Host
Justin Horton
Podcast Content
For the past year and a half, we have focused on discipleship, and this year we will continue that conversation by helping leaders view evangelism as part of the discipleship journey. In the coming year, we will explore personal evangelism around the world and in our lives. To be effective evangelists today, we need to rethink how we operate as a family of believers and challenge our churches to evangelize as a community in both word and deed.
We believe that the church today is so ineffective because it is not evangelizing the right way. As churches, we need to rethink evangelism because we need to rethink how we reach this group of people who believe in God but don't find a safe place in our church to find their way back to God. We need to take these challenges seriously and offer real help to our young people, in fact all of us, in evangelism today.
As church leaders, we must rethink the testimony by empowering people to listen to others and share their story about God in relation to a set of boxed propositional truths. We don't have to be afraid to speak the truth about Jesus, but evangelism is more than just words. So evangelism, in layman's terms, is preaching the gospel, that's what the word evangelism means, just sharing good news with another person.
This may mean good news, but in the biblical sense, the word evangelism refers to the gospel. Accepting this good news and then sharing it with others so they know it too is the definition of evangelism. Evangelism, when I think of evangelism, I don't necessarily think of a method, program, or some area of ministry for the church, I just think of one follower of Jesus telling his story in this way. that Jesus is also telling a story, a gospel. Every believer is called to be an evangelist, in a sense, in a personal context with neighbors, friends, and colleagues, and who evangelize when they are simply made available through conversations, when the Holy Spirit invites and gives the opportunity to speak. The good news of Jesus is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was sent by the Father to live a perfect life in our place, die on the cross for our sins, and through His resurrection give us eternal life, the forgiveness of sins, and the power to change God and cross his resurrection.
However, evangelism is aimed at those who resist the good news. Evangelism is more than just giving people a ticket to heaven after they die. Evangelism means preaching, proclaiming, or otherwise spreading the gospel, our salvation.
A strong culture of discipleship in our churches naturally produces evangelism. While some of us have the gift of evangelism, we are all called to bear witness to the transformation Jesus has brought in us. Now, after traveling for the past twenty-five years, we can invite people to confess their sins and testify to the name of Jesus Christ in their lives, gain a fuller understanding of Christian discipleship, and a deeper commitment to sharing the good news we have. established. Like other churches, the Southern Baptist Church is developing a new vision for personal evangelism, spreading and sharing the good news of salvation.
We do not compromise the gospel of Jesus Christ in order to preach it, but the challenges of evangelism from generation to generation can cause us to go back to the scriptures, learn what the scriptures really teach, and become who we are meant to be as an evangelical community. . This approach may not be the most effective means of evangelism and disciple-making, but it helps us bring the gospel story to our neighbors and nations. The Church can proclaim the message of the Cross and Christ the Cross of Christ, but it is no longer as effective as before, because it is not proclaimed as before.
We're not saying that in our society today we still can't get results just by proclaiming Christ as Savior, but the answer to this approach is different than it was in the past. Jesus frequently visited other people's homes during his ministry, which according to the Protestant Encyclopedia was a very important form of evangelism. Only this evangelism refers specifically to the good news of the salvation of Jesus Christ. whatever Jesus Christ is. Whatever you think about evangelism today, it all stems from a reform movement started by a 34-year-old monk this year 500 years ago.
Data and information from many ministries and churches will be collected and evaluated to support the claim that any church or group of Christians can be effective in personal evangelism. The Barna Group has been tracking evangelistic practices and attitudes for more than two decades, and the latest research sheds light on the gap between evangelism theory and practice, the social groups that share their faith the most, and the surprising ways the economy colors awareness. efforts.