Recently a pastor recounted an experience of being called Evangelical but not knowing what the one naming pastors such believed that meant.
Here is a definition I found.
The National Association of Evangelicals defines an evangelical as someone:
- who believes that the Bible is authoritative
- who has had a born-again experience
- who shares this message of faith.
To evangelize means you explain your beliefs to others with the view that they might want to adopt your beliefs. An evangelist is someone who preaches the Gospel to try to get people saved and on their way to Heaven. The English words come from Greek words that mean to announce good news, bring a good message, or preach the Gospel.
Your thoughts?
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1 comments:
I think there are a lot of 'evangelicals' who don't fully meet the definition of an evangelical. Evangelism and evangelicalism are not interchangeable terms. By definition evangelicals are actively involved in evangelism - personal evangelism, but that appears to be more than often just by definition and not action.
Evangelism is one of those Christian activities that is feared as much by Christians as it is by non-Christians. We are called to go into all the world, to preach that the Kingdom is coming and to make disciples - the beginning steps of this process typically involve telling someone about Jesus - evangelism. This should be as natural as telling people what we did last weekend. Yet, there is a fear associated with telling people about Jesus. I think this is why Jesus told us to pray for laborers to bring the harvest in - the lost souls are already lost, there needs to be some laborers who go out and reach these lost souls for Jesus.
(Editor's note) I removed a closing statement at the end of this post because the poster did not identify themselves. I will remove this post and put the whole post up if the poster will e-mail me with their identity.
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