A conversation with two evangelism experts reveals some helpful insights into a challenging subject.

__

Evangelism can be a tricky word. It evokes all sorts of emotions and pictures in our minds, and often, they’re not very positive, and yet the Church is called to evangelise and communicate the good news of Jesus to the world in our generation.

How do we hold the two things in tension? 

It’s an important question to answer for ourselves personally.

Often we can default to thinking someone else will do the evangelism. Someone more proficient and more gifted than us. In time we begin to doubt whether evangelism something we should be doing at all, or feel guilty that we’re not doing more in this area.

The bible is clear that evangelism is a key part of the ministry of the Church and always has been. Think about your own journey to faith. There must have been one or two people who were there in the background praying for you and foreground, pointing you to Jesus. For some it might have been a friend, for others it might have been a family member, or a colleague, or youth leader.

The point is, for centuries, God has given the Church the ‘grace’ or gift of evangelism – the act of sharing the good news of Jesus, with those around us.

Given the upheaval and devastation of the last couple of years, there are a lot of people asking questions about faith and life. As a result we wanted to make sure we had space in the Stronger 2022 programme for us to talk about evangelism and to provide some tips on how to navigate what seems like quite a complicated terrain.

That’s why we invited Stephen Hance (director of Evangelism for Church of England) and Sonia Duraturo (member of the College of Evangelists) to a panel discussion on this topic of ‘Evangelism in 2022’. We’ll release the recording of the whole session in due course, but wanted to share a few reflections in the meantime.

There were a bunch of things that stood out to me: 

What do we mean by Evangelism

If I were to ask you that question, what would you say? I asked this question to Stephen Hance and he said:

‘I want to keep it simple. I think evangelism is the task of communicating the faith in such a way that it's designed to engender faith or encourage faith in others who don't presently share it. And so I want to make it broad, and I want to make it narrow, I want to make it broad in the sense that it doesn't have to be, you know, somebody standing on a platform giving a talk….I think it's any communication which is designed to engender or create faith in somebody doesn't share it…but I also want to make it narrow in that, you know, in that sense that sometimes people say, ‘Well, you know, our evangelism is we run a food bank’, or ‘we do we have street pastors’, and I want to say it's fantastic … but it's not in and of itself evangelism. Evangelism is the bit where we actually bring in a message where there's words about Jesus, and about how you can come to know Jesus for yourself….’

I find this idea of making it broad and narrow really helpful. Not only is that releasing but it’s also focussing. There’s no confusion about what it means, but it also gives me permission to work that out for my own context.

Why do we struggle with Evangelism

I think part of the issue we struggle with evangelism is what we referred to above, but I wanted to put to Stephen Hance and Sonia Duraturo why evangelism seems to be the thing we struggle with most in mission, in contrast say, to the other marks of mission (There are 5 Marks of Mission described by the Anglican Communion which are really helpful. You can find them here).

Some of the reasons that were raised in the session include:

-Feeling Inadequate: we don’t feel like we will know the answers to questions

-Feeling inarticulate: we don’t feel like we can give a punchy talk like well known evangelists

-Feeling fearful: Sonia mentioned that 87% of Christians in a survey said that they lacked confidence talking about their faith

I recognise some of those things in my own life. What about you? Are there any other things that should be on this list as reasons why we struggle with evangelism? 

Evangelism or Witness?

I raised the question in the discussion about the difference between evangelism and witnessing. I think sometimes we can think they are they same thing, but I wanted to share an illustration Stephen used to help us understand these terms a bit more. He said this:

‘I think every Christian is called to be a witness. And I would go further than that, actually, and say, every Christian is a witness. The question is whether we're a good witness or not. And to be a witness is to be able to talk about what you have seen and heard and experienced. So, say there's a car accident in my road…and the police say ‘what happened?’, all I can say is, ‘Well, I heard a bang, and a crash, and then I went out and this is what I saw’. And somebody else will say, ‘Well, I was walking down the street, actually, and I saw this car swerve’, and so on. So people kind of piece that together, and maybe get close to the whole story. But all I bring to the table is, I saw this, I heard this. And as witnesses, we are called, to be able to say similar things: this is what my experience of Christ's work in my life has meant to me… When it comes to evangelism, it’s a step beyond that, where you use that as part of the communication of the Gospel, of God's invitation to each of us to know God through through Jesus Christ…’ 

I thought this was really helpful and a freeing message to hear, and I loved my conversation with Stephen and Sonia.

The above were just snapshots of a longer, 50 minute conversation in a session called ‘Evangelism in 2022’ as part of the Stronger 2022 programme. We’ll be releasing the full recording in the coming weeks.