No matter how we act, it’s tough to evangelize without words. Read on to discover why the answer to “what’s evangelism?” involves speaking out.
“Use your words.” All of us as parents (with children older than 2 or 3) know the phrase well. Small children just learning to talk sometimes get frustrated or excited. So they use grunts, groans, screams, whimpers or hand motions to try to tell us something.
It’s at these times we use that classic parenting phrase, “Use your words.” As parents who love our children, we want to help move them from immaturity to maturity. And part of that process is getting them to articulate what they’re feeling or thinking. To truly grow, kids must learn how to use their words in the communication process.
What’s true in parenting is also true in evangelism. If we really want to mature in our outreach effectiveness, we must use our words.
I once had an awkward conversation with a woman in a church fellowship hall. She told me she never really articulated the Gospel with her neighbors but simply let them see Christ in her. She had no intention and felt no obligation to try to share the Gospel message with them verbally. So I explained to her that evangelism requires words.
What’s Evangelism: A Closer Look
In the Greek, the word evangelize comes from the word euaggelízo. It simply means to verbally declare good news. Even the dictionary defines evangelism as “the spreading of the Christian gospel by public preaching or personal witness.”
Of course we want to live the message. And, yes, we want to build loving, relational bridges with those around us. We must let our little lights shine with the way that we live.
But without words we aren’t sharing the message that can save people from a hopeless life and Christless eternity. What’s evangelism? As Romans 10:14 reminds us,
“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in?
And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?
And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?“
Over the years, I’ve heard plenty of excuses for not verbally declaring the Gospel to someone. I’ve heard things that range from “Post-moderns don’t respond to propositional assertions” or “That’s not my style” or “If I really live it then, at some point, they will ask me what I believe” or whatever.
