At the end of March myself and Chelsea Moore took a team of Bethel students on their missions trip to Germany and the Netherlands. We had such a blast as we saw God do so much fun stuff, both in and outside of the church.

Given that our trip had a very strong focus on evangelism that is what I want to discuss today.

Anyone that knows me will tell you that I am not the most extroverted of people, if you were to put me in a room full of strangers my first reaction would be to hide in a cupboard and read a book. With that said, I’m sure you can imagine how much I like walking up to strangers on the street and trying to work Jesus into the conversation!

The truth is though, that I actually do love evangelism, just not as I have typically seen it modeled.

I don’t look at evangelism as an outreach event, something we have to muster up our strength for or do at a certain time of the week in a certain location. Evangelism is not an event. It is a lifestyle.

Is everyone really an evangelist?

It has often been said by the evangelists that “everyone is an evangelist”. That is such a true statement, but it has been used to guilt-trip people for years into doing “evangelism” in the mold of someone else.

Evangelism may very well look like preaching on a street corner, handing out flyers or praying for someone you see in crutches. It can’t just be that though, it must also equally looks like being the most loving parent while shopping at the supermarket or being the most incredible employee in your company.

A needed shift in focus

The problem we find ourselves with though, is that most of our evangelism is fruit focused rather than vine focused.

We focus on the fruit, the healing, the great conversation, the prophetic word, the salvation. Yes all these things are fantastic… they are all great fruit. But the fact of the matter is they must remain that… fruit.

So what is evangelism?

The thing is our word evangelism comes from the Greek word “euangelion” which literally means… “The Gospel” that’s right… “Good News”! Evangelism isn’t just someone getting saved, or healed or anything else for that matter – it is simply the good news of what Christ has done for humanity. The great conversation, the healing, the prophetic word and even that person accepting Jesus are all fruits of the good news.

Evangelism is in its most simple, boiled down form is God’s love for us and that love spilling over in our lives onto everyone around us.

Let me reiterate because I don’t want anyone to confuse what I’m saying. All those things I listed are great and we want to see them in our interactions with the world – in fact I’d wager that if we aren’t seeing these things then we probably aren’t focusing on the good news – BUT these things cannot be our goal. Our goal must be enjoying God and having people experience the overflow of that enjoyment!

Loving results… err… I mean people

The second we make the purpose of outreach to be the fruit we stop loving people and start loving what they can represent. At this point people stop being people and start being potential achievements, notches on our spirituality belt. I don’t know about you but I can certainly put my hand up to this one… I’ve made a few projects out of people in my lifetime!

The beauty is when we remove ourselves from this fruit oriented outreach we start experiencing a liberation, a freedom that has never before been allowed to be a part of our evangelistic attempts. You see while bearing fruit might be something you can turn on and off, genuine love is not. You either love people or you don’t.

Let’s face it, the gospel comes across a lot more authentically when we just love people in the context of day-to-day life. I’m not so sure how authentic our love seems to the world when we do it during an event we have organized primarily so we can bring forth fruit!

An evangelistic revolution

I really feel that God is doing something huge in the Church right now. He is awakening individuals into their identity in Christ and their responsibility to represent that reality in this broken world effortlessly.

In Germany we saw so much fun fruit coming forth as we just kicked back and relaxed, we actually found that the less we tried to produce fruit and the more we just enjoyed ourselves the more we would start seeing opportunities to bless people with the love of God.

We got to prophesy over hundreds of people on the streets, saw many people get healed, we even saw some people get saved and baptized! All this and more from sitting on the grass on a sunny day, buying someone’s ice cream at an ice cream parlor or talking to a shop owner while browsing their products.

Our goal can not be to go into a broken world and drag everyone kicking and screaming to church so they meet Jesus. Our goal is to go out into the darkness as the light of the world and be confident that as Christ in us is revealed every head will turn to watch us burn.

When we recognise that our goal is not to get people into church but to be the light of the world something strange happens. We start to see people come flooding to us, just as they did to Jesus, no flyers, no banners, no radio advertisement. The world doesn’t need to come to church once a week, they need Jesus and He’s living in you. It’s time to take Him out of the four walls and into the world… He really likes it out there!

What do you think?

What do you think about evangelism? Do you think we are effective in our reaching out to a broken world? What needs to change?

Is it something you do once in a while or is it a lifestyle you embrace daily?

Phil Drysdale