Why Is Evangelism Important Today?
Evangelism is important because most Christian nations in the world, such as America and South Korea, the top mission-sending countries in the world now have less than 3% of their next-generation following Jesus. Now is more important than ever to understand and renew what we believe evangelism is and how we do it, and how we make it part of the regular lifestyle that we’re supposed to be having with Jesus.
Evangelism is a forgotten term these days.
Ninety-five percent of all Christians have never won a soul to Christ.
Eighty percent of all Christians do not consistently witness for Christ.
Less than two percent are involved in the ministry of evangelism.
Seventy-one percent do not give toward the financing of the Great Commission.
Why Is Evangelism The Heartbeat Of God?
There are multiple places where Jesus shows how much He cares about the lost. One example is the parable of the lost sheep. It says that Jesus can leave the 99 that are found inside of the flock which are essentially those that are being discipled with a shepherd and then go after the one that is lost and that is where evangelism comes in. He’s willing to leave everything so that these people can be found.
Luke 15:4 (ESV) “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?
What does evangelism mean in the Bible?
Why does God love evangelism so much? What is evangelism? Evangelism in the Bible, in Greek, essentially means to preach the good news.
Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance
Evangelist.
From euaggelizo; a preacher of the gospel — evangelist.
See GREEK euaggelizo
There are key plays of preaching the good news that we have to understand. What is it about being a messenger of Jesus Christ and what He did with the gospel? The good teaching on that is the five-point gospel that gives us a full understanding of what it means.
- Creation – God created the heavens and earth.
- Fall of mankind – We chose to rebel against God. The cost of our sin is death.
- Jesus substitution – Jesus paid the price of death for our sins
- Exchange of life – We have to fully exchange our life for Jesus, so to be freed from the penalty of sin.
- Eternal consequences – Depending on our choice, we either receive eternal damnation for our sins, or eternal reward for wholeheartedly obeying and working for Jesus.
That’s the entire story of the gospel.
Every time we preach, we need to make sure that we share the fullness of the context of evangelism, and depending on who we’re evangelizing to, we want to emphasize on sharing the whole picture. We want to emphasize specific parts that they may need more understanding and what evangelism is not.
What evangelism is not
Evangelism despite what people say, is not anti-relational. Baseline of evangelism is actually just organic evangelism. It is being relational. That is eventually what evangelism is at its foundation. Evangelism is not a place to give us the right to condemn people, judge people, be pretty critical about people, be self-righteous. Evangelism should be coming from a place of humility, knowing that all of us need Jesus regardless of who we are and how long we’ve been saved or what we’ve been saved from and how many people we see save and how good our record is. The reality is, without the blood of Jesus, all of us will be going to hell. Understanding this graceful evangelism is very key to understanding how to be effective in it and also how not to shut people off.
Why evangelism so important?
Evangelism is so important today because we are being affected by a the values of a godless society. Divorce, pornography, suicide, trafficking, and more are at an all-time high.
- Youth Suicide Rate Increased 56% in Decade ((https://www.wsj.com/articles/youth-suicide-rate-rises-56-in-decade-cdc-says-11571284861)
- 3 million adults 18 and older attempted suicide in one year, with 1.1 million making plans to commit suicide. Looking at younger teenagers, suicide is the third leading cause of death of individuals aged from 10 to 14.( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_suicide_in_the_United_States)
- About 40 to 50 percent of married couples in the United States divorce (https://www.apa.org/topics/divorce/)
- The first exposure to pornography among boys is 12 years old (https://www.covenanteyes.com/2015/04/10/10-shocking-stats-about-teens-and-pornography/)
- Internet and social media addictions affect 210 million people worldwide. Social media addiction effects include sleep disruption among 4 in 10 young adults in the US. 90% of young adults in the US actively use social media. Generation Z spends the most time on social media (2 hours and 55 minutes per day). (https://leftronic.com/social-media-addiction-statistics/)
It says in Timothy that there’s going to be all of these negative impacts in society and the way that we’re supposed to be responding to that is by evangelism.
2 Timothy 3:1-7 (ESV) But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. [2] For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, [3] heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, [4] treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, [5] having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. [6] For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, [7] always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.
It also says that we should be ready in season and out of season to be able to preach the gospel.
2 Timothy 4:1-2 (ESV) I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: [2] preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.
What he’s talking about is being able to understand the skill and the wielding of evangelism as a tool in general as a disciple of Jesus. But then he’s also sharing it emotionally. Because this is the last letter that Paul sent to Timothy and he’s sharing his heart.
Why evangelism doesn’t work or fails
Sometimes evangelism doesn’t work because we haven’t identified a Person of Peace. We’re also not confident in the skill of evangelism. We need more practice. We may not even be organized in a way that we can be effective evangelists. We want to be able to have all three of these things:
- We have to have the skill to do it. We have to be able to know who to work with.
- We also need to have the Holy Spirit with us so that we understand what we need to be doing next and who He is working on and that will help us identify people with peace.
- Then we have to organize our way in such a way that we have the rhythm of evangelism inside of our daily life.
Why evangelism is a call to intercession
For us to be effective in evangelism, we need the heart of Jesus and His spiritual lifestyle. That requires us to pray and stand in the gap for those who can’t pray. This is in twofold: one is: we ask the Lord, to open up their hearts to the gospel and have mercy on them, even if they’re rebellious. An example is Moses, he prayed that God would have mercy on the people that he was leading, because they weren’t praying for themselves (Exo 32:30). Jesus also does that as well for us as the Intercessor for all of creation.
Exodus 32:30 (ESV) The next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”
Romans 8:34 (ESV) Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
We’re called to do the same thing; to intercede for those who need evangelism.
The second half of this is we ask the Lord to show us who is already open and who’s a person of peace.
Matthew 9:37-38 (ESV) Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; [38] therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
The person of peace is very key because once we identify who the people of peace are, we have a lot higher chance of success because we already identified who the Holy Spirit is operating through and who’s saying yes. The only place you get them is from a place of prayer.
Why evangelism is good
Evangelism is good because it’s sharing the gospel, and all of these things are key components of who we are as disciples. So, Jesus is telling us to be the salt and the light. Those are two positive things. Salt and light are to bring revelation to darkness. It’s being able to expose what real truth is. We want to do this not just by ourselves, but we want to be on the top of the hill. All those attributes are positive attributes of advancing God’s kingdom. That’s why we need to do it regularly.
Matthew 5:13-16 (ESV) “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. [14] “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. [15] Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. [16] In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
What is effective evangelism training?
Evangelism training has multiple categories:
- Revelation: understanding what it means in the Scripture.
- Hands-on: being able to practically do it.
- Role modeling or mentoring so that someone could actually model you their experience.
- Your own personal experience, so that you could grow and develop your relationship with Jesus, for evangelism.
Evangelists can be effective in various parts of training. We have a workshop that you could look out for.
What does evangelism look like?
There are multiple ways of doing evangelism. The typical way of thinking about evangelism is one man preaching to 1,000 people. But essentially evangelism is predominantly done one on one inside of relationships. A majority of the effect of evangelism is by authentic relationships; loving each other even in closed nations.
What is evangelism and discipleship?
Evangelism and discipleship go hand in hand. In the Bible, Jesus went from evangelizing into discipling. The amount of investment that He gave into different types of people for discipleship was different. He didn’t invest into everybody the way He invested into His apostles. Even the way that He invested into His apostles is not the same way He did to His top three closest apostles. Evangelism to discipleship operates the same way. Not everyone is going to be evangelized the same way or discipled the same way. But they ultimately go down that journey of hearing the good news of the gospel, then moving into living a lifestyle in their new identity in Jesus.
What evangelism entails
Evangelism often starts with felt needs being met, then the spiritual need. Felt needs are compassion, entertainment, signs and wonders, healings. The real need is Jesus. Essentially, evangelism is going to have a presentation of the gospel, some type of call to action for the repentance of sins and wholehearted obedience to Jesus Christ and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It’s essentially supposed to end up there, basically. Regardless of how you start evangelism or you go through the process of evangelizing, you’re ultimately going to have some point of being a witness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it to be actually evangelism.
When do we do evangelism?
Essentially everything that you learn in the first 30 days of your walk with Jesus is what you’ll be doing for the next 30 years. That’s just understanding the same concept of what you teach somebody, when they’re young, they’re going to keep for the rest of their lives. Evangelism should be taught that even at the point of salvation, it’s a part of our lifestyle. It should be done immediately. We should evangelize throughout our entire walk with Jesus.
Proverbs 22:6 (ESV) Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Evangelism is something that as Jesus states in Matthew 28, that we will continue doing until the end of age.
Matthew 28:18 (ESV) And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
How evangelism works where you live
A great place to do the Great Commission is where you live, there could be certain things that you could do. One is you could see the greatest needs of your community. Such as if there are people that are hungry, sick, elderly, single moms, there could also be loneliness. Maybe kids need to play sports. Maybe families need help in a certain way or even a friend to listen to. There are multiple ways you can do evangelism just by where you live.
Where is evangelism illegal?
Evangelism is still illegal in a lot of places of the world. In Asia, for example, 70% of the countries there can legally kill Christians for evangelism and conversion. The evangelism while it may be open in places like America, where you don’t get killed or physically persecuted, it’s still a blessing to have a nation that is open. Evangelists will become more persecuted as time progresses before the return of Jesus.
Approximately 215 million Christians now experience high, very high, or extreme levels of persecution; that means 1 in 12 Christians live where Christianity is “illegal, forbidden, or punished,” according to Open Doors researchers.
What is child evangelism?
We can see the next generation be transformed by evangelizing children. This transformation will allow us to have Jesus’ values in every sphere of society. Bringing the Gospel to them is the first step.
Child evangelism, one of the most effective ways of evangelizing is called evangelizing the youth, as 80% of all evangelism. Converts come before the age of 18 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_evangelism_movement).
Who can do evangelism?
Everyone’s supposed to be doing evangelism. In the Bible, it does share that there are evangelistic gifts.
1 Corinthians 12:9-10 (ESV) to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, [10] to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.
There’s also the ministry of an evangelist.
Ephesians 4:11 (ESV) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,
Everyone is asked to do the work of an evangelist.
2 Timothy 4:5 (ESV) As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
Everyone that’s a disciple, at the foundation of the gospel, and following Jesus is called to be a witness.
A Call to Evangelism
We are all called to do the work of an evangelist. Whether it is at home or at work, or with family or friends. By evangelizing those around us, motivated by the unconditional, sacrificial divine love of God, we can see God’s kingdom advance the way He desires it. Imagine if every believer in the world evangelized their friends, family, and co-workers. We would have a different society! Imagine if everyone we evangelized was wholeheartedly discipled. The power of evangelism and discipleship together is transformation! Now that you know what evangelism is, let’s go out and do it together!
