that inspiration it has divine authority, then we must submit to its teaching and not a man-made survey that is entirely dependent on the word of fallible human beings.

To give this blogger credit, he did say this:

Furthermore, true friendship is what is needed here. We cannot claim to be someone’s true friend unless we share with them what gives us life and joy. At the same time, our intention is to be their friend, not to get some sort of badge for getting another one saved. Discipleship is a relational, friendship dynamic.

That raises an important question, though: Must we have a friendship with someone in order to tell them the good news? If we say yes, we are doing many a grave disservice because we cannot have a friendship with everyone. It cannot be overstated: Neither Jesus nor the apostles ever considered or made friendship a prerequisite for evangelism.

One final point should be made regarding this topic. Surveys cannot be trusted to determine what is spiritually effective in evangelism for the simple reason that we cannot understand how God increases his kingdom. This is, for the most part, a mystery to us. Jesus made that clear:

The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come. (Mark 4:26-29, ESV)

The church needs to stop trying to figure out the kingdom of God scientifically and instead simply do what God says: Proclaim the gospel.