Theme: Evangelistic Outreach
‘It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.’ Eph 4:11
When I go to a social occasion where I have to mill and mingle, it is not long before someone asks me what I do for a living. If I say I am a pastor then the next two questions are “What denomination?” and “How big is your church?” Just once I would love to say “Well actually I am a Prophet” and wait to see what the next question would be. The job title of ‘Evangelist’ is quite common nowadays because most people are familiar with Reinard Bonke and Billy Graham, not to mention the notorious telly-evangelists… and I mean ‘not to mention’.
So what then does an evangelist do?Our common answer to this question is determined largely by what we have observed. Most of us have been exposed to the big-stage evangelists who preach to tens of thousands at a time. In terms of this model, an evangelist must be someone who preaches the Gospel of salvation to the masses. I don’t want to sound cynical, but I wonder if, thanks to the well-known Christian TV channels, a lot of unsaved people think that evangelists are professional fund raisers.
Jesus’ master-model for world evangelization was each-one-reach-one-and –teach-one discipleship, so I doubt that Paul had mass evangelistic preaching in mind when he articulated the ‘five-fold’ ministry of Ephesians Four. Actually, he went on to give the job description of the five ministry areas as, ‘ to prepare God’s people for works of service’ (Verse 12). So then, an evangelists main job is to help and equip the members of the church to … make disciples. Now there’s a radical thought!
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