Marks of a Healthy Church: Evangelism

What is it?

Evangelism is simply telling non-Christians the good news about what Jesus Christ has done to save sinners. In order to biblically evangelize you must:

1. Preach the whole gospel, even the hard news about God’s wrath against our sin.
2. Call people to repent of their sins and trust in Christ.
3. Make it clear that believing in Christ is costly, but worth it.

Where is it in the Bible?

Scripture contains both teaching on evangelism (Matt. 28:19-20; Rom. 10:14-17; 1 Pet. 3:15-16) and examples of evangelistic preaching (see Acts 2:14-41, 3:12-26, 13:16-49, 17:22-31). Moreover, any time Scripture speaks of the gospel, it is teaching us what we are to share in evangelism (see, for example, Romans 1-4 and 1 Corinthians 15:1-4).

Why is it important?

• When a church has an unbiblical understanding of the gospel, they don’t evangelize, they evangelize in misleading or manipulative ways, or they share a message that’s not the gospel.
• On the other hand, a biblical understanding of evangelism clarifies our role in the mission God has given to the church: we are to preach the good news about what Christ has done and pray that God would bring people to believe it.

http://www.9marks.org/what-are-the-9marks/evangelism