Yan Hadley spoke on the subject of effective evangelism tonight, reminding us that evangelism must not be forgotten in our everyday busyness; it needs to be our highest priority.
Four essentials in evangelism are:
- clear vision (where there is no vision, people perish; Acts 26:19-20 reminds us that we must not be disobedient to the heavenly vision God gives.) Matt 13:3 reminds us that the sower went out (see also Luke 14:23) and we need to be involved in our community, for the Great Commission is a command to be obeyed.
- creative imagination (as our Bible studies have shown, we have to use all possible means at our disposal; we need to seek God for the ‘how’ relevant to our particular situations, such as the South Korean woman who moved to a high rise flat and asked God for how to evangelise, to be told to ride in the lifts for two hours each day as a means of getting to know people!) Door-to-door evangelism and street ministries can still be effective, even today.
- compelling message (we need to be attractive, not awkward, in our presentation of the Gospel; Acts 4:13 reminds us that people recognised the apostles had been with Jesus, and we need that same attractiveness in our demeanours which can only come from a personal relationship with Christ. ) We have a testimony to share and a story to tell; we need to use both word and deed in our evangelism. We also need to pursue the power of God as validation of our testimonies (in Acts 2, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit led to 3000 being saved; in Acts 3, the healing of the lame man led to 5000 being saved and in Acts 9, 2 whole villages were saved.)
- consuming motivation (for Jesus, the ‘zeal for Your house consumes me’ and we too must be consumed by zeal for God’s honour, not evangelising out of a sense of duty but because we are so thrilled by our own amazing discovery of salvation that we want to share this with others. John 4:39 reminds us that the woman at the well wanted to tell everyone about her encounter with Jesus – we should be the same!)