Evangelists

Evangelists, as people given by Christ to the Church, are primarily trainers in evangelism, sent to show the rest of us how to introduce others to a friendship with Jesus. They are not sent to do the work by themselves! But, because of our Western focus on paid "ministers" and on attendance at church "events," true evangelists tend to be unrecognized and unappreciated.

An “evangelist” (euaggelistes) is a messenger (aggelos) of good things (eu–), a messenger of the good news. (See the discussion of the underlying words in “Angels and Spirits–Basic Word Meanings.”) Even those who are not especially given to the church as evangelists are to “do the work of an evangelist.”¹ But there are some who are specially given to the church to be “evangelists.”² As has already been noted, the modern American church generally applies a rigid pigeonhole to the “office” of evangelist. In common thinking, an evangelist is either a professional “minister” who travels from church to church, or from city to city, holding “evangelistic” or “revival” meetings, or a missionary church planter. Like other paid “ministers,” an evangelist is expected to do the work of the ministry for the rest of us.

            But this modern American version of the “evangelist” is only a pale shadow of the real New Testament evangelist. Recall that the purpose for which all of the Ephesians 4 “offices” were given to the Church is to equip the rest of us to do the work of the ministry.   Evangelists certainly may conduct mass meetings to win the lost—as Philip “the evangelist”³ did in Acts 8.  But this is neither the only nor the primary function of an evangelist. A real New Testament evangelist is not so much a powerful preacher who wins many to Christ by himself as he is a trainer who teaches the rest of us how to introduce others to a friendship with Christ and an organizer who plans group activities for this purpose.            

  This function, however, is very foreign to most of the organized Church, stuck, as it is, in its mentality of considering the work of the church to consist mainly of a series of discrete “services” and other “events” which we must “attend,” rather than as a continuous outreach through the members of the church. To those stuck in this “church event” mentality, any activity which is not directed primarily at getting warm bodies in the pews at scheduled events is considered a waste of time. True evangelism is directed primarily toward building people and their relationships with Christ, not at putting warm bodies in the pews (which comes later and as a by-product).

Thus, true evangelists, that is, trainers in bringing others to Christ, often go unrecognized, because their function is not desired or appreciated by church organizations. To the extent this function is allowed to be performed at all, we generally expect it to be performed by pastors. By the same token, many people who are commonly labeled as “evangelists” because of their powerful and persuasive preaching abilities are really apostles, prophets or teachers mislabeled as “evangelists.” A true evangelist is a mostly trainer in evangelism.

NEXT: Pastors.