ANNOUNCER: What is the primary role of the local church? Is it evangelism? And as believers, what is our responsibility in regard to evangelism? How can we be simple and clear when we evangelize? Some things we will talk about today. Glad you have joined us, friend, here on Grace in Focus. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. We are located in North Texas and our website is faithalone.org. Join us there to find out more about our national annual conference coming up soon, May 18th through the 21st. By the way, you are invited, and if it’s your first time, registration fee is waived. It’s going to be a great time of fellowship and learning, recreation and VBS for the kids. Hope you’ll go to that website, get information that you need, and get signed up. And love to have you with us. The website is faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s discussion, here is Bob Wilkin, along with Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right, Bob, we’ve got a question from John. He’s asking about evangelism. Two part question. One, what is the role of evangelism in the local church? And two, what is the role of evangelism in the life of believer? Should it be a distinctive or a focus for the church and for the believer? 

BOB: Right, so I know that John’s on the committee with his church to find a new pastor. These questions kind of come out of that because one of the people who sent their resume and response said, the person said they have a real burden for the lost. And it kind of generated these questions in John’s mind. 

I would say a few things. First of all, I think it’s important to recognize that many churches craft their worship service around outreach. While the sermons might sometimes be discipleship-oriented, they would always have an evangelistic appeal at the end. They would always have an opportunity to come forward. And however the person would say it, to receive Christ, to give your life to Christ, to put your faith in Christ, whatever the pastor would say, that was a big emphasis in Baptist churches. And it’s a big emphasis in lots of churches. 

I think that’s a mistake in light of Scripture. As we see in Scripture, the purpose of the local church is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. Could you turn, Sam, to Ephesians 4:11-12, I think maybe even verse 13? Because it talks about the various gifted people he gave to the early church and what their purpose was. 

SAM: Yep, starting in 11, he says, “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ till we all come to unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” 

BOB: And did it say for the equipping? 

SAM: “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry.” 

BOB: Yeah, so this reminds me of a Brethren saying: this man came to a Plymouth Brethren church and they have a time of silence before, where people can kind of prepare their hearts for the service. And this man who wasn’t Plymouth Brethren turned to the man next to him and quietly said, when does the service begin? And the man looked over at him and said, the service begins when the meeting is over. 

And there’s a lot of truth in that, in that we are designed in the church service to learn about how to serve Christ more effectively in both evangelism and discipleship. And then we go out into the world and we evangelize people and we disciple people. And another passage I think of related to the purpose of the local church is Hebrews 10. That’s the one where the author of Hebrews encourages us not to miss church. What does he say there, Sam, in Hebrews 10:23, 24 and 25? 

SAM: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

BOB: And the day there refers to the second coming of Christ and the Judgment Seat of Christ and the point is we’re encouraging one another in the local church. And so the purpose of our gathering is to be equipped and to be encouraged. It’s also a time, of course, for prayer in 1 Timothy 2 we are to be praying for kings and all the government officials and all those who are in authority over us. 

But the purpose of the worship service is not evangelism. In fact, the case can be made that the unbeliever who comes to church, at least in the early church they would often be positioned off to the side and they would either stand or they would sit in an area designated for unbelievers and they were not to take part in the Lord’s Supper meeting, that sort of thing. 

But I remember when I was at Dallas Seminary, we had a class discussion after we wrote papers on justification by faith alone. This was a Greek class going through the book of Romans and we had written this paper and we were talking about evangelism. One of the students raised the point, well what are we going to do when we go out and become pastors? How are we going to evangelize the people that visit, the people in our congregations, etc.? And I had just come off four years on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ where our primary purpose was evangelism, right? We would evangelize students, now we would disciple, we tried to start action groups and we would disciple them as well, but evangelism was a huge part of what we did. 

I remember this one student said, well you know I don’t have the gift of evangelism and so he said I won’t be evangelizing, he said that’s going to be the job of the people who have the gift of evangelism who are in my church. And I kind of chuckled to myself because I thought, I wonder if he feels the same way about the gift of giving. Let’s see, no, nobody in the church is going to give anything to the church except those few that have the gift of giving. Or how about the gift of helps? Well nobody in the church is going to help except those few people who have the gift of helps and nobody in the church is going to be merciful except for those few who have the gift of mercy. 

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BOB: I remember what Dr. Ryrie said, he said, although we only have one or maybe a few of the gifts, we’re called to do all of the gifts. In other words, if I don’t have the gift of teaching, I’m still to teach my children the Word of God. I’m still to teach those who are open in my family or in my neighborhood or whatever. If I don’t have the gift of evangelism, I’m still to evangelize. 

In fact, remember that Paul told Timothy to do the work of an evangelist. He didn’t tell Timothy since you’re an evangelist, evangelize. He said, do the work of an evangelist. And evidently the purpose of the evangelist is to help the other people be more effective in evangelism, right? To equip them to be better at evangelism. And we only have one person that I can recall in the New Testament who’s called an evangelist. That was Philip. In Acts chapter 8, he first evangelizes this Ethiopian eunuch who’s going back from Jerusalem to North Africa. And then he goes on to Samaria and evangelizes a group of people in Samaria. And he’s called Philip the Evangelist. But aside from that, we don’t have anybody else who’s called that. 

So I would say, look, yes, there are people who have the gift of evangelism, but their purpose isn’t to go around to the local church in evangelizing people in the local church. Presumably the people in your local church should be believers except for those who visit. But the purpose of the evangelist is to train the people in the church to be more effective at evangelism. It’s a huge mistake to think, my whole reason to be left here on earth is to evangelize it. You ever heard that one, Sam? 

The purpose of believers on earth is to glorify God. And yes, that includes evangelism, but that’s not our only purpose. If at the Judgment Seat of Christ, you or I are found to be great evangelists, but we were walking in the darkness and we were not confessing our sins, that would not be a good thing. Of course, I don’t think there’s any such person. But let’s say a person was a great evangelist, but a terrible husband, terrible father, a terrible neighbor, a really grumpy person, but they were a good evangelist. Well, that’s great. That one area of their life is great, but the rest of it, not so good. 

So we’re called to be believers who are glorifying God in all areas. 

SAM: Yeah, I mean, if we’re called to be like Christ, if you look at the four gospels, the gospel of John, Christ did a lot of evangelism, but the other three gospels, he did a lot of other things, a lot of teaching and good works and disciple-making. So if we want to have a full experience of being as Christ-like as possible, then evangelism, I think is an important part, but it’s only a part. 

And I think what you were saying about the church’s role is accurate that church service or worship service is not really meant to be evangelistic, but that part of equipping the saints is equipping your congregation with the ability to evangelize, even if they don’t necessarily have the gift. We should all be evangelists, but we should also be teachers and preachers and fathers and everything so. 

BOB: Yeah, I’ve got two other quick points. Number one, when we evangelize, the crucial thing is that we’re clear. We need to make sure we’re sharing the promise of life to those who believe, not to those who commit, to those who turn from their sins, for those who promise to serve God or promise to fall, just to those who believe in Jesus. 

Another thing is, I think it’s important that whoever is preaching in the local church does so verse by verse, preaching the whole counsel of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. And as you come to passages that deal with the promise of life, of course you’re going to make that clear in your congregation. But we don’t just routinely say, every week I’m going to be going ahead and making my message evangelistic or clarifying the promise of life, when it comes up I do, on others I might mention that, but it’s not something I have to do every week. 

Well, I would encourage all of you to be people who share the simple and clear message of the promise of eternal life that can never be lost to all who believe in Jesus. It’s a wonderful message, but it’s not all of our lives, it’s an important part of our lives. And in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus. 

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