Tag Archives: preach the gospel

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness

The Pillars of Evangelism

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The fields are white unto harvest

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul wrote: “But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry.” (2 Tim 4:5) If we stopped anyone in the street, Christian or atheist,  (OK anyone over 40 who has lived in an English-speaking country), and asked them to name an evangelist and say what they did, we would almost certainly hear the name of Billy Graham and be told that they stood up in public places and preached about Jesus/ God/ the Bible. I think this image of “the evangelist” is still prevalent in the church today, and that “evangelism” is a special activity carried out at special events by a few gifted people, often in full-time ministry and “living by faith; and that the rest of us can only expect to occasionally “witness” or “share our faith” now and then, “sowing seeds” that we do not necessarily expect to see coming to fruition. But I don’t think this is the truth. In fact I think that it is an enfeebling dilution of the legacy that Jesus left to the Church, and doesn’t really help anyone to fulfil their ministry.  If we combine the “Great Commission” verses in Matthew and Mark into one paragraph, we get the following:

“And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.  And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues;  they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover. Teach them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” And they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs.” (Matt 28:18-30 combined with Mark 16: 15-20)

Just as the church has specialist prophets but “All can prophesy,” (1 Cor 14:31) and has specialist pastors and teachers  but we are all called to love one another and to “teach and admonish one another in all wisdom;” (Col 3:16) we are all called, as Timothy was, to do the work of an evangelist and preach the gospel, even though the church also has specialist evangelists. (See Ephesians 4. It’s not the subject of this article, but leadership in every church should comprise all these specialist ministries. I’m just saying… ) So here ere are eight principals, eight “pillars of evangelism,” that we can take from Christ’s command. To do the work of an evangelist properly I think we need to take all of them seriously.

  1. All the world
    We Go into all the world. Our workplace as disciples of Jesus is primarily the world. We don’t expect the world to come to the church; we take the church into the world.

  2. Every creature
    We preach to every creature – old, young, rich and poor. God is no respecter of persons. In the parable of the wedding feast Jesus said: “Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’ So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.” Our commission is to make sure that the hall is filled with guests: whatever they are wearing, rags or riches, is all replaced by the wedding garment.

  3. Saved… condemned
     We preach the full gospel: salvation and condemnation. To preach is to proclaim, with authority, something that has been done, in the manner of a herald. (From the Strong’s definition.)  We are heralds of what Christ has done for us and its consequences, both for those who believe and those who don’t believe.
  • Baptizing them
    We baptize converts in water and we baptize in the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands. “Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,  of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. (Heb 6: 1-2) The Ephesian church was birthed through baptism and the laying on of hands: “When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.” (Acts 19: 5-6) Being filled with the Holy Spirit has experiential results. If we do not ourselves have the faith and the personal experience to pray for someone to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to experience some consequences of that infilling, we need to leave that ministry to someone who does. In the case of the Ephesians, it was Paul. Otherwise we are offering a hungry person cornflakes and just giving them an empty packet.

  • I am with you always
    We go, therefore, knowing the presence of God, who with us always, because we are in Christ, baptized into Him, into His death and His resurrection (Romans 6:3). We operate “in the name of Jesus” because we have been baptized into His identity. A Christian is a “little Christ,” not a partial Christ.

  • All authority
     We go in His authority: When Jesus sent out the seventy, He said “Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” (Luke 10:19) This was before Pentecost. Whether or not it is in the realm of our current experience, we are now in the day of the Greater Things; we are raised together with Him and seated with Him in Heavenly places. We have more authority now than the seventy, not less.
  • These signs will follow
     Knowing what it means to be sent in His name, we go in the full expectation of signs and wonders following the preaching of the gospel. Paul writes: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16) To preach the gospel is to proclaim Christ’s authority over all of heaven and earth, over all the works of the enemy including sickness and demonisation. If we have no expectation of His authority being manifested when we preach “the power of God unto salvation,” we are like people who get into their company car and don’t start the engine. Not only are we going nowhere, but we are not honouring the One who paid with His life for us to have the car in which we have been told to “Go.”
  • Teach them
     Finally, as “fishers of men,” we keep those whom we have caught. Jesus said “Those whom You gave Me, I have kept. And none of them is lost, except the child of perdition.” (John 17:12) God will give us as many as we can keep, therefore we make sure that we teach them all the things that Jesus has commanded us, so that they in turn can go and make disciples.

Jesus said that it’s the harvest field that needs workers, not the seedbed. It’s time the Church took seriously the work of the evangelist, and started reaping.

Go, therefore!

Christian Life, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Rainbows and chickens

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“For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me, Silvanus, and Timothy—was not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes. For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” (2 Cor 1: 19-22)

We have two chickens, called Jessica and Roadrunner. They they live in a Summer house that has been converted to a chicken run: it has a door, which normally stays shut except when we go in to collect the eggs or clean them out etc, and it has a little chicken door the size of a catflap, which opens and shuts automatically on a timer. One morning I looked up the garden and noticed that the door had been left open all night, yet Jessica and Roadrunner hadn’t come down to the house for their morning treat. (They have a little bit of crumbled cheese every morning, mixed with a soaked slice of bread. Don’t ask.) I feared the worst, and began to gear myself up to go into the chicken house and find a pile of feathers left by the visit of Mr Fox. Then as I looked up the garden I saw Roadrunner, then Jessica, emerge from the Summer house through their little door that had just opened on its timer. They had ignored the wide open door, and waited until the timer lifted their flap before coming out. Photos and laughing emojis soon circulated on the family WhatsApp group.

Moving on to rainbows, that glorious symbol of God’s covenant promises, I saw one yesterday and was blessed by a new (well, new for me, anyway) awareness of how  the rainbow is created: the sunlight combining with water can represent the light of the Sun of Righteousness combining with the water of the Holy Spirit affirming the faithfulness of God the Father to keep His promises. And now I’m coming to my point, because it’s with healing in His wings that the Sun of Righteousness arises (Malachi 4:2). Yet how often do we pray for healing for people and see them go away disappointed? Yes, we encourage them, and ourselves, with the promise of Mark 16:18 – “You shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover-” yet we know that as often as not they don’t, and won’t. Instead of faith arising, disappointment niggles. Our prayers feel like they are hitting that little chicken flap before the timer lifts it: it is firmly shut.

And yet as full gospel Christians we know that the promise of healing is there in the Word of God. “You shall lay hands… and they will…” Why don’t we see it as part of our normal Christian experience?

I think it’s because we are waiting for the flap to open and we are missing the door. The context of Mark 16:18 is this: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature… And these signs will follow those who believe: … they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” The sign of healing follows the preaching of the gospel. It’s the gospel that is “the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes,” (Romans 1:16) and as we know, the Greek word translated as salvation means healing of the whole person; body and mind as well as spirit. I had the blessing a couple of weeks ago to spend some time with an evangelist who has seen countless miraculous healings, including six people being raised from the dead. Is he a “better Christian” than me or anyone else that I know? I don’t think so. He is certainly a man of faith and fervent prayer, but I don’t think that is the main point. I think the main point is this: he believes; he preaches the gospel, and signs and wonders follow to confirm the word he preaches.

I think there’s been a separation the Church between healing and preaching the gospel, to the extent even that many evangelical churches who don’t operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit give a call to salvation at all their services, and many churches who do believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are at work in the Body of Christ today will pray for people to be healed but don’t make a habit of preaching the gospel at all their meetings. You need to turn on the switch (preach the gospel) for the light to come on (the power of God to heal). You can’t have the power without the switch, and the switch without the light achieves nothing.

I’ll bring this to land with the rainbow: the water of the Holy Spirit combined with the Sun of the Word of God affirm the promise of the Father to heal. If you know that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Saviour you  have the Sun, and if you are baptised in the Holy Spirit you have the water. Romans 10:8 tells us that ‘“The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart”  (that is, the word of faith which we preach).’ The very experience of being baptised in the Holy Spirit, especially with the evidence of speaking in tongues, is itself the “guarantee” that God will honour His promise to heal, as Paul writes in 2 Cor 1:22 above. The mustard seed of faith is another subject of course, and only you know whether or not you really do believe yourself, or if you have only fed off the faith of other people when it comes to healing. But if you do believe, and if you know that you are baptised in the Holy Spirit, go out and do what Jesus has commissioned us to do: preach the gospel, lay hands on the sick, and they will recover. It’s a promise. The door is wide open; don’t be a chicken. Go out and turn on some lights.

(On the topic of faith – there are a lot of articles in the “Living By Faith” section – “Resurrection Life” isn’t a bad place to start.)

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Pursuing Love

Prepare Ye the way the Lord! Make His paths straight.

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“And whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.“ (Colossians 3:17).

I’ve just come back from a mission trip to Liberia in West Africa, a nation destroyed by civil war in the 1990s and more recently ravaged again by Ebola. Our team spent a week preaching the gospel, doing leadership training, working with women,  children and teenagers, and holding medical clinics. There were eight of us in the team, each with different skills and specialisms, which we all used to one purpose, which was to share the love of Jesus wherever we went, in word and deed. We had a full schedule, and our trip was focused and fruitful. We used different ministries effectively. I think we could say, with some confidence that it was a fulfilment of the injunction of Colossians 3:17: “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

I have mentioned this, not to draw attention to our ministry, but to use it as a model of what we are called to be doing all the time. We are not our own, but were bought with a price (1 Cor 6:20), commissioned to be on mission all the time wherever we are. We have different gifts and ministries, but they are all devoted to one goal, which is for the body of Christ to become “a perfect man“ (Ephesians 4:13) and for the Kingdom Of God to come on Earth as we live through Him and do everything in His name according to Colossians 3:17.

If someone wants to do something in my name, I would want it to be done as if I were doing it; if not, I would not want my name on it. To do something “in Jesus name,“ not does not mean just to use the phrase like a rubber stamp on all our prayers and proclamations, but to live and speak in such a way that Jesus is happy to have His name on what we say and do.  In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes: “For us there is one God, the father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.“ (1 Cor 8:6).  If we live through Him, that means He’s touching everything we do, and everything we do can be a path from heaven to earth.  If  He isn’t touching everything we do, we aren’t living through Him.

One of the biggest problems in Liberia is the lack of roads. One of the greatest empires in the history of mankind was the roman empire. The Romans built a civilisation by building the roads first: once the roads were down, people and supplies could travel to build and strengthen communities. Without the roads, communities in Liberia remain weak and isolated.

Jesus is coming back soon: how well are we building His roads?  The gospel is being preached to all nations: the Queens’s evangelistic funeral service was attended by the heads (or their representatives) of all but two of the world’s nations, and now the TV series “The Chosen” is being watched by millions. End time prophecy is being fulfilled, the world is going up in smoke , global warming has already gone past tipping point, and no policy or man can fix it. Our call is to prepare the Way of the Lord and make His paths straight: this is the work of the Holy Spirit through us. Our lives are His paths: every day, every moment, is an opportunity for Him to travel from heaven through us. What are His paths in our lives like: straight, like Roman roads, ready for him to bring his supplies at a moment’s notice; or are they potholed unsurfaced tracks that leave His kingdom unfinished and His people impoverished and incomplete?

As the apostle Francis of Assisi (1181-1226 AD) is often quoted as saying: “Preach the gospel at all times, and use words if necessary.” So many of us are full of knowledge, and consequently full of words; but knowledge puffs up and does nothing to build the roads. Only love edifies. Whatever we do in love will have His name on it, and nothing else will make His paths straight.