8 lines
2.4 KiB
Plaintext
8 lines
2.4 KiB
Plaintext
<img src="https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/125008.png?w=540" width="540" /><p class="text">By Jeff Banman</p>
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<p class="text">What is the most evangelistic thing a Christian could do? Suppose a certain Christian desired all people to know Jesus and they gave themselves wholeheartedly to that task, what might it look like? As evangelicals we might imagine that person holding a crusade in a football stadium or maybe just telling everyone they meet about Jesus, whether it’s on a bus or at the office. We have many predetermined categories of what evangelism looks like. But what if that certain Christian was in one of Paul’s churches in the first century? Then what might evangelism look like?</p>
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<p class="text">Surprisingly, evangelism in Paul’s churches looked almost nothing like evangelism in our churches. To begin, when it comes to the motivation or reason for evangelism, modern evangelicals always point to the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s gospel: “Go and make disciples of all nations. . .” All our evangelistic efforts are built on this commission, yet amazingly Paul never mentions it once in any of his letters. Paul certainly understood his own life as a fulfillment of the Great Commission, but he never passes that commission on to any of his congregations.</p>
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<p class="text">In fact, Paul almost never tells his churches to do evangelism (as we would understand it) at all. There are a couple debated passages in Paul’s letters, but surprisingly there is not one single clear call to evangelize! How can this be? How can Paul, whose life was centered on evangelizing the gentiles, not tell his churches that they should also be evangelizing? What gives?</p>
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<p class="text">What gives is that Paul has a very different notion of evangelism than we modern evangelicals do. Paul is not interested in training his churches on how to initiate gospel conversations ...</p><p class="more"><a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/scot-mcknight/2021/august/wise-evangelism.html">Continue reading</a>...</p>
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