Harvest Evangelism/ Ed Silvoso

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MinistryWatch.com’s Take
April 2004
By Dan Wray

Warring in the Heavenly Realms
In 1980, Edgardo Silvosa founded an interdenominational evangelistic ministry designed to assist the Body of Christ fulfill the Great Commission globally in this generation, city by city. With a strategy of prayer inspired by Luke 10:1-9 and 1 Timothy 2:1-8, Silvosa’s ministry, Harvest Evangelism (HE), advances biblical principles of unity and reconciliation to reach entire cities, and has produced church attendance increases of more than 100 percent. In Resistencia, Argentina where Silvoso and HE began, church growth has continued to rise, topping 1,100 percent since 1988, with impressive results in other Argentine cities as well.

Tearing down strongholds
Believing that Christians, through prayer, must become the gatekeepers of spiritual authority over unevangelized areas, HE teaches prospective witnesses to talk to God about the people in preparation for talking to the people about God. HE calls this Prayer Evangelism. Silvoso detailed HE’s Prayer Evangelism strategy in his 1994 publication That None Should Perish, explaining how the method had been refined to assist pastors and laypeople in effectively impacting major population centers around the world. HE uses a “City Reaching Quiz” to test prospective target regions and resources, and raise the evangelism quotient among local churches. With six interactive yes/no questions, the quiz purports to “define, secure” and “expand God’s perimeter,” at the same time “infiltrate[ing]” and “attack[ing] Satan’s perimeter” within a Prayer Evangelism target area. “Yes” responses advance inquirers to the next question, negative responses produce an interactive menu offering HE resources ostensibly designed to address potential problem areas. The 6th and final step involves “redeeming” areas where “Satanic strongholds” have been destroyed.

Transforming the marketplace
“You are anointed to transform the marketplace. Your job is your ministry to bring transformation to the marketplace, so that the gospel will reach everyone!” So states the positive affirmation of HE’s ministry adjunct, Marketplace Transformation Network. Clearly viewing evangelism as the first obligation of all Christians, HE views the marketplace substantially as the place of service. MTN facilitates networking of local lay-workers, resources and support services in a target population center. This is done through “real-time” interactive online mapping and e-communication, and is accessed through member log-in. MTN members have full access to all HE print and media ministry resources, as well as conferences and training seminars, and are encouraged to share prayer agendas and encouraging workplace testimonials of success.

Beacons of prayer and intercession
Silvoso graduated from Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Ore., has had extensive involvement with Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Missions and is generally credited among those having had seminal influence upon the current Lighthouse Movement, which views the Christian home as an evangelical beacon of prayer and intercession in the midst of an unbelieving population. Among HE’s ministry web links are co-operative sites such as the Lighthouse Movement, Generals of Intercession, and The Wagner Leadership Institute where Silvoso enjoys visiting faculty status. Renowned among evangelicals as an innovator in contemporary missiology, Ed Silvoso and HE have captured the imagination of evangelistic missionary effort around the world.

Ministry expenses
Financial donations to Harvest Evangelism are encouraged through an online secure server site. With its emphasis upon co-operative local church involvement, it stands to reason that the major portion of financial responsibility for HE’s ministry expense is at least shared by local churches in evangelism target areas. It may also be reasonably assumed that proceeds from the sale of wide-ranging audio and print media ministry resources available through the ministry website help to defray expenses. HE currently has membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. HE’s conference schedule follows the recognizable pattern of ministries that use large gatherings to promote their mission and focus public attention on evangelism and training objectives, creating opportunity for video media and broadcast distribution.

Bits and Pieces
Ed Silvoso’s “imaginative thinking” in the area of world mission and evangelism was not spawned in a vacuum. Having matriculated through Multnomah School of the Bible, and Fuller Seminary in Southern California, Silvoso has rubbed shoulders with his brother-in-law evangelist Luis Palau, and missiologist provocateur C. Peter Wagner, and has himself become a target of conservatives who support missionary endeavor according to the Great Commission and the Apostolic pattern in the book of Acts, yet object to Silvoso’s concept of an “inoffensive gospel” on the basis of “felt need(s) .” While no one disputes that the unsaved need a “good news” message of hope, many believers are wary of the sometimes radical theology implicit in Silvoso’s and associates’ brand of contemporary evangelism.

Restless reactions
Following is a limited sample of some of the controversial teachings found in HE’s distributed ministry resources and among the writings of HE recommended authors.

• Concerning Prayer Evangelism and “telling God about your neighbors before telling your neighbors about God,” preceding personal evangelism with faithful prayer makes Biblically good sense, and most would agree a basic PE tenet that God doesn’t desire for anyone to be consigned to eternal punishment (based upon Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 2:4 that God desires the salvation of all men). This is not the same, however, as the broad implication that believer prayer for a specific evangelistic target area – “spiritual mapping” – virtually guarantees evangelistic success within the “mapped” area, establishing an atmosphere wherein whole cities will be saved.
• Suggestion that “more [Holy Spirit] power and anointing” is available, ostensibly in response to demonstrably passionate yearning for it, leaves many wondering where such a view of anointing is taught in Scripture; similarly, the implication that unless the “Spirit of the King of Glory” is invited to “remain and flourish,” He may only dwell as a guest “for a season.”(From Che Ahn’s, Hosting the Holy Spirit)
• Pastor, popular Christian author and HE resource writer Tommy Tenney plaintively asserts that "if a family can have a dream home...surely then, God can dream of a day when His children work together in unity,” further, that man’s will “is strong enough that God himself will not violate it,” keeping Jesus’ dream of believer unity in John 17 unanswered. Tenney simply concludes, “His dream is in our hands. Let’s make His dream come true.” Such a view of the interplay between the wills of the finite creature and his sovereign, self determinate creator exceeds the scope and space of the instant discourse. Suffice it to say, many Christians reject it out of hand, asserting that it pictures God as impotent, His sovereign will as tenuous at best, that such a God is unable to establish any outcomes with certainty.(From Tommy Tenney’s, God’s Dream Team)
• Ed Silvoso’s vision of an “unoffensive gospel,” devoid of such unpleansantries as warning of eternal consequence for sin and featuring only things the unsaved consider “important” seems to many to fly in the face of such Scripture texts as 1 Corinthians 1:23, “...we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;” and 1 Peter 2:8, concerning Christ the cornerstone, “...a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them that stumble at the word, being disobedient:”

It pleased the Lord to bruise Him
The death of Christ for sin is God’s miraculous remedy for the unspeakable outrage of the creature’s willful affront to the holiness of God, the just consequence of which is literally killing mankind and destroying his surroundings. It may lack charm and is certainly not pleasant to contemplate, but it is something in which the Father took immense pleasure, “...it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief...the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand,” Isaiah 53:10. It is something Christians quickly learn to value beyond measure, as “...the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” 1 Peter 2:19

Critics
It is certainly possible to endlessly criticize ministry methodologies. Sincere critics of HE’s methods intend no such thing but offer the following observations:

• It is not enough to simply tell people that God loves them, wants to be a part of their lives, and wants to heal their hurts and prosper their legitimate business efforts. Offensive or not, the Gospel has not been preached unless and until people have been told about the good news of the death of Christ for sin and about the urgency of its personal implications for every individual.
• Scholarly exposition of 1 Timothy renders Silvoso’s “Prayer Evangelism” thesis tenuous at best. This writer was unable to locate a single reputable commentary supporting Silvoso’s thesis that Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 1:15 even approaches a veiled assurance that “you will succeed in making everybody accept the truth that Jesus came to save sinners.” In fact, most students of the Pastoral Epistles believe overwhelmingly that Paul’s first letter to Timothy was written expressly for the following purpose, “that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” 1 Timothy 3:15

“Go ye therefore...”
About His Church, Christ promised that it would survive and flourish, that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” About the apparently offensive gospel, the One who shed His blood as a ransom for many promised His unceasing presence and power in the witness of its message “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” It is a message that needs neither to be simplified nor adorned with contemporary blandishments. Its method is exampled in the Book of Acts and has never been improved. Those who desire to be obedient to its mandate need look no further than the record of the Scripture they profess to believe. “For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the |nations|, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth. And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” Acts 13:47-48