Scripture never presents evangelism as only an ‘inside the church’ matter
And neither do I. That said, the kind of outdoor preaching engaged in then is at present difficult to undertake except at organized events. St. Paul benefitted in Athens from the Aereopagus, a hill where people could present what they wanted, and there likewise exists a place in Hyde Park where people can stand on a soapbox and articulate whatever they wish (Muslims have been preaching there of late, among others, and evangelicals have tried counter-preaching, but the net effect is that the majority of people going to Hyde Park to recreate simply avoid that area like the plague).
They did not rely on architecture, icons, music, or ambience to bring people to Christ.
Actually, the oldest surviving church dates from 57 AD and is in Kerala, India, near the spot where St. Thomas the Apostle was martyred in that year. and we still have the Cenacle as well - admittedly it has been redecorated (it is now a monastery under the control of the Syriac Orthodox Church, dedicated to St. Mark the Evangelist, whose house contained the famed Upper Room). Until 2016 an ancient house church was among the archaeological discoveries at Dura Europos in Syria along with a synagogue; the house church had a sanctuary that was particularly splendid, and which featured iconography. Likewise the houses of that era were not commonly made of clay (you seem to be conflating the sophisticated Mediterranean civilization with the more primitive civilizations elsewhere, which some of the Apostles did reach, such as St. Andrew) rather constructed using bricks and stones on the lower level, with wood on the upper levels, while in Rome concrete was available and was used, and indeed the Roman concrete used in the Pantheon, now a Christian church, is among the finest concrete ever used, superior to most concrete used at present in quality. And regarding music, here again you are inaccurate, for the Jewish custom was always to sing the Psalms and prayers, and early Christian worship was taken from Jewish worship, and 100% of ancient liturgical rites sing or chant scripture rather than reading them in an ordinary voice. So basically your entire post is a string of unverified assumptions.
But what really matters is what is working, and what is working is the Orthodox approach. If your church was obtaining an 18% growth rate, per annum, we might want to adopt the methodology you propose. The problem is that you seem to regard ineffective methods of evangelism as a religious duty, which they are not - on the contrary, I would argue we have an obligation to not tarnish the image people have of the Christian faith by spending time annoying them, when we could be spending time loving our neighbors as ourselves, which is an activity that consistently wins people over to Christ and causes conversion, as the Salvation Army and the Anglo Catholics in London, who both made a commitment to care for the poor of the city, discovered (of course in their case it wasn’t so much conversion, but the rechurching of people who were baptized but who had become unchurched or secularized, and to a large extent in the Western World that remains our goal - to take those people who would be Christians had it not been for the devastation inflicted on Christianity by the conflict between liberal theology on the one hand and various non–traditional forms of more conservative theology on the other, such as premillenial dispensationalism and pentecostal worship, which were unknown (in their present form) prior to the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively, and the use by both groups of Christian Rock music and Praise and Worship music during worship services, something which has not occurred in the Orthodox churches because thankfully our church specifies the hymns for each service, which the Roman Catholic Church used to do at one time, but had already stopped by the time Pope Pius X wrote Tra le Solecetudini, a plea for his church to return to its traditional musical forms which unfortunately went unheeded by subsequent generations; they canonized him a saint and they allowed the use of electric guitars in the Mass, which are not consistent actions.
This daily surrender is a form of living martyrdom; faithful obedience in both deed and proclamation. Martyrdom may be rare in the ultimate sense, but daily obedience and boldly speaking the Gospel are expected of all believers. Fear is not an excuse to remain silent.
This is all true. Indeed, boldly speaking the Gospel is why I am posting in this thread, because I feel that a nominal presentation of the Gospel by laity not actively engaged in the continuous love of God through love of their neighbor as themselves is counterproductive. I am calling for more Christians to share the Gospel by serving others in their community - boldly displaying their Christianity while doing so and boldly declaring the Gospel imperative as the reason why they are helping others. A good example to follow would be the Roman Catholic charities connected with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, or many others (indeed the Catholics have such good charitable operations as to be the envy of all Christendom).
The liberal mainline churches made the catastrophic mistake of allowing their charitable operations to become disconnected from their ecclesiastical identity, so that the association between the charity and the sponsoring church was only loosely defined; lately the trend has been for hospitals established by the Roman Catholic Church to de-emphasize their Roman Catholic identity, such as Catholic Healthcare West calling itself Dignity Healthcare, which is quite depressing. Indeed the hospital as we know it was invented by an Eastern Orthodox bishop, St. Basil of Caesarea, in the fourth century, who along with St. Nicholas of Myra is one of two figures who in the popular imagination has contributed to the identity of “Santa Claus” but the real bishops are much more interesting than the fictional character they collectively inspired.
However you seem to be projecting your fear of rejection onto me; I have no fear of speaking the Gospel to anyone, but God will hold me accountable if I alienate someone from the Church (especially given my current clerical status).
Two common forms of living martyrdom that go widely ignored are Holy Matrimony, where each spouse will sacrifice their own desires for the benefit of the other and their children, and the monastic life, which is a particularly bold way to proclaim the Gospel - indeed the contributions Orthodox monks have made to the growth of our church, which started to heat up during the previous decade, and which has become exponential since Covid.
