Evangelism is not an event: A Call to Missional Living
Recently I was able to listen to an amazing sermon by a pastor named Matt Chandler. The sermon he gave was entitled “What is Missional Living?” Let me start off by saying much thanks to him for inspiring this post. As I listened to his sermon, I thought back to the time when I first became a Christian. Not long after my conversion I began reading John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life. In it, Piper boldly issues a call to this generation to flee from the idol of the “American Dream” and to lay down our lives for the purpose of making Christ known around the world. By no fault of John Piper’s, I believe I fundamentally misunderstood just what this should look like.
In my head I had grand visions of overseas missions and preaching the Gospel in the midst of third-world poverty. I began to think of missions and evangelism as a trip or event that should be mostly left to vocational ministers or “missionaries.” (My apologies if you are cringing right now) But then I read the Bible:
II Corinthians 5:18-20 : “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.”
John 17:15-18 : “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one…As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”
I Corinthians 9:22 : “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.”
The first verse here transformed the way I viewed my faith and how it affects my entire life. What Paul is saying here is that God is making his appeal to others through us and that He has entrusted us with both the message and the ministry of reconciliation. Broken people though we may be, we are God’s chosen agents of reconciliation and redemption! Thus, evangelism is not at its heart an event, but rather God working through lives and relationships and our every day living to make his appeal to the lost and reconcile them to Himself. If you are a Christian, you are called by God to be a missionary wherever it is that God places you and to declare and demonstrate the Gospel to those around you. This may not come as a surprise to some, but to other it may.
Is there a call to the church to work collectively to share the Gospel through events and missions trips? Yes. But ultimately God calls us as individuals to be ambassadors for Him in every facet of our daily lives. Our entire lifestyle should be colored by a yearning desire to share the Good News about Jesus with others, both through our actions and our words. We must stop compartmentalizing our faith down to events and allow Christ to truly be Lord of every part of our lives and hearts so that He can change us in such a way that we display his beauty in both our words and deeds to those around us!
So whom has God placed in your path? What connections do you have to certain people that others don’t? Whom has God entrusted you with in terms of the message and ministry of reconciliation? What about that neighbor you wave at on the way out the door? Or the relative of yours who lives alone and doesn’t know Christ? Maybe the barista at your local Starbucks that you see every morning? Or the homeless man you walk by every day? Or maybe the classmates you study with for tests? Or perhaps it’s one of your best friends whom you’ve known for years?
We all know about these different people God has placed in our lives, so here’s my exhortation for you:
Stop thinking of evangelism and missions in terms of events or dates and times. While only some of you will be called to ministry as a vocation, if you are a follower of Christ then you are called to be a full-time minister of the Gospel. Get rid of the compartments in your mind and instead begin to think intentionally about your life, the way you live it, and all the people that you cross paths with every day. How are you displaying and sharing the Gospel to them and with them? How can you allow God to use you as an agent of redemption in their lives?
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