My experience as a Christian has been in pretty conventional American churches (Pentecostal, Nazarene, and Baptist). While writing a paper recently I was challenged to find scriptural mandates for personal evangelism. To my surprise, no one in the New Testament did any evangelism unless they were in a leadership position, and there are precious few scriptures implying that individuals should make a point of doing so. This seems to go against the grain of everything I've been taught. It might be evidence of the fact that sometimes right and wrong aren't as explicitly spelled out in scripture as we like to assume. Has anyone else ever noticed this, and what are the examples that go against the point above?
Doug
Personal Evangelism - where do we get that from?
Re: Personal Evangelism - where do we get that from?
I was also raised with the assumption that everyone should evangelize. This is something that I do not find in scripture. Of course, talking to people about your faith is a hard thing to avoid, if your faith means as much to you as I think it should. Peter assumed that people will be asking us about our faith (1 Peter 3:15). This would only be likely to happen if we were quite open about our being Christians.
I believe that evangelism, in the Bible, was originally regarded as primarily the task of the apostles (John 15:27; Acts 4:33), and later of "some" who were "evangelists" (Eph.4:11). This does not mean that others did nothing in the way of soul winning. Stephen and Philip preached and defended the faith, which was something their office did not call them to do specifically. Philip is later called "the evangelist" (Acts 21:8), but I suspect that this is descriptive of the activities he was doing (e.g., Acts 8) before the title was assigned to him. Spontaneous personal evangelism (or possibly preaching to crowds) seems to have happened by ordinary believers when they were dispersed after the stoning of Stephen (Acts 11:19). This, however, doesn't mean that they regarded this to be a duty of every believer.
I believe that evangelism, in the Bible, was originally regarded as primarily the task of the apostles (John 15:27; Acts 4:33), and later of "some" who were "evangelists" (Eph.4:11). This does not mean that others did nothing in the way of soul winning. Stephen and Philip preached and defended the faith, which was something their office did not call them to do specifically. Philip is later called "the evangelist" (Acts 21:8), but I suspect that this is descriptive of the activities he was doing (e.g., Acts 8) before the title was assigned to him. Spontaneous personal evangelism (or possibly preaching to crowds) seems to have happened by ordinary believers when they were dispersed after the stoning of Stephen (Acts 11:19). This, however, doesn't mean that they regarded this to be a duty of every believer.