Thursday, November 04, 2010

Evangelism: Does your church obey the Great Commission? If not, why not?

Evangelism

What is it?

Evangelism is simply telling non-Christians the good news about what Jesus Christ has done to save sinners.

In order to biblically evangelize you must:
* Preach the whole gospel, even the hard news about God’s wrath against our sin. Call people to repent of their sins and trust in Christ.

* Make it clear that believing in Christ is costly, but worth it.

* Where is it in the Bible? Scripture contains both teaching on evangelism (Matt. 28:19-20; Rom. 10:14-17; 1 Pet. 3:15-16) and examples of evangelistic preaching (see Acts 2:14-41, 3:12-26, 13:16-49, 17:22-31). Moreover, any time Scripture speaks of the gospel, it is teaching us what we are to share in evangelism (see, for example, Romans 1-4 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-4).

*Why is it important? When a church has an unbiblical understanding of the gospel, they don’t evangelize, they evangelize in misleading or manipulative ways, or they share a message that’s not the gospel. On the other hand, a biblical understanding of evangelism clarifies our role in the mission God has given to the church: we are to preach the good news about what Christ has done and pray that God would cause people to believe it.

http://www.9marks.org/what-are-the-9marks/evangelism

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