When Rev. Myrlene asked me if I was ready to preach on a Sunday a few weeks ago, I said, “fine” and thought to myself, “this will be a wonderful experience”. Then Rev. Myrlene told me the Series she was preaching on was Evangelism. I thought again, “fantastic, terrific, this is an opportunity for me, I love to talk to people about God and I believe I have a gift for evangelism. I have an ability to touch the people I meet and touch their hearts.”

However, I have come to realize over the last couple of weeks when I began to put my thoughts in writing for a Sermon, this is a lot harder than I realized. I am so used to just speaking from my heart on a spontaneous basis that having to put words on paper, they take thought, preparation, time, and organization. So knowing I had weeks to write a sermon, I now understand what a writer goes through when writing a manuscript for a book. After deleting what I was writing over and over again, finally on Friday, nothing like last minute for me (which is typical), I wrote this sermon.

My first exposure to evangelism was through the radio and early TV evangelists that my parents would listen to. I remember Billy Graham and how powerful and strong (probably a better description today for be heartfelt, real) his words were when he spoke.

However there were also other evangelists who grabbed my attention. these so-called evangelists wore fancy suits, drove big new cars, lived in large homes. I thought you made a lot of money being an evangelist and they were very close to God they were in the know with God. These evangelists on TV healed people that were blind, crippled, cured cancer, cured any form of diseases. I watched people pass out, fall to the ground and when they arose to their feet, they were amazingly healed. I heard these evangelists repeat over and over again that you can also be healed if you would do one thing.

I thought it was to pray for people. No, I was wrong. It was to send a cash donation to a P.O. Box somewhere to a town you never heard of.

They would even send you a schedule of donations you could make; I remember that for one dollar you would be blessed and they would pray for you daily, for two dollars you would listed as a member of their TV evangelism family, for five dollars certain diseases and afflictions would be healed immediately, for ten dollars God would bring miracles of cure for severe problems, blindness, stroke, speech, etc.... and for fifteen dollars you were made a life-time member in the family of Christ and you were put on a special list and God knew who you were.

I was about 7 or 8 years old and thought: “I want that kind of job with God.” “God sure makes a lot of money”, I thought. I remember telling my older brothers that we should tell everybody about God and we could make a lot of money. Of course my brothers always laughed at me and I didn’t understand why. As I grew up I realized that most of these types of evangelists had their own agenda.

To be called to evangelism you must first be called to the fellowship of Christ. You must first experience and accept Christ’s love and grace before you can go forth and be effective in evangelizing others. God’s call to some of us is very distinct and clear; to others it may be just a whisper, to others it may be filled with some static that needs to be filtered out by our careful and direct listening and hearing what is being said to us; and still for others God’s call may be garbled for now because of other priorities in their life. With the pressures of working, raising a family and paying bills some of us hardly have 5 minutes to ourselves, let alone being able to hear God’s call to us to evangelize.

But be assured God will call all of us to evangelize in spreading the good news of the gospel and when he does you will hear his voice. There is no running away, no hiding places or no excuses at all. You will willingly and gratefully follow his voice.

Evangelism may sound like a scary term to some it did at first to me. According to the Webster dictionary evangelism is defined as the preaching of the Christian gospel; the work of evangelists; missionary; to go out.

I believe all of us are called in one way or another to evangelism.

Evangelism provides us with a great opportunity to transform ourselves into the Christians that we should be and have been called to be through the sharing the good news and love of Christ to all we meet.

Evangelism gives us a chance to commit and recommit ourselves once more to continue to spread the word so God can offer Salvation to all and create disciples through all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

You may not realize this but everyday you, yes all of you, are taking up the call to evangelize and are spreading the good news as fellow Christians. Evangelizing can be expressed in many forms, not only sharing the good news about Christ in words. But evangelism can be as simple as a smile to someone, a handshake, a greeting as simple as hello, inviting someone to church fellowship, inviting someone to Pot Luck dinner who might be hungry for food and hungry to learn more, hugging a baby, hugging someone who needs a hug, listening and hearing a person’s problems, comforting those who are in need, a kind word to someone, being slow to anger in a situation, slow to criticize or even slow to judge another. You are evangelizing because you have opened an avenue by which a conversation and/or opportunity to talk about Christianity will arise and a opportunity to help another come to know Jesus, which is an act of evangelism. Anything that leads to questions being asked about your faith or what you believe is an act of evangelism. You must seize the moment to speak about your life in Christ. “Carpe Diem”

1). Spreading the light and love of Jesus Christ is an act of evangelizing.

2). Bringing the unchurched through a personal invitation to know Jesus Christ is an act of evangelizing.

3). Bringing those that have turned away to turn back and accept Jesus Christ once more is act of evangelizing.

4). Living our lives to honor and glorify God is an act of evangelizing.

5). Having God’s reflection seen through our faces each day is an act of evangelizing.

6). Letting God Lead our lives is an act of evangelizing.

By leading the life we are called to live through Jesus Christ we will be not only following Christ and being obedient to his will, but we will also be Evangelizing. Spreading the Good News to others and giving others the chance to ask questions? This is what Evangelizing is all about.

In our Bible verse Matthew 4:18-22 it is written:

As Jesus walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea -- for they were fishermen. And he said to them “Follow Me” and I will make you fish for people. Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zeb-e-dee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zeb-e-dee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately, they left the boat and their father and followed him.

This was a call of a lifetime for Simon who is called Peter, Andrew, James and John and for other disciples as they were called. They left all their wordily possessions and everything they knew to start a new beginning following Jesus without hesitation or thought.

Their call was a personal invitation from Jesus Christ.

Now it is our turn to personally invite people to come in fellowship and begin to learn about and come to know Jesus Christ.

I believe all of us have evangelists hiding inside just waiting to come out to shine among us. The call to evangelism is just a part of God’s calling for us.

Listen carefully for God’s personal invitation to you when he says

“Follow Me”

I pray that you and I will equip the saints (everyone we meet) that some day God will call us and our names will be among the disciples and apostles designated by him and it will read:

He called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them whom he also designated apostles: Myrlene, Candy, Dan, Janice, Ruth, John, Scott, Tom, Rich, Jim, Caryn and your name! Let it be known that you are God’s Disciples and Evangelists. Spread the good news through your call to evangelism and invite all you meet to come to know Jesus.

In closing I like to leave you with our them verse of this Series

Matthew 28 18-20 to keep it upon your heart and to remember for eternity.

And Jesus came and said to them. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Sprit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. and Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Amen.

Let us pray

Heavenly Father, we come before you waiting and listening for you voice to call us. We come humbly as servants knowing that you are the bread of life. may our eyes be open to discern your will and let you lead. Use us Lord as you will to go forth in evangelism bringing all who do not know you through each of us your children in love.

Amen.