Missional EvangelismSýnishorn

Continually And Specifically.

The apostle Paul epitomized missional evangelism. His whole life was ‘on purpose’. He accommodated those he was trying to reach regardless of potential restrictions to his schedule, customs, identity, and, ultimately, his freedom.

He had a one-track mind in this regard. He was willing to subjugate his own desires for his ruling desire to see everyone saved. 

This brings to mind typical Christian perspectives on prayer. We recognize that we’re meant to ‘pray continually’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17). And, yet, while we are trying to maintain open lines of communication with God, continually, we’re also meant to invest dedicated time to God with the Bible, in prayer, as part of what we might call ‘personal devotions’, or ‘quiet time’… In other words, our aim to pray continually doesn’t take away from the importance of praying specifically.

With evangelism, there is too often a different perspective. In contrast with prayer, in which we try to pray continually and specifically, some Christians figure that it is enough for them to ‘be open’ to evangelize all the time. And, of course, too often, in practice, an ‘openness’ to evangelize is infrequently called to account. That is, it seems that despite an apparent ‘open’ posture toward evangelism, God hardly ever seems to make any ‘divine appointments’ between the Christian and a person who needs to meet Jesus! (and, not to pile on, too often even where there is a divine appointment, that conversation can tend to stay in the shallow end of the pool, with innocuous bromides such as ‘God bless you’ or ‘I’ll pray for you’ or ‘My faith has helped me through it’ or ‘why don’t you come out to church with me sometime’ or… [don’t get us wrong – these are all powerful truths to speak, but contextually often lacking the power of the full Gospel that is an integral part of Biblical evangelism]).

And, they figure that since they are open to evangelize continually, there is no need to evangelize specifically. 

We want to suggest that, just like with prayer – continually and specifically, we should approach evangelism by looking to evangelize all the time and also setting dedicated times to evangelize.

And, here’s the thing. It seems, from the text, that it is as we engage in Paul’s kind of missional evangelism that we can experience that we position ourselves downstream in the river of God’s grace. As Paul says (v23) “I do all this for the sake of the Gospel, that I may share in its blessings.” And we also, doing similarly for the sake of the Gospel, may share in its blessings.