What Is Evangelism?

Video Transcript

"What is evangelism? Evangelism is the practice of sharing one's faith in order to nurture, convince, or to covert another person. They might be taken separately or in conjunction with each other. The understanding of evangelism is peculiar to Christianity, although present in other world religion as well, but for the Christian church the understanding that it's Christ's command at the end of his life before he went to be with his father in heaven was therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I commanded you and surely I am with you always even to the end of the earth. That is the ending of the gospel according to Matthew. Also in the ending of the gospel according to Mark. Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. So those words of Christ have inspired the Catholic church and just about every portion of the Christian community throughout the world to share their faith in order to nurture others in order to convince others of the truth of the gospel or to convert people to their understanding of the faith that they have been given through Jesus Christ. The two main,.. those two main passages have been the subject of a lot of preaching over the years, but the word evangelist describes a person who is particularly called to do this type of work, not that a pastor or a person in a faith tradition is not an evangelist, but there is people like Billy Graham for example who is one of the most well known evangelists of the past generation, especially the twentieth century that took the name evangelist and would go throughout the world holding crusades in order to help people understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. There are numerous seminaries that have divisions of evangelism.There are different areas of particular studies, like the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois that allows people to understand the scope, the meaning, and the desire of people to share about their faith. Evangelism is the lifeblood of many churches and I encourage you to talk to your pastor or your priest or your rabbi about how your particular faith tradition understands evangelism, both the positive parts of it and the parts of it that are peculiar to your particular faith tradition."