Week after week I travel around the country working with church leaders, training and consulting with them in an area of ministry I call church vitalization. There are days when my focus is on the planting of new churches, other days when my focus is on the revitalization of declining churches, and still others when my focus is somewhere in between. In every case, I advocate on behalf of lost people by encouraging, prodding, pushing, and even exhorting church leaders toward outreach and evangelism.
Two weekends ago I was on Hilton Head Island, SC, and this past weekend I was in Gastonia, NC. This coming weekend I’ll be in Anderson, SC, followed by a two-day trip on Monday to Memphis, TN. Next month includes Indianapolis, Detroit and Los Angeles among others. I work with many pastors and leaders from many churches in many parts of the country and one common denominator stands out. That common denominator is that the typical Christian in the typical Christian church has a fear of evangelism (evangephobia) and is ill equipped to share the Christian faith.
The past two Sundays I have had the privilege of preaching at a couple of different churches as well as leading combined adult Sunday School classes. I have taken these opportunities to speak about sharing faith using a schema that I developed over the summer. The response has been very positive so I have decided to take several Tuesday mornings of this blog to unpack this new schema or outline for faith sharing. I’m calling this short blog series Go Purple because the Great Commission is all about going and making disciples and because the schema includes the use of a purple wristband.
Part 1 considers whether outreach and evangelism are synonymous or distinct. In many Christian circles these two words are used almost interchangeably as if their meanings are synonymous. I suggest that they are not. Outreach happens when people of faith from inside the church connect with people without faith on the outside of the church in order to build credible and sustainable relationships. This is typically done through engaging needs and interests of those on the outside. Outreach is of great value and often is a prerequisite to evangelism, but outreach should not be mistaken for evangelism.
Evangelism happens when people without faith are connected to the crystal clear Gospel of Jesus Christ. Until the Gospel of Jesus Christ is made crystal clear, evangelism has not happened. This is a crucial distinction (note that the word crucial derives from the same root word as do the words cross, crucifix and crucifixion). While outreach might be necessary to open a door to evangelism, outreach in and of itself is not evangelism.
Why is this important? It’s important because I’m finding in church after church that outreach is being mistaken for evangelism. When I’m working with leaders from these various churches, I always ask what kinds of evangelistic strategies are being deployed. In most cases, the strategies or events or activities that are reported are clearly outreach, by my definition, and not evangelism.
Understand that I highly value outreach and encourage churches to increase and expand their outreach efforts with great resolve and intentionality. But, please, don’t mistake outreach for evangelism. If there is no crystal clear Gospel on the table, there has been no evangelism.
