There is a phenomenon in evangelism that seems quite strange to me. I call it Necro-Evangelism and it is where local or even national evangelical and fundamentalist radio churches continue to play the sermons of long-dead founders to convert the masses. There are at least three major churches in my area and one I know of nationally that practices necroevangelism and I’d like to explore the pitfalls of this if I could.
I find it amusing in a macabre way to hear, usually the now-dead evangelist’s surviving son, inviting the audience to heed a message from my long-dead father and pastor. Some of these types of evangelists have been dead for only a few years, so we could attribute their ongoing ministry as a shock that the man died on the part of the family that has no idea how to keep the business going. Others have been dead for decades and I suspect that as long as the tapes are played and can be re-copied, they will continue to preach until the Second Coming and maybe beyond! There is usually a college or “job” that the now deceased evangelist’s family has inherited to support and while current family members may be up to the task, it is good to hear from the founder as if he were alive and right. in the air. Others, to me, seem like the type who could never do for themselves what dad did with evangelism, but can’t give up the programming dad put in their heads and the dollars he can still generate. That is a remark about method, not sincerity.
People hate change and this delays the reality of many who have grown up with the words of the evangelist, now dead. A local college where I live continues to reproduce the long-dead founder’s sermons even though two or three generations have taken over the family business of evangelism since his death. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sermon on air from any of the sons, all bearing the same name as the founder, except for the II, III, or IV after the name. Some Christian evangelists may be happy to return to glory, but you’ll never know as one family desperately tries to keep things the same as before he became a necroevangelist. Why do we do this and what is the message it sends? You don’t see necroevangelists on TV, only on the radio. Television would be too much and obviously in bad taste.
First of all, it doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong to do it. I’m sure the argument is “well, if we had Jesus or Paul on tape, wouldn’t we play it?” Well, yes it would be, although that’s not going to happen. We have them in books and we are not sure there if they really said and wrote what some say they did. All we need is a bunch of fake Jesus tapes floating around and here we go again! An entire industry would explode verifying or repudiating “the Jesus tapes.” So while I get the point, these men aren’t Jesus or Paul, and besides, if you really know theology, you might suspect that the real Jesus wouldn’t have really appreciated the real Paul anyway, so now we have a conflict of tapes. Then we would have to deal with the James tapes and what a mess! There would be a whole market for underground tapes and pseudotaperapha and we wouldn’t be much further ahead than we are today with our knowledge.
So while necroevangelism might keep your family church, college, or business going for a few more generations, is it really the right thing to do, and what message does it send? One advantage is that it actually gives the unskilled or founder-beaten kids time to regroup and figure out what to do now that dad is gone. All their lives they had preached that the Second Coming would surely be in their lives, but now what? Typically, the first generation finds something, the second keeps it, and the third loses everything. Necroevangelism can postpone the necroevangelist sinking into a “who?” a generation later than this, perhaps. But let’s get back to the message it sends, which might not be a good one.
1. Necro-evangelism tells the audience that the children do not have the conviction or the skills that dad may have had but are not willing to give up like something dad did but we don’t want to do. So we interpret Dad’s sermons and don’t have to invent our own, “live.” In my town, one of those family members certainly doesn’t have his father’s quality of voice or sound of conviction, so I can see why he might wish Dad would keep things going. He just introduces “my late father, Dr….” and sells his tapes and even library books that his father cherished, which he obviously doesn’t do. But he also has another line of work from what I understand, so he doesn’t depend on his Necro-Evangelist dad for his only income.
2. Necroevangelism sends the message that survivors are spiritually lazy, but again, they just can’t give up the potential to have a following or keep it all going. The second generation dabbles in the world of evangelism, they usually get caught up in politics more than dad because deep down they know that most of what dad predicted or said didn’t actually happen that way, and they just aren’t. sentenced in the same way. how was dad Dad kept them out of “the world”, and dammit, they’ll see it before they become Second Generation Necro-Evangelists too. Since Dad impacted his lives with his own worldview, and often not in a very good way, they just don’t have the same need to convey it along with the same fervor as Dad, the Necro-Evangelist. In fact, they can’t. So they get busy producing Dad’s tapes and books and don’t have to do much to show off their own creativity. They can run for public office or speak as they please, but keeping the ball rolling is much easier than getting it rolling. Anyone can be the next president of a Necro-Evangelical College or Pastor of a Necro-Evangelical Church. Pulling out the sucker is the hard part. Keeping it going can be a challenge, but if we keep our late father in the picture, it sure gets easier. Somehow we filtered out the fact that the Necro-Evangelist is long dead and maybe evangelism is a profession for living convicts.
3. Necroevangelism sends the message that the necroevangelist knew everything there was to know about the Bible and all related subjects. There is nothing new to learn or even unlearn, since dad did not make any theological mistakes, which is not true. Since we all like to hear the “old, old story, let daddy tell it to you over and over again. This is something that is wrong with religion in general. It assumes that all its mouthpieces were right all along. If they could read the bible, tell some good stories, keep you interested and convince yourself that the reading was the same yesterday, today and forever, bingo!…why change a winning game during the sermon or even the family finds out that how or what dad said that day isn’t true or appropriate today and let’s just not play with it. Hits of the Necro-Evangelist”, selected by the next generation. That’s not fair to me!
4. Most of those who had been inspired by the now Necro-Evangelist are now Necro-Christians themselves, so they’re not even around to listen to Dad anymore. They were all around the same age and had long ago moved to other heavenly realms. The children of those who loved the now Necro-Evangelist are not going to be inspired by a dead man. Sorry, they just aren’t. They will feel the above three points even if they don’t express it. Kids are not stupid and they will see what Generations II and III might be doing and how dumb it is. These kids tend to find churches saying “as for me and my house, we will serve a living evangelist” and not just the memory of the good old days when parents thought the now Necro-Evangelist could do or say anything wrong. He used to pastor a church that on too many occasions sent recorded sermons from the then-living Apostle and the occasional evangelist. It was hard enough when they were alive, don’t make me listen when they’re dead!
Well, I think we get the point. Is it right or wrong to carry out a Necro-Evangelical-Centric ministry? I don’t know. It is just lame and nothing more than an evangelical dead end.