In recent years, evangelism has meant a Church organized “soul-winning” effort in which an open invitation is given to the Church members to meet at a given time to either canvas a residential area with door hangers and tracts, or to go door to door to make personal contacts and share the good news of the gospel. However it is performed, it seems that the Churches have taken on the burden of making sure the community is evangelized. Some Christians recognize the personal responsibility to evangelize, and set aside personal time for themselves to make visits, or to hand out tracts. But is this really what evangelism is? Does evangelism mean to just simply tell others about Christ? I don’t think so… I believe there is more to it than simply ‘preaching the gospel’.

Here are a couple of passages that are typically used to draw our conclusions about evangelism:

Matthew 28:19-20 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, [even] unto the end of the world. Amen.

Acts 5:42 And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.

First of all, I would like to point out that neither of these passages imply that door-to-door salesman-like evangelism is the ‘only’ method approved by the Bible. Secondly, neither of these passages imply that it is the duty of the Churches to organize evangelism. I know, this may sound completely contrary to what you have been taught and what you believe; but before you turn me off, I ask you to hear me out.

While Church-wide evangelism can be effective, it is by no means the most appropriate method of evangelism and is certainly not the most efficient. Anyone who has been involved with organized soul-winning knows that Churches that organize evangelism typically only have about 3-5% of the membership show up. To me, that seems like a problem. No Church can efficiently evangelize a community with only 3-5% of the membership participating. Unless your Church has 100% of community as members… then evangelism is superfluous. Of course 100% saturation is a rarity. In most cases, for the Christian sharing their faith to be effective, a certain level of trust and credibility must be established with the prospective convert before they will give a second thought to the message being presented. This cannot be done in 3 minutes standing at a door with a crying toddler in the next room. The door to door soul winner has a disadvantage right from the start because they have no credibility at all to present their message; but shouldn’t that person have already heard the gospel from one of the dozens or hundreds of people he or she comes in contact with on a daily basis? What about the Christian lady at work that sits at the next desk over; or the man that bags her groceries; or the teller at the bank she visits regularly? Why didn’t she already hear the good news from one of those people? Surely a Christian that has regular contact with a prospective convert has an advantage over a door to door soul winner because they have had the opportunity to present themselves as a living epistle; as the Apostle Paul described the Christians in Corinth:

2Co 3:2-3 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: [Forasmuch as ye are] manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.

Now, I realize that Churches have taken up organizing evangelism because there is an obvious lack in personal evangelism by Christians on their own; but to me, this seems like the wrong approach. The duty of the Church is to edify the Saints through preaching and teaching. If the ‘Saints’ aren’t evangelizing (which they are not, even when organized soul-winning is available) it is a symptom that the Saints aren’t growing and being edified by the Church. It seems that a more efficient evangelism project would consist of discipling the members that your Church already has, and helping them to grow personally in their relationship with the Lord that they don’t need to have a 2 hour slot dedicated to knocking doors in order for them to evangelize… they will be evangelizing in every situation and circumstance they find themselves in, in their daily lives.

In this scenario, you will have more people sharing the gospel, and doing it more often than a few people going out knocking on random doors like a vacuum salesman. Not that God can’t use that, I know He can. But I don’t think that’s necessarily what Acts 5:42 was describing. I think Acts 5:42 was describing people going about their daily lives from sun up to sun down while sharing the gospel with those they came in contact with. I believe this is what was intended when our Lord commanded us to take the gospel into every nation, and I believe this is what was being described in Acts 5:42 when Jesus Christ was being preached daily in every house and in the Temple.

It seems Churches (in more areas than just this one) take the responsibility of the Holy Spirit working in believers upon themselves… to MAKE things happen that God would do through His children if they would only trust Him. Churches need to focus on feeding the flock God has given them, and stop neglecting the flock in their determination to gain more sheep.