Evangelism in the Early Church: Part 1

“Christianity is enshrined in the life, but it is proclaimed by the lips” (Green, 300). Michael Green’s wise words in his book Evangelism in the Early Church seem to challenge the old saying, “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary,” which has been falsely attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. Evangelism for the purpose of multiplication was the fundamental mission of the early church following Jesus’ commissioning of his disciples just before he ascended into heaven. Biblically, it is still the chief purpose of the church today; however, the vast majority of us, for a variety of reasons, often struggle to produce evangelistic fruit. Because of this, many churches today are working to implement systems and practices to feed and propel their church’s fervor in evangelism. But in order to begin growing in our evangelistic identity and practices, we must have some understanding of what evangelism is and what it looks like, both in the early church and today.

Most of us know what evangelism is: it is simply the proclamation of the good news, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ. The second element, what evangelism looks like, is a little trickier to rigidly define because it deals with practice, and practice is often contextual. But, I think a brief study on the practice of evangelism could greatly benefit us as we seek to recover the evangelistic identity of the church. What does evangelism look like for us in the 21st century? We have several assumptions about what evangelism does or should look like, but where do these assumptions come from? And can we strengthen our understanding of the practice of evangelism? The answer seems rather obvious – yes. And one of the most valuable resources we have available to us on this subject is our very own church history.

This series of articles is not an indictment on the modern church’s approach to evangelism, nor is it a prescription to follow directly the practices of the early church. Rather, these posts are an examination of the principles that drove the early church to practice evangelism the way they did and an investigation into how we can contextualize these principles in our evangelistic efforts today. Here, I simply want to set the stage and take a moment to briefly examine our current condition in the church as it relates to evangelism and multiplication.

Here’s the deal. Lifeway Research conducted a study in which they asked churchgoers – specifically Protestant churchgoers – how many times in the last six months they had shared the gospel. The results were rather sobering. The findings of this study indicated that around 55% of churchgoers, while they would like to be evangelistic, had not shared the gospel with anyone in the last six months. Furthermore, 24% of churchgoers said they had shared the gospel one or two times in the last six months. The percentage of churchgoers goes down significantly as the number of gospel presentations goes up. Only 21% of churchgoers had shared the gospel more than twice over a period of six months. Now, if you’re reading this, chances are, unless you are in the minority, that you identify with one of the first two percentages. That’s real. That’s why I am writing this article – because this hits close to home for a lot of us. We deeply want to share the gospel, but for a multitude of reasons, we don’t. But what does the early church have to do with this? A friend of mine said it very well, “Today, we know we should share the gospel, but we don’t. The early church knew they should share the gospel, and they did.” So, what’s the difference? That’s where our investigation of church history comes in.

You see, there’s a common saying that goes something like this, “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” You’ve probably heard this old adage at some point or another. Now, this saying assumes that we are talking about the dark, tragic, and undesirable things that have happened in our history. However, history is much more helpful to us than just to prevent us from making the same mistakes over and over. History, if used well, can sharpen us and remind us of what is truly important. If you’re a Christian reading this, you should especially know this to be true. After all, we believe in a historical Jesus who condescended to earth, who performed miracles, who taught profound mysteries, who contradicted the assumptions of the day, and most importantly, who died on a cross and came back to life three days later. God used history to accurately preserve the message of the gospel for us. All of that to say, studying history is important, and it isn’t just a preventative measure we take to make sure we don’t mess up like our ancestors did. Sometimes our ancestors had it right. And in such cases, we should, at the very least, examine the things they did and see how these things might apply to us today.

So, get ready. In this extended series of articles, we will take a look into the past at our ancestors in Christ and examine how they thought about and faithfully lived out the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). We will explore how they leveraged personal evangelism, hospitality, and the Scriptures to make disciples. And who knows, maybe you and I will walk away with a revitalized evangelistic flame, a fresh passion for sharing the good news about this Jesus of Nazareth.