How To Do Evangelism Like Jesus

The Bible lays out an evangelistic outreach strategy that is entirely different from all the latest trends. In fact, it's not only an evangelistic concept from the Bible, it's a concept laid out by Jesus himself. This is just one way to think about evangelism and how Jesus thought about it. It's wholly different than how we as modern Christians think about it and it might just change how we do it.

Imagine if you were dying and you had only a short time to offer your last words to the ones you loved and the ones who would carry on your work. You would probably carefully choose your words so that you would convey the most important of the things you want to leave behind.

For Jesus, advancing the Kingdom of God was the most important thing to Him. He came to earth to establish His Kingdom and He preached about the Kingdom of God more than anything else. The front lines of advancing the Kingdom is evangelism. Jesus said the Kingdom of God is within you. Kingdom is built around and within people. And Jesus gave us a key to evangelism that we should pay close attention to because it's not the way most churches currently do evangelism. The Kingdom of God is by nature evangelistic. So how did Jesus say to go about it?

In John 17, Jesus prays: ²³ I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Jesus said that the world would know that the Father has sent the Son when we are brought to complete unity. Jesus is saying that the way to testify to the world about Jesus is to love one another and be in complete unity.

According to Jesus, if we love our fellow brothers and sisters and really, really love each other, the Gospel will be preached and He will bring people to Himself. So in your evangelism strategy, you should ask, do you really love the people that are already in your church? If not, why would God give you anymore people? If not, why would God want to entrust more people to your church, especially since He probably want his new kids to be loved and cared for.

In addition, would it be right to serve unbelievers in an effort to do outreach and neglect the family of believers?

Paul told the Galatians: So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith (Galatians 6:10). Your priority should be to first do good to the household of faith, those already in your church. Then to everyone else.

How can this be played out? The next time you have an evangelism outreach effort, like picking up garbage in your community, maybe you should think about picking up the garbage at the single mother's house who goes to your church. If her neighbor receives garbage pickup in the evangelism outreach and sees that the single mom doesn't receive that ministry because she goes to the church already, will her neighbor want to go to that church, or even want to become a Christian?

For example, in our church, when one of the dentists in our congregation decided to do free services for underprivileged families, they first got candidates from our church and then opened it up to the community. What a shame it would have been if they did it for other's outside the church but their own fellow brothers and sisters were sitting there with dental issues?

Yes, the world should see us meeting the needs of the community, but what a bad testimony it would be if they saw us neglecting the needs of our own people. Emperor Justinian saw that the Christians in Ancient Rome were not only serving the needs of their own, but those outside their community. We must be careful to do both, but prioritize it properly. If Emperor Justinian saw that the Christians were helping Pagan plague victims but not Christian plague victims, it would not have represented Christ well.

It seems like common sense, but in the busyness and rush to reach out to unbelievers, you may be neglecting those sheep already entrusted to you, and maybe that's why God is not sending more your way. Just something to think about...

Check out some of the other articles that I've written:

How To Find God's Will For Your Life

How To Find God's Will In Christian Dating And Marriage

How To Be in God's Presence