Hello

The purpose of evangelism is not to get people into our churches.  It is not to increase the number of people belonging to our denomination.  The purpose of evangelism is to encourage people to become disciples of Jesus and to obey his commands:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… …teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

Here’s an interesting and important point.  You’ve probably heard that Jesus said: “the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few”?  Well, he didn’t say it as a call to evangelism, he said it as a call to prayer.

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.'”  (Matthew 9:36-38)

So, Jesus tells us to pray that our loving heavenly Father will send people out to do his work.  OK.  I can do that, but what if our Father wants me to get out there and talk to others about him?  ‘Evangelism’, or ‘witnessing’ may sound embarrassing, even scary.  Don’t worry.  Trust our Father.  If he wants us to do it, he will give us whatever we need to do it, and it won’t be embarrassing or scary.

I heard a brilliant talk once about evangelism. It was given by a friend who I have come to respect deeply.  My friend practiced as a lawyer for 11 years before becoming a pastor and his main point was that, in a court of law, testimony is evidence.  He said that all God wants his servants to do is be witnesses, provide testimony or, to put it very simply, just talk with others about our heavenly Father’s love for us and our walk with Him.  The evidence we provide in our testimony may convince others that we really do mean what we say.

Of course, a very important part of the evidence we present to others is the way we live our lives.  If we live our lives in obedience to Jesus’ commands, loving our neighbors and treating others the way we like to be treated, people will be much more likely to listen to what we have to say when we talk about our walk with God.  It is particularly important that we love our fellow Christians.  Jesus said:

“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35)

So, there may be little point in talking to others about our walk with God, if we are less than loving towards any of our sisters and brothers in Christ, and this includes sisters and brothers who belong to different denominations or Christian groups.  Again, prayer is the key.  When we pray that we will love others more, our loving heavenly Father will answer that prayer.

In the early church the good news spread rapidly, and mostly it spread through ordinary Christians talking about their experience of God. They talked with neighbors, with people they met in the market place, with fellow workers, with anyone they happened to meet.  We can do this too. We don’t need organizations, funding or buildings. We don’t need campaigns or celebrity speakers.  We just need to pray and talk. And when we talk to others, they probably won’t be interested in hearing how good our church is, or what a great person our pastor is.   They’ll be interested in hearing about our walk with God and what that is like.  I can’t emphasize this enough.

Finally, let me tell you something from my own experience.  Our loving Father has not called me to be an evangelist, but this may illustrate that people are interested in hearing about our walk with him.  Before my wife retired, she was a senior academic in a local university.  She had a good friend who was also an academic.  Let’s call the friend Susan.  Whenever my wife and Susan got together, they would talk animatedly about academic life.  One day Susan invited us to dinner at her house because she wanted us to meet her partner.  Let’s call him James.  We arrived and Susan asked me to go into the kitchen to meet James, who was preparing the meal.  I did so, and James and I got talking.  I took a liking to him straight away, he was intelligent, thoughtful and had a lovely gentle sense of humor.  He told me he was a lawyer and asked what I did.  I told him I had a paid teaching role in a church and I was studying for a Masters degree in Divinity at a local seminary.  He was clearly surprised at this and wasn’t sure how to respond, so I steered the conversation to other topics and the subject was not mentioned again that evening.  But on a later occasion, the four of us went out to a local restaurant and, as usual, Susan and my wife got straight into talking about university life, leaving James and I to talk about other things.  Within a few minutes he started gently asking me about my spiritual life, what I believed and why I believed it.  I answered his questions as simply, clearly and honestly as I could and Susan suddenly held up her hand to my wife, stopping their conversation, and said “Hang on a minute, I want to listen to this.”

May our loving Father bless us and strengthen us in whatever he has for us to do.

Jesus is Lord.

Peter O

 

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