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The International Church of Christ (ICC) ICC prefers to think of its recruiting as "evangelizing," but when we compare the terms, we see that the organization is doing the former in the disguise of the latter.
“Recruiting” is the best word for what the ICC does, for a number of reasons. First, the words “evangelize” and “recruit” carry different connotations:
evangelize vb 1: to preach the gospel to 2: to convert to Christianity
recruit vb 1 a (1): to fill up the number of (as an army) with new members…
b : to increase or maintain the number of c : to secure the services of
d: to enroll or seek to enroll(1)
The word “evangelize” connotes spreading the Christian gospel, while the word “recruit” implies a focus on numbers and adding members to an organization. Recruiting and evangelizing, then, are not strictly synonymous. The ICC’s emphasis on numbers – and the pressure exerted to reach arbitrary numerical targets – sound much more like “recruiting:”
“I’ve heard that some of you have actually had an attitude about having to share with [invite] thirty people a day. That makes me sick, and you know it makes God sicker. Where is your heart? You’ve lost your faith – you’ve lost your heart. You can’t even take a simple challenge like sharing with thirty people a day, and not get all bent out of shape about it.”
Nick Young (Geographic Sector Leader), Tulsa reconstruction sermon, audiotape, 1992.
In fact, ICC’s emphasis on statistics and numerical growth is so strong that the Christian message can seem almost incidental.
Second, ICC leadership has mis-defined “evangelism” by considering mere invitations to ICC events to be sharing one’s faith – even when faith or spirituality plays no part in the invitation.
Third, the ICC organization (although not each member) uses deception in its efforts to grow, which runs against the whole idea of Christian evangelism.
[For information on deceptive ICC proselytizing, see ICC Recruiting/Retention.]
For these reasons, this site will mainly use the term “recruiting” instead of "evangelism."
Copyright © 2001 Dave Anderson. All rights reserved.
