Various aspects of living out the faith are reflected throughout Scripture. Teaching, music and worship, fellowship, helping the poor and disadvantaged, and more, are all clearly given in both the Old and New Testaments. As a result, these things are reflected in most churches.
Where does evangelism fit in?
For example, virtually all churches prioritize a worship service with music, have several teaching ministries including a sermon, and so on. Personally, I’ve never been in a church without these, just as I’ve never been in a church that didn’t have some sort of ministry to the poor. One large church we attended had six figure budgets for it, while another very small church had a table in the back where people brought things that could be shared with others. But no matter what, there was always a heart for helping people.
However, the importance of evangelism, of proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, is recognized much less often. Even when leaders say it’s important, there is generally only a secondary effort, perhaps an occasional special event or support for a distant ministry. It is not considered a central part of running a church as is teaching, music, or helping the poor.
However, my previous post showed how central evangelism was to Jesus and the early church. The Old Testament foreshadowed it, Jesus practiced it, trained others several times in expanding ministries, and foretold, even commanded, it for the church at least five times. The picture that God has given us of the early church in Acts was almost completely dominated by evangelism, even to the extent that the only recorded group prayer we have is for boldness to speak
In addition, many of the New Testament letters teach its importance (even listing evangelists as one of the primary gifts to the church) and mention ongoing efforts other than Paul’s. Finally, early church history after the Bible indicates that evangelism continued as a key aspect of Christian life.
Of course, evangelism isn’t the only church activity that is highlighted in Scripture. Consider music. It is also described through Scripture, is a key part of worship which is commanded, has examples of leaders in the Old Testament, and is clearly part of the early church history.
This raises the question of why we treat these two efforts so differently. What if we prioritized music the same way we prioritize Jesus’ examples, training and commands for evangelism? Consider what it might look like if we conducted music ministries the way we do evangelism.
Instead of hiring ministers to lead singing, we could just encourage everyone to sing on their own if they feel so led. Instead of music being a regular (weekly) part of church life, we could offer it a few times a year as a special event. Instead of investing in sound systems to support music, we could ask those who are interested to simply get their own music players. Instead of hiring specially trained leaders, we could support performers who conduct singing ministries in other locations, and then we could occasionally send teams of people to those locations to participate themselves in singing events.
Clearly this neither matches Scripture nor early church history, But then, neither do our current evangelistic activities, so why treat them so differently?
Exploring Antioch 