Evangelism

Heard in the wild

The longer version

What it means

Evangelism is communicating the Christian message to people who don't yet believe it, in hopes they will. It takes every form from a lifelong friendship in which faith comes up naturally, to a conversation on a plane, to a tract handed out on a corner, to a stadium crusade. The friendship version is by far the most common and, by most accounts, the most effective; the megaphone version is the most visible and the least.

Christians distinguish evangelism from discipleship (what happens after someone believes) and from apologetics (arguing for the faith's truth), though they overlap.

Why people say it

Christians believe the gospel is the best news there is and that keeping it to themselves would be a failure of love. Jesus told them to be His witnesses; Paul said he was "not ashamed of the gospel." That said, most Christians are anxious about it — afraid of being pushy, of losing friends, of not knowing what to say — and church programs on evangelism exist largely to help ordinary believers get over that fear.

How to respond

If a Christian friend brings up their faith, they're doing something that took courage; you can engage or not, and "I'm not interested, but I appreciate that you care" ends it kindly. If you are curious, say so — they'll be relieved. If a stranger evangelizes you on the street, you're free to keep walking. If someone tells you they "have a gift for evangelism," they mean they find these conversations natural, which most Christians don't.

If you hear it in different churches

Evangelical, Baptist, and Pentecostal churches emphasize personal evangelism and train for it. Catholics speak of "evangelization" and, since the 1970s, the "New Evangelization" aimed at lapsed Catholics; personal evangelism is less culturally common. Orthodox emphasize witness by presence and worship. Mainline Protestants often prefer the language of "witness" and pair it with service and justice. Everyone would say the church exists, in part, to make the gospel known.

Where does “Evangelism” come from?

The Greek euangelizo, "to announce good news," is the New Testament word, and Acts is a book of evangelism — Peter at Pentecost, Philip and the Ethiopian, Paul in the marketplace. "Witness" (Greek martys, which also gave us "martyr") is Jesus' word in Acts 1:8. The modern mass evangelist emerged in the 1700s (Whitefield) and 1800s (Moody), and Billy Graham's crusades (1947–2005) defined the form. Evangelism training programs — Evangelism Explosion (1962), the Four Spiritual Laws (1965), Alpha (1990) — taught millions of ordinary Christians a script. The Lausanne Covenant (1974) is the movement's charter document.

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Go deeper on the network

• The Lausanne Covenant — the landmark evangelical statement on evangelism and its relation to social concern ↗

Common questions