Why We Don’t Evangelize Like the Early Church

A few weeks ago, we considered how the early church “did evangelism” with open-air evangelism, personal conversations, hospitality, loving one another, a reliance on the Holy Spirit, and a belief in the imminency of the return of Christ.

What has changed? Certainly there is some of that throughout Christianity, but not as much as there should. Most Christians would probably admit they don’t share the Gospel enough. I have read data that suggests that the majority of Christians have not shared the Gospel with even 1 person in the last 6 months! That doesn’t sound like early-church evangelism to me.

So, what has happened? Can we diagnose the problem? Let me suggest to you 3 differences between the early church and the modern church.

In the early church, evangelists were theologians and theologians were evangelists. The idea of being one without the other didn’t compute. The leading theologian of the N.T. was the Apostle Paul who was also the leading missionary. That was normal. The idea that someone might become a theologian and not a missionary was foreign to Christians. Today, missions and theology are separate majors in colleges.

Second, the early churchknew what to say. I encounter conversations all the time with Christians who say, “I don’t how to share the Gospel” or “I don’t know what verses to share” or “I am nervous about saying the wrong thing.” The early church preached a person (Jesus’ death and resurrection), proclaimed a gift (forgiveness, Holy Spirit, adoption, reconciliation), and looked for a response (repentance, faith, baptism). As Michael Green says in his book on early church evangelism, the early church gossiped the Gospel.

Third, and finally, the early church thought globally. They took Jesus’ instructions Acts 1:8 quite literally – “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” If you read through the Book of Acts, those geographical locations can be tracked in order. And you and I are here today, as Christians, in because Christians took the Gospel to the “end of the earth.” The disciples were committed to global evangelism. The modern church is global in the sense that we are aware of the thousands of unreached people groups around the world, and we are able to stay in contact with missionaries like never before and the Gospel is more accessible due to technology than ever before. But how many of us have ever left America to preach the Gospel? To help build up a local church in another country? To visit a tribe in the Himalayans to help encourage missionaries translating a Bible there?

Too many Christians are too comfortable with their drive-thru coffee places and movie-streaming services than to go “to the end of the earth” to preach the Gospel. The early church was going all over the place to preach the Gospel.