As the beneficiary of an excellent
theological education from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), one
course impacted me the most—“Introduction to Evangelism.” The impact of this
course was not its content as much as the
practice of evangelism that it required. I am very grateful for this course, as
it changed the future trajectory of my entire life and study.
It was the wrestlings of my heart in
taking “Introduction to Evangelism” that pushed me to study the Scriptures:
Was the requirement of sharing the gospel weekly truly
biblical?
Was my professor not wrong in assuming that I may need to
speak to strangers about Jesus?
What indeed does the New Testament truly say about
evangelism?
In order to meet the requirement for
a weekly contact report, I became a regular participant on the Wheaton
Evangelistic Team (my undergrad alma mater), sharing the gospel in downtown
Chicago on Friday nights. On one of these nights, another college student said,
“Come on, Tom. Let’s go speak to the carriage drivers.” This student, Henry
Beaulieu, initiated me into street evangelism. It was not long before I
regularly visited with the carriage drivers to share the gospel and to pray
with them. Soon I crossed East Pearson Street to speak to the taxi drivers
parked there.
I was hooked. But—
What about evangelism in the New Testament?
Was my professor biblically sound in requiring me to turn
in 10 contact reports in 10 weeks?
I could never have imagined where this
journey of research was to lead me!
Let me backtrack a bit. I was born
in France to missionary parents. Therefore, French is like my mother tongue,
although my mother is of Norwegian descent born in Brooklyn, New York J
I first read the word “evangelize”
as a verb in the French Bible of my youth, the 1910 Louis Segond—not recognizing
its significance. In that Bible the verb “evangelize” is found two times. After
I had Greek in seminary, I became vaguely aware of the Greek verb evangelizo, which is usually translated
“preach the gospel.” Again I did not recognize its relationship to the
evangelism class that I took my first quarter at TEDS.
It was not until I read David
Barrett’s “Evangelize! A Survey of the Concept” in 1988 that I gained interest
in this powerful verb. Yet it took another 12 years until, as a student at the
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the power of the verb “evangelize” forcefully
grabbed my attention. It was through seeing its use in the Holman Christian
Standard Bible (HCSB) that I experienced the blessing of this verb.
The 2000 HCSB that I saw at that
time had six uses of the verb “evangelize.” In its 2009 edition a seventh use was
added. Here are the seven uses in the current HCSB:
Acts 8:25, “Then, after
they had testified and spoken the message of the Lord, they traveled back to
Jerusalem, evangelizing the many villages of the Samaritans.”
Acts 8:40, “Philip
appeared in Azotus, and passing through, he was evangelizing all the towns
until he came to Caesarea.”
Acts 14:7, “And they kept
evangelizing.”
Acts 14:21, “After they
had evangelized that town and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, to
Iconium, and to Antioch.”
Acts 16:10, “After he had
seen the vision, we immediately made efforts to set out for Macedonia, concluding
that God had called us to evangelize them.”
Rom 15:20, “So my aim is
to evangelize where Christ has not been named, in order that I will not be
building on someone else’s foundation.”
1 Cor 1:17, “For
Christ did not send me to baptize, but to evangelize—not with clever words, so
that the cross of Christ will not be emptied of its effect.”
I was so excited when I saw these
uses during a doctoral colloquium at Southern that I immediately went to show
them to Dr. Thom Rainer, dean of the Billy Graham School at that time.
Then, as a professor of evangelism I
took the time to study this verb in great detail. I began doing “evangelizology”—I
studied the biblical methodology of evangelizing! It so happens that the Greek
verb “evangelize” is found 55 times in the New Testament. To make a long story
short, the verb evangelize was buried and un-translated as “evangelize” in
modern language Bibles for a very long time.
For example, Wycliffe’s 1382 first
edition used the English verb “evangelise” 36 times. However, six years later in
the 1388, posthumous second edition Wycliffe, 33 uses of “evangelise” were
removed, leaving only 3 uses. “Evangelize” was not used in the Tyndale
translation or in the King James Version. This non-use of “evangelize” in
English Bibles continued up to the 2000 HCSB (with only very minor exceptions).
The HCSB’s 6 or 7 uses of “evangelize” represents a huge shift in the
translation of this Greek verb.
Let me give three other uses to wet
your appetite. Jesus was the only one in the New Testament who said Himself, “I
must evangelize … because I was sent for this purpose”:
Luke 4:42-23, “When it was
day, He went out and made His way to a deserted place. But the crowds were
searching for Him. They came to Him and tried to keep Him from leaving them.
But He said to them, ‘I must evangelize the kingdom of God to the other towns
also, because I was sent for this purpose.’”
Paul pronounced a woe on himself if he did not evangelize:
1 Cor 9:17, “For if I
evangelize, I have no reason to boast, because an obligation is placed on me.
And woe to me if I do not evangelize!”
In fact, the theme verb for the Book
of Romans is actually the verb “evangelize”:
Rom 1:14-17, “I am obligated both to Greeks and
barbarians, both to the wise and the foolish. So I am eager to evangelize to you
also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God’s
power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the
Greek. For in it God’s righteousness is revealed from faith to faith, just as
it is written: The righteous will live by faith.”
Notice that verses 16 and 17
represent prepositional phrases modifying the “I am eager to evangelize” in
verse 15. So, via his letter to the Romans, Paul proceeded to share the gospel to those in the church of Rome at that time.
Four concluding thoughts about the
biblical verb “evangelize”: Seeing the verb in context can help us understand: (1)
who evangelized; (2) why they evangelized; (3) how they evangelized; and (4)
what was the content of their message.
We find angels evangelizing, Jesus
evangelizing, the apostles evangelizing, the scattered church evangelizing,
Philip evangelizing, and Paul and his team evangelizing. They evangelized
because they were sent to evangelize and they were compelled by the Holy Spirit
to do so. They evangelized on the streets, from house to house, in the
marketplaces, and from city to city. Their message was the word of God, the
word of the Lord, and the word of the kingdom; it was the gospel; they
evangelized about Jesus, Jesus Christ, and the Christ. The study of this verbs and
its many synonyms is fascinating!
What is exciting to me about the
verb “evangelize” is that it is not limited to pastors. The New Testament verb
“evangelize” therefore unleashes all church members to reach lost people for
Christ. Translating this verb as “preach the gospel” (as is most often done), limits
its applicability to ordained pastors. A Baptist deacon once told me, “I am not
called to preach!” The implication of his words was, “You are the preacher, you
are called to preach.” If we take this notion and consider that the verb
“preach” is regularly used to replace the verb “evangelize” in the English Bible,
it limits its contextual applicability only to ordained clergy. God, however, has
not limited evangelizing to ordained clergy—nor should it be reread into the
translation of Scripture in that way.
Therefore the awakening of my mind
to the verb “evangelize” has taken almost 3 decades. I am very grateful to
David Barrett for his study and to the HCSB for unearthing this biblical term
in English. It is with this background in mind that I have named my blog
“evangelizology.” So come with me on a journey of evangelizology—the central
theme of this blog!
[BTW: my notes
titled “Defining Evangelizing” are found at: http://www.evangelismunlimited.com/documents/evangelizology/evangelizology-2014-chapter-07.pdf;
beware that this file is 230 pages long—an index is found on the fourth
page]
No comments:
Post a Comment