“What you win them with, is what you keep them with.” A dear widow-lady I worshipped with for a number of years told me that. It is a simple statement, but has profound meaning. What are we “winning” people with? 

If you win people with fleshly things, you have to keep satisfying their fleshly desires or they will quit coming. The Christian world has been struggling with this for the last several decades. They have been “winning” people, you can see that in the size of many churches, but have they been adding disciples? You can draw the crowds to church if you will offer them the right stuff. But is this issue just about numbers and finding the “right stuff” to offer? 

I guarantee you, if we start offering potlucks every Sunday instead of a sermon, movie nights on Wednesday instead of Bible class, or start having great charity events on Sunday night instead of “old-fashioned” worship, we will get the numbers. But why stop there? To borrow an illustration from an old preacher friend, just start handing out $100 bills at the door to every visitor. You’ll get the crowds! And it would solve the, “what to offer” conundrum. But crowds and convicted Christians are not the same thing. 

The problem is, “what you win them with is what you keep them with.” You can’t sugar coat the gospel message and still make a Christian. That’s not how the gospel works. We can’t be looking for ways to sneak in the Bible! “Let’s have this great event (movie night, football watch party, blood drive, etc.) and once we get them here we can teach them the truth!” If THE event is not preaching Christ and Him crucified, then why are we having it? [Preaching/teaching Christ crucified (1 Cor. 1:23) is done in all forms of Bible authorized worship: The Lord’s supper (1 Cor. 11:26), Singing (Col. 3:16), etc.] 

I know some are thinking, you are a stick in the mud! My friends, Heaven is too real and Hell too hot for us to waste our time playing church through all manners of fleshly desires. But sadly, that is exactly what we see all around us, churches accommodating the flesh. Our job is to help equip one another to live acceptably before God (Rom. 12:1-2; Eph. 4:11-16), and we do that by “preaching Christ crucified.” I enjoy potlucks, movie nights, and charity work, but they have no business being funded by the local church or being used in place of sound Biblical worship and study. 

It is just as that dear sister observed, “what you win them with is what you keep them with.” 

The simple fact is, you can’t “win” people to the truth by using anything except the truth.