Evangelism

From the perspective of a church, we unfortunately tend to think about evangelism in the limited (and misguided) terms of what events can we do or what programs can we offer to attract non-Christians to our church. (I chose my words carefully there- read between the lines- what didn't I write?*[see bottom])

If we look not just at evangelism of the Gospel, but evangelism of anything, we find we never need to think about what events or programs to do to evangelize it! Evangelism is actually very organic and natural.

If one truly believes in something and that it is a good thing, perhaps a life-changing thing, he can not help but tell others about it. TV shows (LOST!), great restaurants (Chapeau!), shampoo, cookies, anything- it can be evangelized. One only needs to believe in it's goodness, even greatness.

In the gospels, we see many instances of people having an encounter with Christ and returning to their town or family to tell everyone about their changed life. (Oddly, Jesus sometimes instructed them not to tell anyone what happened.)

We probably don't necessarily need elaborate evangelism events or programs. (Nothing inherently wrong with those things either.) If we're experiencing a vibrant, true spiritual life in Christ, it will show in our lives (Galations 5:22-23) and we can't help but tell others about it. (Example, John 4)

Conversely, if we aren't sharing Christ with others, then it is likely we are not experiencing God. Revelation 3:15-16 refers to these as lukewarm. One thing I don't get is when leaders of a church like Laodicea want to "do more evangelism." Not that I doubt their compassion for the lost, but if Christians are lukewarm, aren't the new Christians going to be lukewarm as well? Shouldn't we be spurring each other on to be "hot", and not lukewarm nor cold, all the time? If everyone were "hot," I'd think we'd all be evangelizing all the time wherever we are!

BTW, when I link Scripture, I'm linking to the entire chapter by design to encourage you to read it in context :) Of course, if you read to this point and didn't click on the links, you wouldn't know the difference. ;) Also, I'm linking to the NET Bible from bible.org, both which I'll write about in the near future.

* Sometimes we even forget that evangelism is all about saving the lost, but rather we think it's just about getting people to come to our church.