James McDonald pioneered the concept of "red apple evangelism" in 1988 basing it on John 4:35. McDonald draws a distinction between red apple evangelism and green apple pre-evangelism. God has prepared some people through sometimes painful circumstances of life to be ready to hear the Gospel (Red Apples). These are folks who God has prepared to hear and believe the truth of the Gospel right now! They are ripe fruit. New and existing churches need to teach people how to recognize "red apples" and be prepared to share the truth of Scripture in both words and in actions. McDonald says "It's not hard to see who is 'ripe' in our world. People who are hurting; people with problems; people whose lives are falling apart. They're all around us. We need to look for them under a rock or up in a tree, and we don't have to 'market' the Gospel to them. It's a pearl of great price to them."
Green apples are people who are not (yet anyway) ripe to the Gospel. Those are people whom we become friends with (pre-evangelism) even though they are not yet ready for the harvest. Our very friendship might be the instrument that God uses to prepare them to hear and believe the Good News of salvation through the blood and merit of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.
McDonald contends that we spend too much effort on Green Apples and not enough on Red Apples. He puts it this way in an interview for PreachingTodaySermons.com
"Too often, instead of looking for the people God is breaking down and bringing to a place of humility... we want to reach whom we want to reach. Jesus went to the down-and-outers; we're a lot of times—and certainly in suburbia—looking for the up-and-outers. That's just not where the gospel is penetrating.
So what we've too often done in the church is build a philosophy of ministry that will allow us to get green apples in and out of church without offending them, and we call that evangelism. Eventually some of those green apples get ripened to the Gospel and they come to know Christ. We praise God for every one of those.
But we could be seeing far more people coming to faith if we skipped the dog and pony show and just went straight to the heart of the matter, which is reaching people whom God's trying to reach with a bold proclamation of truth - Red apples. They're ready to hear the Good News."
How prepared are we to reach out with Word and action to the Red Apples God has placed into our sphere of influence? How can we learn to recognize them? What if they are very different (socially, economically, ethnically) from us? Who is a Red Apple God has called you to share Jesus with?
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