What Is Evangelism?: First of Two Parts

Two classes of people, Presbyterians and theologians, I regret to say, have something of a reputation for their skepticism about evangelism. “Theologians,” says Dr. Johannes Hoekendijk of Union Seminary, “have been among the most unconquerable saboteurs of evangelism.” And some Presbyterians, rather than evangelize, seem to take a perverse pride in losing members as if this attested to the fearlessness of their prophetic preaching—which may some times be true, but may more often testify rather to the peripheral nature of their preaching, articulate at the active edge, but silent at the vitalizing center, where commitment to Christ begins.

No Christian today, not even a theologian or a Presbyterian, can any longer afford the luxury of indifference to the call of evangelism. “Even theologians,” says Dr. Hoekendijk, “seem to have rediscovered here and there [evangelism’s] relevance. They realize that they jeopardize the biblical authenticity of their thinking if they go on refusing to acknowledge that the church is set in this world with the sole purpose of carrying the gospel to the ends of the earth …” (The Church Inside Out).

As for Presbyterians, can any Calvinist who has read his church history defend the proposition that evangelism is unpresbyterian? In less than eleven crucial years, from 1555 to 1566, 121 evangelists, personally trained by Calvin, were dispatched into persecuted France from Geneva. In their first four years those pioneer Presbyterian evangelists founded 2,000 new French Calvinist congregations. Evangelism is as Presbyterian as John Calvin.

But the first question to ask about evangelism is not, Are we for it or against it?, but rather What is it?

Unfortunately, one of the symptoms of the sickness of the Church in our time is that such a question is more apt to split Christians into controversy than to unite them in mission. Philip Potter, in an excellent paper entitled “Evangelism and the World Council of Churches,” notes with concern that an opinion poll on missionary priorities put “meeting human need” as the most favored priority; it also put preaching as the most opposed priority, and conversion as the most controversial subject.

How easily we divide about evangelism. To some people, evangelism is what Billy Graham does and what their pastor, alas, does not do—as if the two were pulling in different directions. To some, evangelism is a rapid stream of Bible verses fired at prospective converts. Others would never think of quoting the Bible. They prefer to think that anything they do as Christians is evangelism, and that a friendly world will prefer the warm but silent witness of a Christian life to the articulate and upsetting specifics of the Christian faith. To some, evangelism is changing people so that the world will believe. To others it is changing the world so that people will believe. To some it is the sawdust trail, scalding tears, and the confessions of a broken heart. To others it is the Sunday-morning sermon and the communicants class and the public confession of Christ in the congregation of the church. These are some of the ways we divide and differ as we define evangelism.

But if, as Dr. Hoekendijk has asserted, “biblical authenticity” demands that theologians rediscover evangelism, let us make sure that the evangelism we rediscover is biblically authentic. What does the Bible say that evangelism is? If God has something to say about evangelism in his Word, it would be wise for us to listen to him first, before we choose sides and allow our preconceived notions of evangelism to push us into one or more of the straitjackets that the current debates about evangelism hold out to us.

The Bible, however, gives no quick answer to the search for a definition of evangelism. God’s word is true but not always simple. With the best of intentions we tend to oversimplify what is not that simple, like the enthusiast who objected when the great Dr. Chalmers, the Edinburgh evangelist, sent his son off to St. Andrews for an education. “No,” said the zealous friend. “The times are too urgent. Send him to the fields white for harvest. Not to school.” And Chalmers gently replied, “Who accomplishes the most? The man who goes into the forest with a dull axe, and works all day, or the man who stays home long enough to sharpen his axe, and then spends the rest of the day chopping trees?”

Before we plunge into what we think is evangelism, let us sharpen our axe for a few moments with the Word of God. What does the Bible say evangelism is?

The first surprise of Scripture for the would-be evangelist is that the word “evangelism” is not in the Bible. It does not even appear in the English language until the seventeenth century. The Christian faith, as set forth in God’s word, does not come in abstractions, in “isms”—not even as “evangelism.” The Bible is written in living color, not in gray definitions. It centers on live people, not inert conceptions. We find “evangelist” as a scriptural word, but not “evangelism.” The nearest the Bible comes to the abstract concept is a phrase in Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy (4:5). “Do the work of an evangelist,” says Paul to his closest disciple. But what kind of work is that? What do evangelists do according to Scripture?

Once again the eager student who combs the Bible for simple specifics is going to be disappointed. There are surprisingly few references to evangelists in the Bible, and only fragmentary descriptions of their work. The word “evangelist” occurs just three times.

When the Bible speaks of evangelism it uses not nouns but verbs. The stress is on action! The biblical word is the verb, “evangelize.” This is where our definition must begin.

1. Evangelism in the Bible is, first of all, preaching.

There are six different words which the Bible uses for the act of preaching. One means no more than making oneself heard (laleo); another means “announce” (diaggello); others mean “advertise” (kataggello), and “argue” (dialegomai). There is also the great word “to herald” or “proclaim” (kerusso), from which we derive our current theological favorite, the kerugma. But “the greatest word of all,” sums up Max Warren in his description of these words, “the greatest word of all is evangelize (euaggelidzo) …” (The Christian Imperative).

This is what the angels did. They evangelized. They brought glad tidings of great joy (euaggelidzo), and the shepherds watching their flocks by night heard the good news (the evangel) of a Saviour. This is also what the Saviour did. Jesus evangelized. He came preaching. His message was the good news (the evangel) of the Kingdom of God. Paul, too, describes his own ministry as preaching, or evangelizing. “I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel [literally, how I evangelized you]” (1 Cor. 15:1, 2, NEB).

Evangelism in the Bible, then, is primarily preaching. It is a ministry of the spoken word. This is why I cannot quite agree with those who identify evangelism with what some are now calling “the Christian presence,” though that too is an important ministry. There is much to be said for the quiet, pervasive influence of “the Christian presence” in the world, a presence that does not offend by frontal dogmatic assault but penetrates as silently as salt or light, without the spoken word. This is good; this is important; this is necessary. But this is not evangelism. It may be an indispensable preparation for evangelism, but it is no substitute for evangelism. Jesus was thirty years in Nazareth as a Christian presence. But the good news was not carpentry. It was not until Jesus left his carpentry and came preaching, not until the word was spoken, that the good news was heard and understood. Until then the blind did not see and the deaf did not hear. Until then the poor were not evangelized. It takes the word, not just the deed, to evangelize, according to the Bible. Evangelism is the specific, articulate presentation of the person and claims of Jesus Christ. It is literally “preaching of Jesus,” or “telling the good news about Jesus.” This is how the verb “evangelize” is used in Scripture (e.g., Act 8:35; 11:20).

2. But, secondly, evangelism in the Bible is more than preaching. It is preaching with power.

If evangelism is what the angels, and Jesus and the disciples, did as they told the good news, it is more than what we today call preaching. There was a charisma, a power in it. There were “signs following,” as the Gospel of Mark suggests (16:17). At Bethlehem with the angels, there was a sign in the sky and a brighter sign in the manger. There were signs and wonders as Jesus announced his “evangel of the Kingdom.” In the preaching of the apostles, there were similar “signs following.”

Evangelism in the strangely upsetting world of the Bible is thunder and lightning, and leaping, healing power. And we Presbyterians shift vaguely and uncomfortably in our pews when we are reminded of it. I do myself. But I have discovered from experience that whenever the Bible makes me uncomfortable, in the end the trouble always turns out to be in me, and not in the Bible.

The signs, the rushing manifestations of the power of the Spirit, may make me uncomfortable, but I believe in them because I believe the Bible, and more importantly, because I believe in the Holy Spirit. My father believed in them also because he saw them. He was a missionary pioneer, opening up vast tracts of North Korea to the very first impact of the Gospel. His evangelistic labors, therefore, more nearly resembled those of the apostles than do mine, and he saw the signs. He had not special gifts himself. He was not even a revivalist. But he saw the Spirit at work in power in the great revival of 1907, and the Church in Korea has never been the same since. “It was a great sign and wonder” wrote a Korean minister. “I saw some struggling to get up, then falling back in agony. Others again bounded to their feet to rid their souls of some long-covered sin. It seemed unwise that such confessions be made.… But there was no help for it. We were under a mysterious and awful power, helpless.…” In those great days, to the preaching was added the power; and that was evangelism.

My father saw and believed in those signs of power. But he did not make the mistake of confusing the “sign” with the Gospel. I have heard him tell the story of one of the greatest of the Korean evangelists. This man, he was convinced, had the gift of healing. But one day the man surprised him with the announcement that he was giving up his healing ministry. “Why?” he was asked. “Because God has called me to evangelize, but people are now beginning to come to me not to be evangelized but only to be healed.” When the “signs” turn men’s minds to their bodies, or to anything other than Christ, they are no longer the power of the Gospel. They have become hindrances to the Gospel.

The New Testament signs of power had this major function. They attested to Christ that men might believe. When John doubted and wondered if Jesus was really the one he was waiting for, Jesus simply pointed to the signs: “The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor are evangelized.” This is the primary and indispensable biblical link between witness and service, between evangelism and good works, between the social gospel, if you will, and the preached gospel—for the two belong together in Scripture. It is only our sectarian and unbiblical separation of the two into mutually hostile camps—preaching evangelicals against social-gospel activists—that traps both sides into an indefensible posture. It polarizes and divides the preaching and the action, the word and the deed, with the tragic result that too often neither side is any longer biblically evangelizing. If I believe I am evangelizing simply by preaching, and you believe you are evangelizing simply by acting for racial justice, we are both partly right, but we are both wrong. The preaching and the good works are never, never to be isolated, one from the other. Preaching is not done in a vacuum. The Christian who does nothing for racial justice had better not try to preach in Africa. On the other hand, however socially active he may be, if he is silent about Jesus Christ, he is basically not communicating Jesus Christ. Evangelism in the Bible is preaching with the power of “signs following,” namely, mighty acts.

It is possible that I have overreached myself by equating good works and Christian service with the signs of Pentecostal power. But I would remind you again of Jesus’ own words. When John doubted, what were the signs he pointed to? “The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed.” These are good works. I would further observe that it is as much of a mistake to limit the power of the Spirit to its more dramatically Pentecostal manifestations as to deny the existence of such manifestations. The Spirit “worketh when, where, and how he wishes.” Healing is no less valid a sign and a wonder when it takes place quietly in a hospital in the name of Christ than when it occurs suddenly in the court of the temple or at the altar rail. In fact, in the history of modern missions, the medical doctor has often out-evangelized not only the faith-healer but also the Christian preacher. Only, however, when the healing is not separated from “the name,” and the power not separated from the preaching.

Sixty years ago in Taegu, Korea, there was just one medical doctor, a missionary, in a tiny, inadequate hospital. Today there is still only one American medical missionary there, though when my brother returns from furlough to his hospital there will be two. But there are also in that hospital today 120 qualified Korean medical doctors. Every one of them is a Christian. Every one also belongs to the hospital’s Preaching Society. For it is the business of those Christian doctors to be able, not only to minister to human needs with their highly technical medical skills, but also to say a good word for Jesus Christ. On weekends, teams of doctors and nurses fan out into the countryside where no medical care is available. The mobile clinic carries them into villages where during the day they give free medical care to the needy, and in the evening the same doctors and nurses assist the hospital chaplain in an evangelistic service. It is no surprise to me that out of this biblical welding of the word and the work have sprung up more than a hundred and twenty new churches in the Taegu area.

The objection has often been made that to bring good works in this way into the service of evangelism is to twist Christian service out of its true shape as a beautiful, unselfish end in itself and to debase it into a cold and calculating tool of proselytism. But in the Bible good works are not an end in themselves. That kind of thinking comes from Greek philosophy, not the Christian faith.

Perversion comes only when the preaching or the power, the word or the work, witnesses to self and not to Christ. Several years ago John Coventry Smith told the story of a conversation between Howard Lowry, the late president of Wooster College, and Dr. Radhakrishnan, the Hindu philosopher who became president of India. Lowry remarked that he was sometimes embarrassed by the Christian claim of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, which is at the heart of evangelistic preaching. To say to India, where only ten million out of four hundred million are Christians, “Jesus Christ is the light of the world”—isn’t that arrogance? Is not that a subtle form of exalting ourselves, as if to say, “We only have the light.” Dr. Radhakrishnan paused and thought and replied, “Yes, but the Christian has no choice. This is what your Scriptures say; you cannot say less. You are saved from arrogance when you say it in the spirit of Jesus Christ.”

The Hindu philosopher was right. The Christian has no choice. He must evangelize, which is to preach Christ. He must preach with power, with signs following, which is to bring Christian action into the service of the Christian word. For to take service out of the context of evangelism is to take it out of the will of God, who “is not willing that any should perish.” But he must do both in the spirit of Christ.

Samuel H. Moffet is dean of the Graduate School and professor of historical theology at the Presbyterian seminary in Seoul, Korea. He is a graduate of Wheaton College and of Princeton Theological Seminary and holds teh Ph.D. from Yale University. This essay is one of four lectures he presneted to three evangelisim conferences sponsored by Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns.

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