The Book's Purpose

• Encourage individual Christians to make evangelism a priority in their lives
• Refute the excuses that are frequently used for not evangelizing
• Identify scriptural foundations for evangelizing
• Offer practical advice on evangelizing

The Book's Message

Evangelism is a word that evokes fear in many Christians today. We breathe a sigh of relief when we can relegate it to “professionals” in the field, those who have a “calling” on their lives to do so, namely pastors, preachers, and evangelists.

We lack an understanding of what evangelism is and what it is not, we lack a conviction to be evangelistic, and we find reasons to watch from a distance rather than actively engaging in it.

Christ commanded all of us to “go and make disciples.” So how do we do it?

Why We Don't Evangelize?

why John Harper was born to a Christian family in 1872 in Glasgow, Scotland. When he was a teenager, he accepted Christ as his Savior, and by the time he was 17 he had begun preaching the gospel passionately. In 1896, Harper began his own church with just 25 members and it had grown to over 500 at the time when he left it 13 years later. By then, he had been married and widowed and was the father of a girl named Nana.

Harper preached with zeal and enthusiasm; the gospel was his love. Moody Church in Chicago asked Harper to preach, and he did. They asked him back a second time and he accepted. He brought along Nana and her older cousin. Then in the middle of a fateful night aboard a famous ship, he woke his daughter and told her that she needed to board a lifeboat and get to safety because the ship had struck something in the water. He was going to stay behind and wait for the rescue ship that was on its way. She did travel to safety; however, he was stranded upon debris from the sinking ship, and he died along with many others who were waiting for a rescue boat that never came.

We know Harper never stopped preaching the gospel, even as he held on to the debris in the ocean that night, because several months later, a young man gave his testimony at a gathering. He had been on the Titanic the night it sank, and while he was floating in the water Harper passed by him, asking if he were saved. The man replied no and then a wave swept Harper away. After a while, Harper floated by the man again, asking if he were saved. The man again replied no and Harper said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” The man watched as Harper lost his hold on the debris and sank. This man was the last of Harper’s converts.

It’s amazing that we hesitate sharing the news of Christ to those around us. After all, who would mind telling someone about a miracle drug that would cure his incurable disease, or calling someone to tell her the wonderful news that she’d won the lottery? Yet, there are many times we stop short of telling the gospel story, and for this failure, we have many excuses: Maybe we do evangelize but don’t see the results we expect. Or perhaps we know we should but do it out of guilt. How do we overcome our reluctance to share the best news there is to tell? God gives us answers to these questions and shows us what our evangelism should be, but we need to start at the beginning of our struggle~why we don’t evangelize.

Let’s face it: we have failed at evangelism. We don’t recognize it as such, though, because we’re busy justifying, rationalizing, and explaining to ourselves why it’s actually very wise and prudent not to share the gospel. Though there are many excuses for not sharing the gospel, we will look at five in particular.

Basic excuse 1:
I don’t know their language.

Paul warns us about how unprofitable it is to speak with someone who can’t understand us (1 Corinthians 14:10-11, 16, 23). It’s easy to stop there, excusing ourselves for not knowing another person’s language. We could carry tracts or litera- ture in other languages with us, or even various Bible translations, but we don’t. Regardless, this excuse is a valid one.

Basic excuse 2:
Evangelism is illegal.

Most likely, not many of us are in this position right now, but it is true that there are countries that forbid preaching the gospel.

Basic excuse 3:
Evangelism could cause problems at work.

At work we have a certain job to perform, and the gospel could get in the way of that. We are paid to do our job well. If we go around preaching to our coworkers on company time, we may disrupt our work and our work relationships, actually doing the good news harm rather than good.

Basic excuse 4:
Other things seem more urgent.

Our lives are filled with things that require our immediate attention; they often seem urgent. Our priorities outnumber the hours in the day, squeezing out important but non-urgent matters.

Basic excuse 5:
I don’t know any non-Christians.

For mature Christians, this excuse is all too true. Our social networks stem from our church relationships, and we spend our extra time serving members of our heavenly family. The elderly or single parents have a hard time getting out from the routine of their day because of other constraints and demands. It’s not easy fitting in more relationships, especially those with people outside their belief system.

Other excuses stem from our assumptions of the hearers’ disposition, such as “people don’t want to hear this” or “I bet they already know the gospel.” We don’t consider how faithless this kind of thinking is. God saves people with broken lives from all kinds of backgrounds~including ours. Why were we any more likely to hear and respond to the gospel than they might be?

Let’s consider 12 steps we can take toward evangelizing: pray, plan, accept, understand, be faithful, risk, prepare, look, love, fear, stop, and consider.

Pray.

We don’t find opportunities to evangelize because we aren’t praying for any. We assume full control and power, leaving God out of it. It pleases Him when we share His message; our doing so brings Him glory.

Plan.

We need to plan for evangelism just as we plan the rest of our daily, weekly, monthly lives. We need to plan on building new relationships with non-Christians and purpose to find ways to share the gospel with them.

Accept.

Often we pass the responsibility of this job on to professionals~pastors, preachers, evangelists. Instead, we should realize that Jesus spoke the Great Commission to all of us as His followers.

Understand.

We need to understand our role in evangelism. Some do have the gift of evangelism. But, “God uses not so much gifts for evangelism but the faithfulness of thousands and millions of Christians who would never say evangelism is their gift. Your conclusion that you are not gifted for a particular task does not absolve you of responsibility to obey.”

Be faithful.

When we are more concerned about others than we are about God, we are being unfaithful.

Risk.

Often we will not share the gospel because of the risk of hurting our reputation or because we don’t know how someone will respond. However, we must obey, even when it’s uncomfortable to do so.

Prepare.

Sometimes we don’t evangelize because we feel inadequate or unprepared. We believe we may actually do more harm by trying to share than by keeping quiet. We don’t have all the answers and we feel ignorant. We need to study the gospel and work on our humility, preparing ourselves for opportunities.

Look.

If we’re in the habit of praying for opportunities, we also must establish a habit of looking for those opportunities to come. We can’t ignore opportunities, and we shouldn’t be lazy in our desire to spread the gospel. Sometimes we have to be willing to be inconvenienced or challenged, realizing the task is at hand.

Love.

Ultimately, we are supposed to love people; however, too often we are cold to their dying souls. We struggle with selfishness, and instead of becoming selfless for the sake of their salvation, we become impatient. We need to love those around us just as Christ loved us, seeing their need for Him and desiring that they, too, will come to know Him.

Fear.

We need to grow in our fear of the Lord. When we do so, we understand the depth from which He took us and the height at which He has now placed us. The proper fear of Him will eventually lead us to tell others about Him.

Stop.

God is sovereign. But, that does not give us the right to close up shop and assume that He’ll take care of it. We need to stop using God’s omniscience and power to excuse ourselves from obeying His command. Scripture mandates time and again that we must spread the good news.

Consider.

Hebrews 12:3 says, “Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” In considering all that Christ accomplished to set us free and all that God endured by sacrificing His Son, our hearts should grow in our love for Him. This love will naturally lead to evangelism: “Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:24).

What is the Gospel?

Evangel literally means “good news.” The Christian faith is all about the good news of Christ, who came to redeem our lives and save us from our sins and who gave us eternal life with God. This is good news! And even this news gets confused and muddled in our day. So what exactly is this news, then? To clarify what the gospel is, let us examine several ideas that have crept into our thinking which are not evangelism.

The good news is not simply that we are OK.

Christianity is sometimes viewed as a therapy session, a time to come and feel good about ourselves. Yet, the Bible is very clear that we are not OK. “The Bible utterly rejects the idea that we are ok, that the human condition is just fine, that everyone is merely in need of accepting their current condition, their finitude, or their imperfections, or that we simply need to begin to look on the bright side of it.”

We are sinful~all of us. Our minds and bodies are in rebellion to God and to His perfect law, and as such we sin against a holy God. We deserve a punishment that fits our sins, and Romans 6:23 identifies the wages of our sin as death. We can’t say we are Christians while continuing to conscientiously break the law, but we do it every day. We are depraved. No matter how hard we may try, we continually break God’s law. Real Christianity realizes that this is part of life and part of the Christian religion. While it doesn’t bring a rejoicing spirit, it is part of who we are. But real Christianity doesn’t settle here. It doesn’t allow us to accept our state, to simply live with it, or to somehow numb the pain of this reality. It gives us hope for what is to come.

The good news is not simply that God is love.

God is love, but He is so much more than that! If we settle for an understanding that God is love alone, we tend to settle for God being emotionally manipulative in His love. The Bible also says that God is Spirit, that He is holy, unique, and perfect. How does a God who is all these things define and demonstrate love? Certainly not by always saying yes. Sometimes His love says no. Sometimes His love even has to punish us in order to bring about the best in us, or it has to allow difficulty and hardship in order to refine our faith.

The good news is not simply that Jesus wants to be our friend.

Jesus is not our therapist, listening as we vent, moan, and groan. He didn’t come to pat us on the back, supporting and encouraging us as our buddy. Our sins are serious business. He had to die, sacrificing His life in order to save ours. He chose to die, glorifying God in obedience. The cross is central to His ministry. He is our Redeemer; He took on our sins as His own and suffered in our place. He’s not simply our friend. He’s our Savior.

The good news is not that we should live rightly.

Many conceive Christianity as simply doing right, avoiding wrong, living morally, serving others, and somehow making our world a better place to live. But Christianity is about submitting ourselves to a pure, perfect, and holy God, repenting of our sins and relying on the power of God instead of our own power. We can live as rightly as we possibly can and still fall short of God’s approval. We must repent and believe, not work and perform. Trusting in and relying on Christ’s power to cover our sins, to give us power that we don’t have in ourselves~ that’s real, life-changing belief.

Who Should Evangelize?

Who is called to evangelize? Should only the pastors and clergy, those “called” and “gifted” do so? What about the laypersons in the church? the introverts? the ordinary people? Scripture is full of verses about preaching the good news, and they aren’t simply limited to Paul or the apostles. Jesus said in Matthew 28:18-20, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” The disciples heard this command and fulfilled it with their lives.

And according to Scripture, every believer has been given this Great Commission, since all believers had the Holy Spirit poured upon them in Acts 2. Several more times in Acts we see many believers continuing to tell the gospel. We also see that they suffered, some greatly, for proclaiming Christ as Lord; yet, they did not stop. Throughout Paul’s letters to the churches, he admonishes them to continue in their preaching, praying through their suffering and his own.

Knowing who Christ is and what He came to do, can we really continue living our lives and remaining silent about how our hearts have been changed? Can we ignore those who so desperately need to hear the good news? If we desire a deep love relationship with God, then we should desire it for our neighbor too~after all, the most important commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We should want the best for our neighbors, our friends, and our family. And by wanting the best for them, we should never stop sharing the good news of Christ with them until we know they have a personal relationship with Christ.

Being part of a Body of Christ by demonstrating love is also part of the evangelism plan. It is showing the world how we love one another, encourage one another, and hold out the Word of life to others. We should serve one another. Our lives are supposed to be lived in such a way both in our homes and in the church that non-Christians can see our good deeds and praise God (Matthew 5:16).

Martyn Lloyd-Jones teaches, “Evangelism is pre-eminently dependent upon the quality of the Christian life which is known and enjoyed in the church.” We need to work together in our churches to teach and train evangelism, clearly understanding the gospel message as well as encouraging each other to live lives that glorify God.

How Should We Evangelize?

Obviously we evangelize by sharing the gospel. But more specifically, we need to share the gospel with honesty, urgency, and joy. Often we’ll have one or two of these traits, but balancing all three is essential to communicating the full message so as to not leave any part untouched.

Honesty.

We need to be honest about our message. In the beginning, it’s not one of joy but of sacrifice. We need to make sure that we are clear about the need for repentance, about the need to face our sin and guilt before moving forward with God. People need to understand that they are enemies of God until they are made right by Him. It’s an ugly, painful process, but it has to be explained in order for the hearer of the message to have a true and lasting relationship with our Savior. We can’t skip this part of the message just because it is negative or uncomfortable. It is at the very core of the gospel. Skipping it or watering it down only minimizes the truth of our sins.

Urgency.

Although we can’t force anyone to repent and believe in Christ, we do need to speak in urgent tones. No one knows the day or the hour that a person’s chance to come to the Lord will have passed. It’s not a good “deal” with a better one waiting in the wings. There is no other way to be reconciled to God but through Christ; therefore, there is not one reason to wait but many reasons to be converted immediately! We need to let others know that waiting on perfect circumstances, looking into other ways, or putting it off until later could prove fatal.

Joy.

So far, this good news isn’t very good. But, here’s the good part, the part we don’t want others to miss. “We are built to love. God loves us. We love God. Christ has loved us, and we love him even though we have not seen him. This news is good exactly because we want to spend an eternity with him.” There is so much to gain in coming to Christ that we should never hold back our joy! We can be restored to Him, can become righteous through Christ, can be forgiven, and can find everlasting peace. We do need to communicate honestly about our fallen nature and about the urgency with which commitments to Christ must be made. But we also need to communicate the greatness of coming to our Lord.

We must do the following when sharing the gospel.

Pray.

Always intercede for those you are witnessing to. “Salvation comes from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9). We need to pray for the salvation of those who we hope will make a commitment to Him.

Use the Bible.

God’s Word is inspired, and it can be used very powerfully in evangelism. By quoting the Bible, we are using God’s own Word to point God’s own elect toward conversion.

Be clear.

We need to be clear in the words we use, not taking for granted that a non-Christian will understand what we’re saying. Even words that are simple to us, such as sin, heaven, moral, and judge may need explaining. However, we must avoid confusing clarity with the use of only nonoffensive words.

Provoke self-reflection.

People don’t like to be told something; they want to find it out for themselves. They need to converse about it, not be dictated to. It’s the journey that we’re all on, finding truth through research and questions. Defensiveness is natural, so we should help them realize their own need for Christ in our conversations with them. We should listen to others and befriend them.

Use the church.

Invite the person to whom you’re witnessing to your church. And then invite him into your life, letting him see how you and others in your Christian community live out your Christian faith. That in itself is a tremendous evangelistic tool.

What Isn't Evangelism?

There are many times we believe we are evangelizing when we actually aren’t! At times we are doing nothing more than telling stories, and no harm is done; however, other times we could do the gospel and our message harm by assuming we’re doing what we’ve been commissioned to do when, in fact, the message we are sharing doesn’t even resemble true evangelism.

Five things commonly mistaken for evangelism are imposition, personal testimony, social action or public involvement, apologetics, and results of evangelism.

Imposition.

Often the way we evangelize today imposes on people’s opinions. It’s important to remember that the gospel is not simply someone’s opinion but actual fact. Christians didn’t make up this wonderful tale, and we aren’t communicating a revolutionary thought that we came up with ourselves. We are simply representing the facts of God, Christ and His redemptive story. Because of this, we aren’t imposing something on anyone. We aren’t forcefully giving our opinion on a topic that has differing sides; we are sharing the way to eternal life. We can’t control the way someone responds to our witness, but we can represent Christ accurately, produce good fruit from our spiritual walk, and pray for others. No coercion is involved.

Personal testimony.

“We should testify to this wonderful experience. We should delight in God and share our delight verbally with others. Such testimony can certainly contribute to evangelism.” But, our personal testimony alone is not evangelism. Evangelism is telling the good news of the gospel, not the good news of how we as individuals were saved. Our testimonies are important parts of our spiritual growth, and they can greatly encourage other believers. They edify and often prove our transformation from a non-Christian to a Christian life. But evangelism is about the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ to save sinners.

Social action and public involvement.

Being a part of active social change, politics, public involvement, and using issues to show God’s sovereignty and character is good, but it’s not evangelism. Unless someone is told the good news, any good deed we perform or social injustice we have a hand in fighting against is simply an attempt to bring change to a societal problem. It might commend the gospel and confirm your salvation, but it will not bring about conversions. The gospel itself must be present and clearly communicated when evangelizing.

Apologetics.

Apologetics is good for Christians and nonbelievers alike. It asks questions, answers objections, and discusses the details behind theology, our God, the Bible, or the gospel. Arguing truth and standing firm on conviction are needed in many ways in our culture today, but apologetics by itself is not evangelism. In apologetics, many side issues can take hold, causing our focus to be not on the gospel but on other, sometimes nonessential, areas of doctrine and truth. And when doctrines and truth are being debated, the debate often distracts us from the main message. Evangelism can often come from apologetics, but we must be purposeful and deliberate to stay the course once we move from debate to evangelism with our audience.

The results of evangelism.

Evangelism is not seeing results from our telling of the gospel message. It’s important to understand that we will not always, or perhaps not even often, see the fruit of our evangelism. Our job is to tell the good news, but it’s not within our power to actually convert anyone. By assuming that the fruit of our evangelism is evangelism, we can often feel discouraged and disillusioned by the lack of results. Evangelism can have differing results, even when we say the same message, as Paul explained in 2 Corinthians. “We are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one, we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?” (2 Corinthians 2:15-16).

We cannot become pragmatic, changing our message in order to get a specific response. “When we are involved in a program in which converts are quickly counted, decisions are more likely pressed, and evangelism is gauged by its immediately obvious effect, we are involved in undermining real evangelism and real churches.”

What Should We Do After We Evangelize?

When we evangelize, we get all kinds of responses. Some people want to hear what we have to say and discuss it and converse about it. Others don’t. Even when people repent and turn their lives over to Christ, each person’s response to the gospel message can be different. So, what do we do with each one, and what action should we take? The answer to that question is dictated by the kind of response we receive: negative or positive.

“I’m undecided.”

There are many reasons people are undecided about turning their lives over to Christ. Some aren’t aware of the importance of this decision, lacking an understanding about life or even being uncertain of what they believe about issues such as the presence of God. Some are uncaring, apathetic, and unreflective about the state of their lives. Although we can’t force anyone to make a decision, neither can we give them the impression that not deciding is OK. Being undecided means they are still against God.

“I want to wait.”

Waiting and not deciding are very similar, but they sometimes have different motives. Waiting could be because someone is undecided, but it could also be that someone doesn’t want to change her sinful lifestyle or that she isn’t ready for a commitment. We should warn people that waiting to make a decision could be a dangerous thing since we don’t know the day or the hour that our time on earth will end. Waiting assumes life will continue on as usual, an assumption that no one is guaranteed. Don’t be discouraged at this statement, however. Remember that God is the one who makes the seed grow; we are simply to plant it. Continue to pray for the people with whom you’ve shared the gospel and for wisdom to know how to continue to talk with them.

“Not now.”

This is a more definitive, negative response. It is basically a no that comes with a hesitancy to make the no official. There is still hope though! “Not now” can often become yes over time.

“No, never.”

This response is the most specific considered thus far. Saul was a “no, never” as he persecuted Christians, and many others have followed. These are people who are blind to the truth of the gospel and whose hearts are hard. We should still treat these people with love and respect, for there may come a day when a “no, never” becomes a yes as God opens and works on people’s hearts. After all, Saul did become Paul.

“Yes.”

The Bible gives us all we need to know regarding how to respond to people who repent and believe in Christ as their Savior. We are to bring them into fellowship in the church, give them the privileges and responsibilities of family members, baptize them, guide them, and point them toward an environment in which they can grow spiritually. Discipleship is the fulfillment of evangelism. Some yes answers are false ones. Some would-be converts fall away quickly, going back to old habits and lifestyles without even a glance backward. Others take longer to determine~ years of life can pass until fruit is shown. Some people’s true decisions may not be revealed until we reach heaven.

Why Should We Evangelize?

why What is the ultimate goal of our evangelism? Is it truly to grow the family of Christ, or are there other motives behind what we do? Can we have a wrong motive to evangelize and can that really be a bad thing? We can have wrong motives, like selfishness, or wanting to look good in front of others, or wanting to check something off our lists. Good motives for evangelism are expressed in the Bible as a desire to be obedient, a love for the lost, and a love for God.

A desire to be obedient.

Christ commanded us to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). We find throughout Acts that disciples of Christ, converted by Paul or Peter or another apostle, were scattered about the land, preaching the name of Christ wherever they went and encouraging each other in the act. They were obeying the call on their lives as Christians. They even suffered for what they preached, and yet they continued to do so.

Whereas today most of us aren’t persecuted in the same way as the disciples were, we are still suffering for proclaiming the truth of Christ. Usually it brings about disgrace, cold shoulders, or severe looks to witness to those who have no desire to hear the message. But we must continue to do so because we must be obedient.

Love for the lost.

If God has loved us so tremendously that He chose us for His own, then we too ought to love the lost as He has loved us. After all, we were once lost too. We need to have compassion in our hearts for those who have yet to come into the Body of Christ. The gospel moves us to understand a glimpse of God’s love for us and allows us to see God’s love for non-Christians as well. It’s good news that we should love to tell those who need it, for their sakes.

Love for God.

The ultimate motivator for proclaiming the gospel should be our love for God. After all, we frequently disobey and sin, and our love for others will at times fail, but our love for God should be ever strong and true. We want to see Him glorified and praised, and we want to tell of His great love for us through the gospel to those who need to hear it. Evangelism calls us to stop looking inward, to stop being self-focused, and to start looking outward, to start being selfless for the sake of His name.

As with anything, we need encouragement to continue to walk in obedience, not neglecting what we’ve been commanded to do. To be encouraged in evangelism, ask for testimonies and share your own. Consider the reality of hell, which, though sobering, helps us re-establish our priorities for the week ahead. Consider God’s sovereignty~ that God has appointed times and places for us to be and to speak. God’s elect will be saved, but someone has to tell them so! Meditate on the gospel, allowing the message to interact with our hearts, attracting us all the more to God. And lastly, consider the Cross, reminding ourselves of what Christ did for us and compelling us again and again to reach out to others.

Closing the Sale

So evangelism should be a priority in our lives, God-centered and motivated by our love for Him. It’s needed, and expected of us. But there’s one more thing to know: we can’t close the sale~ever. It’s not our job, not even in our power to do so. “The redemption of an eternal soul is one sale that we, in our own strength, cannot accomplish. And we need to know it, not so that we won’t preach the gospel, but so that we won’t allow the gospel that is preached to be molded by what finally gets a response!”

We can’t keep changing the message until we get the “right” outcome. The message is what it is, and God holds all the power to change a person. God can use anyone, anywhere, and anytime He desires in order to draw others to Himself. Evangelism is appropriate only when we hand the reins over to the One who actually controls the direction a non-Christian is headed. We are the messengers, God is the Soul Changer. It is critical that we share the gospel.