Evangelism, über alles?

No Evangelical worth their salt would want to argue that evangelism doesn’t matter. For a movement so closely connected with the evangel that we enshrine it in our nomenclature, it would be a surprise if we said otherwise.

Whilst Evangelicalism has been notoriously difficult to define as a term, you would be hard pressed to find any attempt to do so that doesn’t land on our activist tendency to go and share the gospel.

So, let’s just get this straight from the front end: evangelism and mission are vitally important. Jesus tells us, in the Great Commission, to go into all the world and preach the gospel. The New Testament gives example after example of Jesus’ followers doing exactly that. The apostles also want to encourage us in this task. Even from a personal perspective, the fact that we only came to believe the life-giving message of the gospel because somebody shared it with us would tell us the importance of our doing the same for others. So, don’t mishear any of what follows as a call to ditch evangelism or anything close to a suggestion that it doesn’t matter. It clearly does!