Evangelism Overview
by Paul Hazelden

Evangelism Overview by Paul Hazelden

Introduction

Two Pictures

Putting it into practice

The Small Picture

The Big Picture

The Job Description

Building a Strategy

Levels of Detail

The word 'evangelism' is a difficult one. As soon as people explain what they mean by it, there are always arguments.

For what it's worth, my own summary of the problem is this: any definition of evangelism which matches they way people use the word is far too restrictive when you start to think about it, but as soon as you atempt to cover everything which is a part of evangelism, you describe the whole Christian life and the whole mission of the Church.

So people decide that evangelism is either not worth doing, because it is far too limited to be of real value, or not possible, because it involves doing everything, and we only have a limited capacity.

I believe we need to hold on to both aspects of the truth. There is a sense in which everything we do can be - and should be - evangelistic. But there is also an important sense in which evangelism is a small (but vital) part of the Christian life: a small part which we can do well or badly, and which we can learn to do far more effectively than most of us manage.

One other confusion: only a few Christians are called to be evangelists - to have that as their life work, their calling. But all Christians are required to be able to evangelise when the opportunity presents itself. So learning to do it well is something that will benefit all Christians, not just the chosen few. In fact, you can argue that the primary job of the chosen few is to enable the vast majority of 'ordinary Christians' to be more effective evangelists.

What happens in evangelism? What does God actually do? There are many ways we can express this. Let us look at just two of them.

Over and over again in the Bible, people are given the choice between accepting God's way and rejecting it - between life and death.

	Individual

Life		Death

But, in the long run, each one of us has chosen death, and only the Holy Spirit working in us can enable us to turn from the road to destruction.

And through the gift of eternal life, the Holy Spirit joins us to the Body of Christ.

What does the Bible tell us about? Many people would say that the Bible tells us about just three things - and as an initial summary, that's quite good.

The Bible tells us about ( 1 ) God; it tells us about ( 2 ) the World, how God loves it, works within it, and acts upon it; and it tells us about ( 3 ) the Church - us.

The Bible makes it clear that God can do anything He wants. But, by and large, when God wants to do something, He chooses to work through His people. We can show this in a diagram as follows.

God

Church

World

This diagram, as it stands, does not help us much. However, we also learn from the Bible what God is like, in the person of Jesus Christ. We learn how He works through the Church in the power of His Spirit - over and over again, he uses a person (the 'Messenger') to communicate His word (the 'Message') in a specific way, at a specific place and time (the 'Method'). And we learn that the world is changed through God impacting the lives of individual people. So the diagram can be expanded as follows.

God	is revealed as		Grace & Truth

Church	works through	Message	Method	Messenger

World	is changed by		Individual

Introduction to the section.

Ephesians, the book that tells us more about the Church than any other part of the Bible, gives us in one brief passage the job description for the Church. There are just five gifts that God has given to the Church - or four, depending on how you read the Greek:

apostle,
prophet,
evangelist and
pastor/teacher.

If the Church is doing these things, we will all grow up into maturity, into Christ. That is God's plan for us. It's quite simple, really.

How do we put this plan into action?

I would like to suggest that you need only three things to establish a strategy for building the church - or for reaching your street, village or city for Christ. You need:

prayer,
planning and
perspiration.

You need them in that order, and they need to be cumulative.

If you want the Biblical basis for this, you can see the pattern being worked out in the lives of Jesus and Paul.

For those of you who want to know how this pattern fits into the other Biblical pattern I teach, here is a table:

What we do	How God works
Prayer	God gives Revelation
Planning	We respond in Obedience
Perspiration	We respond in Obedience
	God performs a Miracle

The Bible tells us that God is interested in the way things work at three levels of detail: the individual, the congregation, and the community.

The prayer, planning and perspiration need to be undertaken and expressed at each of these levels. The apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher need to be released to work at each of these levels.

The evangelism is have been describing needs to operate within this context, or all kinds of problems occur. You need the right context for evangelism - as you do for all the gifts in Ephesians 4 - or things go horribly wrong.

Comments? Feedback? Let me know what you think.

Copyright © 1999, 2000 Paul Hazelden.
You are welcome to create a link to this page or to print it for your personal use, but if you would like to use some or all of this article in any other way, please contact me first.

Individual

Repent
Believe
Obey

Repent
Believe
Obey

Destruction