At the age of 11 I marched forward from the rear of an assembly to accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. I was responding to an invitation extended by a bishop of the then Church of the United Brethren in Christ in a series of nightly meetings many years ago in Caba, La Union, Philippines. Three or four years earlier, my father had become one of the charter members of the first Protestant church organized in that section of the Philippines. For some time my mother remained faithful to the old Roman Catholic church, while I attended the children’s Sunday School and the Junior Christian Endeavor society meetings of my father’s church. I nonetheless joined mother in many religious observances of her church. Then within two years of my own decision for Christ, mother also espoused the new faith.
Pulpit evangelism had no doubt been the principal means by which our family of three had been brought into the evangelical church, although in my case Christian education had also played an important role in preparing my young mind and heart to respond to the Gospel when it was proclaimed (albeit in a foreign language I could hardly comprehend) and communicated through faulty translation into our native tongue. Evangelism, therefore, although distinguished from Christian religious education and other specialized functions of the Church, cannot be separated from them. It is the crux of all conversations in the Church. It lies at the core, even as it is at the very heart, of all the Church’s ministry to man and the world.
WHAT EVANGELISM IS
When discussing evangelism it is good and helpful to recall afresh its implications and to clarify its involvements. Real evangelism deals with the issue of life and death. It is concerned not with man’s wishes and hopes but with proclaiming the Gospel, the revealed, redemptive truth, the “faith once delivered to the saints,” in contemporary meanings and symbols, without secularization. Evangelism is the high and holy activity of bringing persons by the power of the Gospel into crucial encounter with God-in-Christ. It prepares the way for the Holy Spirit to lead men lost in sin and destined for destruction to find their way back to God for life’s renewal in Christ the Lord. It is, as Archbishop Temple put it, “the winning of men to knowledge of Christ as their Saviour and King, so that they give themselves to his services in the fellowship of his Church.” It aims at conversion, “at turning man from the way of ruin to the way of life.” It confronts man with the light of God’s truth and grace whereby man is constrained and compelled to do something about it. Its aim, as the Fourth Gospel declares, is that men “may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name” (John 20:31). The Gospel offers its own health and peace to the souls of men, and its own resources for the transformation of society.
A CONTINUING REQUIREMENT
Evangelism remains an unfinished task after it has gained the sinner’s assent to a statement of faith and his baptism into church membership. Indeed, the task of evangelism is never really finished. As evangelism is concerned with “leading nonbelievers to a living faith in Jesus Christ and into the fellowship of the Church through the power of the living word,” it is equally concerned with making believers “witnesses … unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” Evangelism must unceasingly thrust forth disciples as witnesses of “the Gospel to the whole of creation.”
As a young man graduating from an American college I was confronted with a crucial issue in my life. I had been preparing for the study of law and a political career. Suggestions from a missionary, a pastor, and others, that I give myself to Christian work, were long unheeded. Furthermore, in the Philippines, at a time when Protestantism was definitely a new thing, the call to Christian service in a Protestant church seemed like an invitation to obscurity, ridicule, and deprivation. Moreover, the desire of my fiancee, and also of my mother was that I should prepare for the legal profession.
But one night I experienced another confrontation with the Gospel. The crucial issue that sleepless night was: Should I not rather give myself to the Christian ministry wherein the need was great, and for which I felt a divine call, instead of to a career into which many were crowding and for which only human desires had been expressed? After hours of earnest thought and prayer, I experienced renewal and a new sense of commitment to the Lord, and decided forthwith and firmly to follow his bidding. Evangelism had kept its hold on me. It drew me at the age of 11 to give my heart to God; it drew me during young manhood to “give of my best to the Master,” and to devote my whole strength to his cause. While no visible preacher prompted me or convinced me to make this decision, the unseen Evangelist, who is the Evangel, brought forth this radical change in my life’s outlook and vocation.
Thus evangelism operates to convert and transform, to call forth and to hold for God. It seeks to make disciples of children and youth and men and women, and in the inspiration of the Gospel to raise them up and make them mature through the ministries of the church for service in the cause of Christ.
TASK OF THE WHOLE CHURCH
This primary, crucial, and continuing task of evangelism must be faithfully discharged by the Church, the whole Church. The very formation of the Church was involved in a witness; its beginnings, in a testimony. To Peter’s declaration of belief regarding Jesus: “You are Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus answered: “… on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.” By its very nature the Church must be missionary and evangelistic.
This task has been undertaken by prophets and preachers, by apostles and pastors, by evangelists and teachers. Constrained by a vision splendid or impelled by a sense of mission, men and women have gone to call on people to repent and turn to God. It was and is today being done by individuals acting on their own initiative. As in the apostolic times, however, the task has been more effectively undertaken as a collective effort in which the whole Christian brotherhood participate, with preachers going forth to preach the Gospel at the behest and support of the people of God, the Church. “For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent?” (Rom. 10:13–15, RSV). Arthur C. Archibald. in his book New Testament Evangelism, says: “The New Testament knows nothing of evangelism apart from the church. Everything goes out of the churches, and draws back into the churches.… The early church far surpassed us in this, and they were, as churches, centers of organized evangelistic activity. The whole life of the church pushed out into evangelistic fervor and soul-winning persuasion and they were organized for such endeavor.”
The Church today should not forget or fail to employ another New Testament pattern which depends not solely upon ordained apostles or evangelists, utilizing the pulpit and platform, but calls upon the laity to render their apostolate. Someone has described it this way: “Evangelism is the participation of the total Christian community in Christ’s mission in the world.” The clergy and the laity who make up the Christian community may differ in office but not in vocation. After first sending the Twelve in teams of two, Christ later sent the Seventy in similar teams into all parts of the earth to confront people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Not only were they organized in that fashion but the entire Church was mobilized, as we see when, following Pentecost, the whole Church was scattered abroad and the rank and file bore their witness.
It must be remembered again and again that “only the whole body of Christ can fulfill the purpose of Christ.” The world coming to believe in Christ as Lord and Saviour is premised upon the unity of God’s people, upon the unitedness of all members of Christ’s body, the Church. For this reason, the Church of clergy and laity, of West and East, and South and North, of white and brown and black, must sense more than ever before her need of “wholeness” and turn to Christ in repentance for a new dedication to the unfinished task of winning the whole world to him.
A DIVINE COMPULSION
Why must we as a Church give ourselves to such a task? First of all, because we have been called and commissioned by our Lord for such a task. We cannot be real disciples of Christ unless in glad and faithful obedience we enter upon the task.
Furthermore, because the Church and those in it have a great story to tell. Great historical, human events cannot be kept unknown. Here was the unprecedented action of God centering in Jesus Christ in and through which he inaugurated a new era in history. God-in-Christ visited his people, identified himself with them, bore their tragic condition, shared their frustrations and death, and he at the same time triumphed over the forces of sin and evil, rose from the grave, opened up heavenly possibilities for men, and “actualized” the kingdom of God in history! Who would and could withhold the story of such a momentous fact? Those involved in these events and those who came to learn of them could not remain silent. They must tell the story and release the news. What could keep the Good News from being spread? How could those who received it, who found new hope and new life in it, keep quiet? In the very words of Jesus himself, replying to the Pharisees who asked him to silence his disciples: “I will tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” So the Church faces her calling to evangelism because “we have a story to tell to the nations.”
THE FACT OF REDEMPTION
Not only is it a story that we have to tell; we have an experience of redeeming love to share. The Church is in possession of a mighty fact in history; it is also in possession of a tremendous fact of experience. Evangelism rests upon the “inwardness” of the pentecostal experience by which the Jesus of history becomes the indwelling Christ of faith. J. B. Phillips, in his Introduction to Letters to Young Churches, states: “Mere moral reformation will hardly explain the transformation and the exuberant vitality of these men’s lives.… We are practically driven to accept their own explanation, which is that their little human lives had, through Christ, been linked up with the very Life of God.”
Precisely for this reason the Church across the years and faithful Christians in every generation could not be contained even at the sacrifice of their lives from sharing the glow and warmth of so wonderful an experience to a world and to human lives bereft of the unsearchable riches of his grace. It was so with Paul. “The love of God constraineth me,” he declared. “Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16). It was so with Latimer and Ridley who “lit a candle in England which never went out” because of their unwavering faith that Jesus was “Everyman’s Saviour.” It was so with John Knox who cried out, “Give me Scotland, or I die.” It is so with our pioneer Filipino missionaries, with Leones, Estoye, and Quismundo who dared to venture into dangerous situations for the Gospel because in no other than Christ could they find peace. It is so with us. The Church faces her calling to evangelism and missions because she has an experience of infinite love to share.
From ancient days to the present time the Word of God has constrained reluctant men to say, “Here am I, Lord, send me.” It has impelled men and women to go forth to proclaim that God omnipotent reigneth and Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour. And so the Church works and obeys in response to the Master’s call. Facing the calling to evangelism is integral to her very nature. The Church is most truly the Church when she is giving her utmost to the task of man’s redemption from sin and reconciliation to God.
To this end the call of the Head of the Church comes to us anew in our time, even at this hour. And if we who make up the Church are alive and faithful, we shall be earnest and quick to appropriate God’s fullness, and we and our sons and daughters with new power will confront the whole man with the whole Gospel to win the whole world to Christ. For such a task we may feel ourselves to be inadequate and insufficient. But we have One who is sufficient. It is he who has called us; it is he who goes before us; it is he who meets us every day. It is he who declared: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations … whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Therefore, “Lead on O King Eternal, The day of march has come.”
God’s Man
God’s man is more than a moral soul
Who lives a life that his friends extol,
Who pays his debts when his debts are due,
Whose wife will vow that he’s not untrue.
God’s man is more than a man who stands
Saluting the Lord and His great commands,
Who reads the Bible and kneels to pray
And goes to church on the holy day.
God’s man is the man whom Christ has freed
From sin and guilt and the grip of greed;
Who counts as gain all the earthly loss
Which he must suffer to gain the Cross
He knows that he at a precious price
Was bought by Calvary’s sacrifice;
Who knows, therefore, he is not his own,
But bound by blood to the Lord’s high Throne.
So live he must for the Christ above,
Who gave His all and whose name is Love.
The world that watches him as he goes
Will see no Christ but the one he shows.
Christ has no way to redeem the race
Save through the men that are saved by grace.
God’s man knows well that his life must count
For Him who spoke on the ancient Mount;
God’s man is witness, by deed and word,
That God is love and that Christ is Lord;
He sets a light in the field and mart
And leaves the Truth in his neighbor’s heart;
He walks with men on the common road,
And lives for them while he lives for God.
LON WOODRUM
Jacob J. Vellenga served on the National Board of Administration of the United Presbyterian Church from 1948–54. Since 1958 he has served the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. as Associate Executive. He holds the A.B. degree from Monmouth College, the B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, Th.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and D.D. from Monmouth College, Illinois.
