The book Out of the Salt Shaker and into the World begins with these words: “Christians and non-Christians have something in common: we’re both uptight about evangelism.”
Evangelism is a struggle for most Christians. Churches struggle with it as well. One of the passages that motivates me is John 4, the story of the woman at the well. Jesus sends His disciples into the city, and while they’re gone He sees and talks to the woman at the well. When the disciples come back, they are surprised to find Him talking to a woman. After the disciples arrive, the woman returns to the city and informs people that the Messiah might be at the well. The disciples ask if anyone has given Jesus anything to eat. He replies that His food is “to do the will of Him who sent Me.” And then He tells the disciples to lift up their eyes and look upon the fields, which are white for harvest.

I wonder if Jesus encouraged the disciples to lift up their eyes just then to see the people flooding out of the city to meet Him. They were coming because the woman had informed them about Jesus. Often I am like the disciples. They had been in the woman’s city, but there is no record of them telling anyone that the Messiah was at the well. Yet, because of the woman’s testimony about Jesus, the city flocked to meet Him. This illustrates our struggle because, like the disciples, we know where the Messiah is but often do not tell others about Him.

Evangelism is the first part of disciple-making ministry. Through evangelism, people are called out of the world and into the kingdom of Christ and into the church. The next stage is establishing, as the new believer is instructed in the skills needed to be able to walk closely with Christ. The third ministry area is enfolding, where the new believer learns to live in the Christian community of the church. The final aspect is equipping, where the growing Christian is trained in how to have a ministry in the world.

Evangelism is demonstrating and proclaiming the good news of the risen Christ so that people will put their trust in Him, accept Him as their Savior, and serve Him as their King in the fellowship of the church. A shortened definition would be that evangelism is demonstrating and proclaiming the good news of the risen Christ.

Evangelism is both demonstrating and proclaiming. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” He believed that our lives could be a demonstration of the good news of the risen Christ. But it takes both demonstrating and proclaiming the good news of Christ.

D. James Kennedy, founder of Evangelism Explosion, said that when he was in high school there was a fellow student named Jim who was very popular, the class president. Everyone liked him; everyone wanted to be like Jim. And James Kennedy felt the same. After he graduated, James Kennedy went on to be converted, and then became a pastor. Years later Kennedy read Jim’s obituary. It stated that, after high school, Jim went on to go to seminary and become a pastor. Kennedy realized that Jim must have been a Christian all along. But because Jim had never said anything, had never proclaimed or spoken about Christ, he had only been a testimony to himself. He demonstrated the Christian life, led a good life, but he never proclaimed Christ. Therefore, his testimony only pointed towards himself and not toward Christ.

Both demonstrating and proclaiming are important in every situation. If you’re out knocking on doors unshaven, with disheveled hair, you may be a poor demonstration of the gospel. The more you know a person, the more important your demonstration is. It’s always there, even if you’re doing outreach at the mall. But there needs to be proclamation eventually.

Christ has called the church to do six things: worship, preach and teach, address social concerns (taking care of the needy, taking a stand for righteousness and justice), nurture (helping people grow), fellowship and reach out. Of all of these, the ministry most easily dropped is evangelism. A church will have worship and prayer; there will be preaching and teaching; there will be Christian growth and meeting the needs of the community; and we can’t be a church if we don’t have fellowship. But the thing we most easily drop, if we’re going to drop anything, is outreach. Because it is so easily neglected, churches and individuals need to give vision, passion, energy and perseverance to outreach.

For evangelism to be effective in the local church, two things are needed:

1) There must be consistent ministries in the church to equip, encourage, and embolden the members to share Christ with their neighbors, friends, relatives, and other associates;

2) There must be a churchwide evangel-istic strategy (see next article).

The Importance of Convictions.

There are three convictions we need to have for evangelism. We need to grow in our understanding and commitment to these convictions, both as individuals and as churches.

The Treasure of the Gospel

My wife and I spent the first several years of our Christian lives in campus ministry. Most of the people around us were fairly new believers. The first years of my pastoral ministry we were church planting in the Chicago area, and again most of the people around us were just coming to faith in Christ. Now that I’ve been living the Christian life a little longer, I recognize how easy it is for us to lose enthusiasm for the true treasure that is the gospel. We need to meditate on how great it is, and grow in our understanding and commitment to it.

Three aspects of the gospel are justification by faith, adoption into the family of God, and the liberating power of the Holy Spirit. We should meditate upon those gifts and other aspects of the gospel. We need to realize what a treasure we have in the good news of Jesus Christ—the fact that our sins have been forgiven, that we’ve been brought into God’s family, that we have the liberating power of the Spirit, God’s grace, the promise of eternal life, and a hope not only in this world but in the world to come.

The Tragedy of the Lost

We do not think on this topic very much. However, we need to recognize that the person next door, your friend at school or work, is lost. We need to understand the future in store for them if they do not repent and believe.

When William Carey was in India, the missionaries that gathered around him signed the Serampore Community Compact, a covenant of sorts. It contained 11 points to which they agreed to give their lives. The first point was, “We must place an infinite value on the souls of men.” Think about that—an infinite value. Charles Spurgeon talked about the idea that if there were one unconverted person left on earth and living in Siberia, it would be worth the cost of all the believers in the world to spend their time and energy and money to get to Siberia to win that one soul.

Carey’s second point was that we must work to understand the snares of false religions and philosophies. He worked to understand the snares that were binding the people in India. To be effective in ministry, we must know the philosophies and false religions that are trapping people in our communities.

The Compact’s tenth point was that the missionaries must be constantly in prayer and seeking to grow in Christian character. This point mentioned David Brainerd, “in the woods of America, pouring out his very soul before God for those without Christ, without whose salvation nothing would make him happy.” What about us? Can we say that there is nothing that can make us happy unless we see people come to faith in Christ?

William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, developed a powerful method for helping people learn how to win souls. The Salvation Army was treated very poorly by the British press. Mocking him one time they asked, “Do you think that you have the best witnessing school in the world? Do you think that you have the best training program to teach people how to witness for Jesus Christ and win souls for Him?” Booth said, “No, I don’t think my methods are the best methods. I think the best method for giving people a burden for lost souls would be to take them to the devil’s hell and allow them to experience what it is to be lost in hell, separated from God for an eternity in the fire that can never be quenched. Then I believe men truly would have a burden and know what it is to be soul winners, because they would know what it is to be lost.”

The Triumph of the Kingdom

The kingdom of God is growing. We need to act on that conviction. This means someone, somewhere, somehow, under some circumstances, will believe our message.

Because we believe that the kingdom of God is growing, the next convert might be the person next door to you; it might be the person you meet at the grocery store today; it might be the person you see walking their dog in your neighborhood. We believe God is calling people to Himself. Therefore we have confidence to share the good news of Christ, because somebody, somewhere, somehow, under some circumstances, will believe our message.

The Importance of Proper Motivations

1) The command of Christ. This should be a key motivation for us. Christ commanded His followers to share the gospel. “He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation’” (Mark 16:15). Also, “He said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men’” (Matt. 4:19). I had a good friend who every once in a while would ask me about his life because he said, “I haven’t had the chance to share Christ with anybody recently. Will you please pray for me so that I can know if there is something wrong with my following of Jesus?”

2) Christ can meet needs. In addition to salvation and forgiveness of sins, there are other practical needs that only Christ can meet.

Guilt—“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones grew old
through my groaning all the day long” (Ps. 32:1).

Boredom—John 10:10. I was talking to a businessman who was involved in ministry in Chicago. He mentioned one of the big problems business owners face is that their employees are simply bored.

Meaninglessness—Jer. 29:11. There is a deep meaninglessness in people’s lives. They are turning to drugs and all kinds of other things in an attempt to meet this need.

Loneliness—Heb. 13:5. How many people do we know who are truly lonely? Jesus said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Fear of death—1 John 5:11. How many people are afraid of that last step? What’s going to happen to them when they leave this world? I believe that is a bigger question for most people than we Christians think.

Separation from God—Rom. 5:1. Many people understand, in the core of their being, this separation.

3) Rewards. God has promised rewards for faithful service to Him. Most of us like to think that we’ll serve God simply for some altruistic method. “He’s loved me so much that I’ll serve Him.” Certainly that’s true, but He has also laid down in Scripture the idea of rewards in heaven for service here on earth.

4) Good news is to be shared. The gospel is such good news, and, therefore, it ought to travel quickly. When my wife gave birth to our first child, it was amazing to us how few people we could tell. I don’t know how people found out, but somehow they just knew. We had a chance to tell a few people and, and from there, the good news traveled fast. The good news of the gospel is something that we must treat as truly good news.

5) Christ is glorified. When we are involved in outreach, especially as people come to faith, God is glorified. Jesus said, “By this My Father is glorified: that you bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples.” Fruit can refer to several things, but we do know that it refers to evangelism. In John 4, Jesus refers to laboring for souls as the gathering fruit for eternal life.

The Importance of Prayer

The church needs to be praying about evangelism. The leaders of the church need to be praying about evangelism. It needs to be part of the fabric of the church—praying for evangelism, praying for our non-Christian friends.

We have a prayer meeting every Lord’s Day evening. Almost always there’s prayer for a relative, a friend or a coworker whom people in our church are seeking opportunities to talk to about Christ. We need to be fervent in our prayers about this area of evangelism. In Matthew 9:37-38 Jesus saw the multitudes who were distressed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd. “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His field.”

Although it is easy to think otherwise, the problem is not with the harvest. We think, “The harvest is not plentiful where I live.” Jesus said the problem is not the harvest, but the laborers, that they are too few. The solution from the verse is prayer.

There was a British pastor by the name of J. Sidlow Baxter. When he was 85 years old, he spoke at a church in Arkansas. He said, “I have pastored only three churches in my more than 60 years of ministry. We had revival in every one and not one of them came about as a result of my preaching. They came as result of a small number of the membership entering into a covenant to pray until a revival came. And it did come every time.”

Paul said that “my heart’s desire, my prayer to God, is for their salvation.” He was praying for his desire to see the Jewish people to come to Christ. We need to be praying for evangelism.

The Importance of Perseverance

We always try to do things for evangelism at our church. We have always got things going on. Some of the things we do could be considered weird. We play Pickleball every summer. Pickleball is sort of a combination of tennis and ping pong. We put up nets in our parking lot and put a big sign in front of our church saying, “Pickleball, Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Come join us.” We’ve had people join us, and we are hoping they will become friends with the people of the church.

“He who watches the wind will not sow, and he who looks at the clouds will not reap” (Eccl. 11:4). In ancient times they used to sow by having a little bag of seeds. If it looked like windy day, you would not sow because the wind would blow the seeds away. If you saw heavy clouds, you would not reap because the rains were coming.

If we apply this verse to the area of evangelism, there will always be excuses to not be involved in reaching out to others. “It’s too windy, it looks too cloudy, it’s going to rain.” Ecclesiastes 11:6 says, “Sow your seed in the morning and do not be idle in the evening, for you do not know whether morning or evening sowing will succeed, or whether both of them alike will be good.” We need to be sowing our seed regularly, trusting God for the results.

There’s a saying that goes: “There are people that you go after that you never get. And there are people that you do not go after that you get. But the clincher is: You would not get these people that you did not go after if you did not go after the people that you did not get.” The point behind that quote is that God honors churches that seek to be involved in evangelism.

The Importance of Teamwork

Most people are not going to be the world’s greatest evangelists. This is why evangelism usually requires help from other believers. The goal for having a churchwide evangelistic strategy is that the ministries and fellowship of the church would attract the attention of unbelievers and provide an opportunity to share Christ with them. Our hope is that the church would have attractive ways of impacting the community. The beauty of Christian fellowship is a way that often opens the door for Christian witness. Most of us hope it’s our doctrine that is going to win people to faith in Christ. We have to recognize the fact that most people in America today—especially those under the age of 35 or 40—consider church to be irrelevant to their lives. It is difficult to attract them to the gospel unless they see something in Christians living together in love and harmony and joy. We need to not only be careful about our doctrine, but also the fellowship of our church.

Teamwork in outreach can be facilitated in these three areas:

Step 1: Initiation—Church members need to develop meaningful relationships with the unchurched. This can often be done in teams as a couple of Christians join together in book clubs, neighborhood functions, political events, and even such things as bowling leagues or softball teams.

Step 2: Identification—Christians are to identify themselves as followers of Christ. Working together, Christians can pray for one another, and share ideas as to how to best minister to the people they are trying to reach.

Step 3: Involvement—The church should have nonthreatening activities that can be held on a regular basis, so that the unchurched may come and meet Christians and be exposed to the teachings of Christianity. The accompanying (page 8) article details some of these possible activities. It includes such things as a Bible study, church-sponsored service projects, game nights and parties. The goal is for non-Christians to be exposed to Christianity and meet Christians.

The Importance of Ministry Skills

For fruitfulness in outreach, there are generally certain skills people will need to master.

Building Relationships. We use the idea of “Networking for the Kingdom.” Steve Childers of Global Church Advance defines networking as intentionally building meaningful relationships with nonbelievers as a way of life in order to serve them and assist them in their spiritual journey. We want to make ourselves available to assist those outside the church.

Starting a Spiritual Conversation. There are many ways to do this. Questions about church background, spiritual beliefs, the spiritual condition of our country, etc., can be used to see if a person is interested in spiritual matters. You can ask a unbeliever to check you on a verse you are memorizing, or share a story about what happened at church.

Personal testimony. This is the story of how you were brought to faith in Christ. For those who have been Christians since they were young children, it is important to share how Christ has met needs (see the list earlier in this article). Maybe pick three or four of those needs that relate to you and be able to tell how Christ has helped you. What benefits have you seen from Christ? How has Christ helped you in dealing with guilt or meaninglessness or loneliness? Your testimony can be built on areas where Christ has clearly ministered to you.

A simple gospel presentation. We need to know how to simply share the gospel.

Handling common objections. Although many questions are smokescreens, there are genuine questions people have about Christianity. We need to know how to answer these questions carefully and lovingly. Some of the common objections are such things as, “I believe in evolution; I don’t believe the Bible is true; I don’t believe in heaven or hell.”

The prayer of faith. Praying to receive Christ is often the visible sign of biblical faith. Christians should be taught what is involved in this prayer and how to lead someone in the prayer.

Conclusion

Evangelism, though a difficult ministry, is one that can bring great joy. C.T. Studd was a well-known missionary in China, India, and Africa. He was from a very wealthy family and was known as England’s greatest cricket player. Before he sailed to China, he spoke to college students at Cambridge. “I have had many pleasures in my time, and have tasted most of the delights this world can give, but I can tell you that these pleasures are as nothing compared to my present joy. I had formally as much love for cricket as any man could have, but when the Lord Jesus came into my heart, I found that I had something infinitely better. My heart was no longer set on the game: I wanted to win souls to serve and please Him.”

May God grant us the privilege and joy of being used by Him to see people come to saving faith in our Lord Jesus Christ!

—By Harry Metzger. Harry is pastor of the North Hills (Pittsburgh, Pa.) RPC. This article was adapted from a webinar presentation via the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, rpts.edu.