Adrian Holloway from
Christchurch London hosted the event and started with a very good pep talk regarding who was there and why we were there.
- There were lots of different people there: different ages, genders, stages, experiences, places
- Not "single issue" people but people with a desire to both do and equip others to do evangelism within their wide-ranging Church responsibilities
- There were (as you would expect) many "preaching" evangelists there but also a whole range of other people in different roles and with different gifts. That pleased me, because it shows it is not seen as an "expert" thing and that the definition is not too narrow.
And then the next bit which sounded a bit like a manifesto for evangelism for newfrontiers in the UK.
- Britain is largely unevangelised
- Reaching lost people is a primary goal
- Church planting is essentially an evangelistic activity
We want to see:
- Evangelistic Churches
- Evangelistic members
- Evangelistic meetings / programmes / courses / small groups
- Evangelistic preaching
There is more to Church life than just evangelism. But we need to take evangelism very, very seriously as it is such a primary calling.
5 comments:
Amen (from Sweden...!)
My prayer is to see God reveal the gift of the evangelist IN the church, connected to the church, building the church!
Great blog!
Britain is largely unevangelised
Disagree. Britain is largely ineffectively evangelised. I think most ordinary people would say they have enough God-botherers bothering them thank you very much. They've been 'evangelised' but turned it down.
I would accept that Jon.
"Had the gospel communicated effectively" may be closer: it has often been communicated ineffectively.
I would agree because although most, if not all, people had some awareness of the Bible in the past these days there is not that same awareness; in fact I have met some youth who were amazed to discover that Jesus existed as a person because they thought the word 'Jesus' was just an expletive or exclamation of surprise.
Previous generations would have been like the Jews that the Apostle Peter preached to at pentacost, in that they had a spiritual awareness of the terms used and the concepts presented.
Today society is much more like the Greeks that the Apostle Paul spoke to in Athens who had no such awareness or reference points for God and the Bible. Which is why Paul started literally at the beginning (creation) and went from there.
Problem is though that if you 'started with creation' nowadays most people would say 'natural selection' and that would be the end of the discussion.
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