Lausanne is a place where Billy Graham and others gathered 50 years ago to seek to answer the questions of global evangelization. That time and place event became a movement. Today, more than 5000 Christian leaders from more than 200 nations are gathered in Seoul, South Korea for the Fourth Lausanne Congress to continue that conversation, to pursue the Great Commission together.
I invite you into the collaborative work of the Church as we consider evangelism today.
What is evangelism? Where does the Gospel of love and hope, meaning, belonging, joy, life, light, forgiveness, redemption, salvation need to be declared and displayed? How will evangelism be accomplished? When is the time and where is the place for evangelism? Who, what, when, where, why, how?
But the question we must ask before all else is, Who?
Evangelism – like everything else – starts with The Who.
The whole enterprise of Creation begins with The Who. This was all God’s idea and this is all God’s doing. So, it should come as no surprise that when you pull back enough layers, the answer to the Who question is God.
Evangelism is the work of God. God is the Evangelist and Christ is the Evangel. By the present power of His own Spirit, God declares and displays the Good News of the Gospel every time anyone hears it anywhere, in all the world.
Who are some of the greatest evangelists you’ve ever heard of? I’m betting that Billy Graham is the first person who came to mind. Have you ever considered that Billy Graham is a Johnny-come-lately when it comes to the Gospel? The Evangel possessed and used a continuous body of men and women from the Day of Pentecost to the 20th century to use a man named Billy Graham. And today, that same Spirit is using other men and women possessed of the same Spirit of Christ who allow their lives to be used by God. Why? So that others might come to see and hear the reality of God’s goodness and grace, His power and redemptive love.
Billy Graham was not an evangelist and neither am I. Christ alone is the Evangel and the Spirit of the living God is the One and only Evangelist.
Who is your who
Whoever and however God got your attention and welcomed you home into a living fellowship with Himself is your evangelical story— your encounter with the Evangel, Christ, and His ever-working evangelistic Spirit. Yes, there was a day and a time and a process and maybe even a human being God used, but there was most certainly only one Christ – present in reality, declaring and displaying the Good News in a way you could uniquely see and hear and receive.
God declared and displayed the Gospel of Goodness in the Garden through Creation itself. But the sweet intimate fellowship where all things were Good was marred by human sin. Creation continued to declare the goodness and the glory of God but the ability of people to see clearly and hear clearly and walk rightly with God was forever changed. As we walked further and further away from the reality of the Garden where people walked with God and talked with Him in joyful harmony, the Evil One used every good thing to lead people to set up idols of all kinds to keep them company and fill their lives with all manner of lesser loves.
Throughout history, through signs and wonders, word and deed, God declared and displayed the Gospel through an endless stream of people. The Good News has never been without a witness because the Evangel has never abandoned the field. God has never forsaken the Gospel project. We can see and hear the Gospel in Abraham and Joseph, Hannah and Ruth, Jonah and Daniel, David and Job and Ruth. We can see and hear the Gospel through the people of God but not in all of its fullness.
Jesus is the Good News, the Evangel Himself
Jesus, the Evangel, the Evangelist, invited the curious, the desperate, and the skeptical to walk with Him. He invited them to follow and watch and overhear. He invited not-yet-believers to go with him where he was going and as they went they discovered The Good News. As men and women and children came to Jesus, he put the Gospel on display. Yes in words, but also in deeds.
When Jesus issues the Great Commission the disciples are not overwhelmed. How is that possible?
First, they heard and received and believed the promise that came at the very end. “And remember, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20). The presence of Christ, the Evangel himself, would be doing the work of the Great Commission. Christ would not leave them orphaned. He was ascending to the Father and sending the Spirit to inhabit a people who would become Evangelists! A people who put the Kingdom of Heaven on display and who would declare the Good News to every person in every place in every generation!
At the Great Commission and at His ascension, Jesus was not abandoning the mission field. Far from it! The Evangel would return to fill every believer, every follower of Christ, every disciple so that the work of evangelism, the Great Commission, could and would happen by the power of the Holy Spirit, displaying and declaring the Gospel through every member of the Body of Christ throughout all generations.
At the Great Commission and at His ascension, Jesus was not abandoning the mission field. Far from it! The Evangel would return to fill every believer, every follower of Christ, every disciple so that the work of evangelism, the Great Commission, could and would happen by the power of the Holy Spirit, displaying and declaring the Gospel through every member of the Body of Christ throughout all generations.
The work of evangelism is the work of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Christ was and is and is to come as the Evangel – evangelism cannot happen apart from Him.
And You: Co-missionaries with Christ
The Great Commission is an extension of the experience the first disciples had walking with Jesus as He declared and displayed the King and the Kingdom of God through embodying the reality of the Gospel. The whole Gospel – the redemptive cosmological reality that cannot be reduced to a few points along a Roman’s road but also requires those essential markers along the discipleship journey.
The Gospel requires the Evangel and the Evangel requires a body through which to declare and display the Gospel today until the day that every knee bows and every tongue confesses, “Jesus Christ is Lord.”
The Evangelist needs a conduit, an instrument, a voice. The Evangelist needs a mouthpiece, a willing body, a people and persons to declare and display The Good News. That’s where you come in. That’s where I come in. That’s where we come in.
We are the Body of Christ in the world today. If you are a believer in Jesus, you are part of the Great Commission. You are a co-missionary with Christ and every believer in Him. Together we constitute the Body of Christ in the world today. The world still needs Good News and the Body of Christ exists to make the Gospel visible, substantial and beautiful today.
The strategies of how (which now includes digital technology) and with whom (which is the work of collaboration) are all important. But strategies and plans will fall short if they are merely human endeavors. It’s about the Who.
Who is it that God wants to reach and who is being sent to reach them? Good who questions, right? Yes! But the Who behind it all is the prior question. We have to begin the conversation with the Who. God is the Prime mover, the first Lover, the One and only Good News.
Have you had a conversation with the Who today? Have you invited God to speak to you through that which He has already spoken? Have you considered who God is sending you to reach today on His behalf? Have you connected with other members of the Body of Christ in the collaborative work of displaying and declaring the Gospel in word and deed?
We are the Body of Christ in the world today. If you are a believer in Jesus, you are part of the Great Commission. You are a co-missionary with Christ and every believer in Him. Together we constitute the Body of Christ in the world today. The world still needs Good News and the Body of Christ exists to make the Gospel visible, substantial and beautiful today.
We not only need the Spirit, evangelism is impossible and makes no sense without Him. And the Body the Spirit indwells and animates is the Body of Christ, which means evangelism is impossible apart from one another. I am an evangelical Christian but apart from Christ I can do nothing. And, apart from you, my sisters and brothers in Christ dispersed among people of every tribe and tongue, apart from you I am nothing. Like a banging gong or a clanging cymbal, one instrument in isolation does not harmony make. So, it would seem that we need each other in ways we may have not considered before. And somewhere in all of that are lessons of love, goodness, beauty, truth, faith, and hope.
All of which lead us right back to the beginning of the conversation. The question of Who.
God is the Who behind it all and the Who to whom it is all moving. The First and the Last, the Living One. God is the Evangelist and Jesus is the Evangel and the Spirit pours the Gospel on all flesh that we might participate in God’s redemptive plan. How Great is our God? Sing with me! How Great is our God! Till all the world knows: how Great is Our God!
