Doing the Work of an Evangelist

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Acts 1:8

Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 11.

The purpose of this chapter is to explain why Jesus wants us to do the work of an evangelist, and how to share the Good News with our friends, relatives, neighbors and all neglected people.

Find in Acts 9:10-27 things that were done after Paul’s conversion, to bring him into fellowship with other Christians:

Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 11.

Evangelism is complete when new believers repent from a life of sin, receive baptism and become part of a church body with which they practice the new life by the Holy Spirit who dwells in them. A church planting task group, or small group in a cell church, needs people who have a spiritual gift of evangelism. Such a gift is active wherever people turn from their sin to follow Jesus. The gift of evangelism, like all other spiritual gifts, should be used in harmony with the other gifts found in the body of Christ.

Evangelists who work independently from churches usually contribute little to church planting and sometimes cause damaging confusion in a new field. They often push people to make decisions, then leave them without pastoral care. They are like a farmer who scatters seed recklessly on a mountainside then returns years later looking in vain for a crop. Such irresponsible ministry seldom adds anything lasting to a church planting movement, except confusion. Such evangelists usually present Jesus merely as a ticket to heaven or a cheap answer to every their problems, making out Jesus to be a mere servant at people’s service.

Evangelism that offers such cheap grace can inoculate people group against the kind of discipleship that Jesus commands and that results in a Spirit-led movement to Christ. The evangelistic messages in the book of Acts proclaimed Jesus as both Lord and Savior. True evangelists proclaimed God’s command to leave the things of this world and to follow Him under His Kingship. Call people to change loyalties, to turn from serving themselves to serving the living God, as described in 2 Corinthians 5:14 and Galatians 5:13.

Some modern evangelists neglect repentance. They justify this omission be saying that repentance would be "salvation by works". Even some theologians have claimed that salvation does not require repentance, only faith. They reason that repentance would be a ‘work’ and that works do not save us, supposing that the repentance mentioned in the New Testament was only for a transition age for Jewish Christians who still followed the Old Testament. Such theologians perhaps mean well but obviously lack experience in church planting on new fields. If you overlook repentance when calling people to Christ, you will not get healthy churches. Jesus commanded all of His followers to repent in order to enter His Kingdom (Matthew 3:2 and 4:17; Mark 1:15; 2:17; Luke 13:3,5 and 24:46-48).

Jesus and His apostles emphasized repeatedly that repentance is for both Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews), in (Luke 24:47; Acts 11:18; 17:30; 20:21, 1 Peter 3:9 and Revelation 2:1).

Jesus taught repentance in various ways. He called it being born again spiritually, dying as a grain of wheat to bring forth new life, receiving God’s indwelling Holy Spirit, entering His kingdom as a little child, leaving one’s sins and turning to God.

Repentance means turning from sin to God. This transformation includes receiving His Holy Spirit who produces in us what the Bible calls the fruit of the Spirit. He brings love, joy, peace, patience, goodness and other virtues. Such fruit is not of one’s own making; it is the result of the Holy Spirit producing holiness in believers, making them holy. Believers bear fruit because God’s Holy Spirit enters their hearts and begins an eternal transformation process; it is His fruit in them. Thus, biblical repentance requires God’s work; we humans must let Him do it. Thus, repentance cannot be construed as humans saving themselves by their good works.

Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 11.

Jesus said to his followers, "Open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest". John 4:35

The apostle Paul sought to evangelize where Jesus had not been preached, where he would not build on another man’s foundation, in (Romans 15:20-22).

Jesus still requires that some of His apostles, or missionaries serve on fields that are neglected, for the church is to go to all nations, as commanded in Matthew 28:19; John 4:35 and 2 Corinthians 10:15-16.

The word "nations" in Matthew 28:19 means specific people groups. Help your churches to look at people groups—not just nations in the political sense. China, for example, has hundreds of people groups, or nations, in the biblical sense of the word.

Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 11.

Use the promised "keys" to witness with power. We receive this power from the Holy Spirit who anoints us for the specific purpose of witnessing for Christ, as promised in Acts 1:8. This power to witness includes the authority to bind or loose, that is, to hold people accountable for a sin or to forgive it. Jesus symbolized it with the phrase "keys to the kingdom." He promised this power to bind or forgive first to Peter and later to all of His disciples, as recorded in Matthew 16:16-19, in 18:18 and in John 20:23. Jesus related the binding and loosing to forgiveness and to building His church through witnessing. The Matthew 16 text relates this power of binding and loosing to invading Satan’s kingdom in this world, promising that the "gates of hell will not prevail".

The Matthew 18:15-22 passage relates it the power to correcting sinners in the church, thereby keeping the kingdom of this world from infiltrating His kingdom. In 1 Corinthians chapter 5, the apostle Paul instructed a congregation to exclude, that is, to "bind" an unrepentant offender and exclude him from fellowship. In 2 Corinthians 2:4-10 it appears that the offender had repented in response to the congregation’s discipline, and the apostle urged them to forgive him, to "loose" his sin. Whether binding or loosing, God authorizes His church to act on earth in Jesus’ all-powerful Name to deal with sin in the power of the Holy Spirit and with His guidance.

Keys, then, are a symbol of authority to forgive, and are related to witnessing for Christ with the power of the Holy Spirit, as we read in Matthew 16:15-20; 18:18 and John 20.23.

Read Acts 3:1 - 4:13 to find an example of how the apostles witnessed with power.

• What act of power did the apostles do in Jesus’ name?
• What, besides Jesus’ death, did they proclaim in their message to the people?
• Whom did the apostles’ teaching disturb and what did they do?
• Before whom did they stand trial the next day?
• Why were those who sat in judgment over the apostles surprised at their defense?

When Westerners begin working in other cultures, they usually find that they have to simplify their gospel presentation. The essential gospel message is about:

• The death and resurrection of the Son of God,
• Eternal forgiveness of sins for all who repent and believe in Him,
• Our entrance into the new Kingdom, into a new, eternal, loving society of believers filled with the Spirit of God.

Western missionaries must not export their individualistic approach to witnessing. Also, Westerners often neglect Jesus’ resurrection. The apostles preached about the resurrection more than do most Western preachers. Throughout the book of Acts, it was the main point of their witness. Indeed, Jesus died for people’s sins; he was also raised back to life to give life to those who believe in him. The same emphasis appears in the Epistles. God raised Jesus from the dead and promises to raise believers with Him. This is history’s most powerful, triumphant event, the supremely good news that the Holy Spirit uses, along with the promise of forgiveness through Jesus’ sacrificial death, to convert those whom he has convicted of their sin.

Some Westerners, armed with a logical "plan of salvation," stress almost exclusively the legal value of Jesus’ death to forgive sin, neglecting His resurrection. Believers are risen in with Christ in the same way that they died with Him: by faith. His resurrection is the vehicle that raises believers to new life, to eternal life. Believers’ participation in His resurrection is the only way for humans to receive the gift of eternal life, as affirmed in John 11:21-26 and 1 Corinthians 15:12-26. Believers receive this life together with others in a united body, as taught in Ephesians chapters 2 and 3.

Christ’s sacrificial death and forgiveness for sinners are precious truths, but they are not the whole gospel. Those truths underscore our justification by faith as taught in Romans chapters 1 through 5. But those chapters do not prepare a new believer to understand the Spirit-filled that he will live in the power of Jesus’ resurrection, as taught in chapters 6 through 8. These chapters reveal the new life believers have by participating in Christ’s resurrection. To proclaim only that by Jesus’ death sinners are justified tells only half of the truth. Such a deficient gospel proclamation leaves seekers without the good news about the new resurrection life in Christ, unaware that believers should be practicing the righteousness that is imparted to us through our participation in Jesus’ resurrection. Biblical evangelism proclaims not only justification but also the power to live a new, holy life. Evangelism that fails to bring people to repentance and the new life creates churches that are too weak to multiply.

In many cases, witnessing for Jesus with power includes praying for people’s physical healing. Salvation should result in spiritual and emotional healing, but does it guarantee complete physical wholeness in this world? Is physical healing also a result of saving faith during one’s earthly life? 1 Corinthians 15:53 affirms that "this corruptible must clothe itself with the incorruptible" as part of Christ’s redemptive work. Isaiah 53:5 assures that "By His wounds you are healed." But can complete healing from all corruption take place before our resurrection? That is not what 1 Corinthians 15 promises. If that were the case, then few faithful believers would ever die and go to heaven, for there would be perpetual healing on earth. The biblical truth is that Jesus rose from the dead and the same power that raised Him works in us to give us new life, which starts by faith at conversion, as taught in Ephesians 1:18-23.

Some theologians assign the power of the keys only to the original twelve Apostles; others include only the bishops who followed them. Most evangelicals agree that all true believers that are filled with the Holy Spirit can use the keys. Thus, all Christians have the power to bind or loose sins as they witness to an unsaved person or correct a disorderly Christian. What specifically is the power that the Holy Spirit gives to believers, so that they can witness effectively for Christ? Is it courage or a loud voice? No, although there may be times that call for courage and speaking with force. The power is the anointing from God’s Spirit on believers and their testimony as they we declare a person’s forgiveness in Jesus. Believers must trust God to convince sinners by His Spirit to repent and believe through their faithful testimony. The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus in the heart of new believers, not only by convincing them of sin and the need for salvation, but also by loosing (forgiving) their sin before Most Holy God. His work of converting a sinner often depends as much on the faith of the one who witnesses as on that of the new believer. The paralytic lowered through the roof to be healed by Jesus was first saved from his sins because of the faith of his friends (Mark 2:1-12; compare Acts 16:31).

Highly educated people often find it hard to witness with this kind of confidence, to believe for people who are still unable to believe for themselves. Too often they view their witness as mainly a process of transmitting information. They rely more on their logic and the accuracy of their witness, than on God’s power to convey Jesus’ actual forgiveness and life. Less-educated believers often witness more fervently, because they rely consciously on the Spirit’s anointing as they announce the news of forgiveness with supernatural power.

Cited from Church Multiplication Guide, Patterson and Scoggins, William Carey Library, Pasadena, chapter 11.

In some cultures, you can ask a new believer to invite unbelieving friends to an informal gathering. Missionaries might lead such a gathering at first to show the new believer how to do it. Then let him lead similar meetings for friends, coaching him from behind the scenes. These are not worship services or detailed Bible studies. They are simply a means of sharing Christ, like Levi, Zacheus, Cornelius and others did (Luke 5:27-32; 19:1-10 and Acts 10).

Let the new believers decide if they want to be baptized publicly or in private as the Ethiopian eunuch and the Philippian jailer were (Acts chapters 8 and 16). It is their life and jobs that are in danger, not the missionary’s, so let them make the decision themselves. In hostile areas believers should meet secretly "underground" in clusters of tiny house churches or cells. Muslim follows of Jesus may decide to continue going to a mosque to pray, as Paul continued to go to Jewish synagogues. This should be their decision, so let the Holy Spirit lead them.