Best 280 quotes in «evangelism quotes» category

It could be that one of the greatest hindrances to evangelism is the poverty of our own experience.

I think it's unhelpful to suggest that the task of evangelism is essentially the responsibility of ministers.

One of the greatest priorities of the church today is to mobilize the laity to do the work of evangelism.

No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once.

The task of evangelism often involves preparing an open road so offenders can find their refuge in Christ.

Somehow, the things my mother wanted to do, the release in evangelism she sought with such frenzy, were transferred to me.

The Apple store is not a store. It is an exercise in evangelism.

The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started.

When the world sees us doing evangelism, they just see us recruiting. When they see us doing justice, they see God's glory.

Today's evangelism is just as likely to take place via chat rooms and viral videos as it is in a personal conversation or a sermon.

A Jesus Follower can explain our "One God in Three Persons" is like an "equilateral triangle". Both have three, conjoined, and distinct but identical parts. This is a simple way to help non-Followers of Jesus who struggle with the concept of Trinity to better understand the Three Personalities of our One Living God...God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit." ~ gfp '42©

Worldliness in the church is a lot more pervasive than a lack of passion for evangelism. Nevertheless, one of the results of worldliness is a waning enthusiasm for evangelism.

After the original rapture of conversion had settled in, (Bob) Dylan backed away from his obviously Christian lyrics and returned to his more metaphorical use of language.

Adopt the positive in everything you do, for there will always be positivity there to find, if that is what you seek.

All too often people say to artists, 'To be an artist is fine if your art can be used for evangelism.' And art has often become a tool for evangelism. But let's be precise. As such there is nothing against this. But we must be aware that art cannot be used to show the validity of Christianity; it should rather be the reverse. Christianity is true; things and actions and human endeavor only get their meaning from their relationship to God; if Christ came to make us human, the humanity and the reality of art find their foundation in him. So art should not be used to preach even if it can help. Yet there is another way that art can be or is meaningful.

All topics should be studied through the lens of the Gospel.

America doesn't need another lukewarm Church out on the streets producing lukewarm converts.

A modern revolutionary group, explained Abbie Hoffman, headed for the television station, not the factory.

Anti-intellectualism and fullness of the Holy Spirit are mutually incompatible. Wherever the Holy Spirit has given His freedom, truth is bound to matter.

Ancient wisdom collides with modern crises, equipping believers to image Christ in a world entranced with salvific knock-offs.

An evangelist is like a newscaster on television or a journalist writing for a newspaper . . . except that the evangelist’s mission is to tell the Good News that never changes.

Any journalist who holds the office writes in a straitjacket.

A weak and dying Messiah is the very antithesis of a man-made cure.

Anytime you feel like you don't have any work to do, just look around. Look for what God had started doing and ask for his permission to assist him in doing it.

As the church get older and older it becomes harder to keep evangelism on the front burner because of all the competing issues that keeps pushing it back.

A translator must, of course, be an interpreter of cultures.

Author conveys contemporary respect for Methodist preachers who rode the circuit of frontier settlements to put themselves at risk for the Gospel near the Second Great Awakening. They were dubbed 'God's light artillery'.

A renewed gathering of the followers of Jesus must break into the world, and break up the world. The gathering where bread is broken, stories shared, and prayers are offered reminds the local community that they are implicated in a narrative of peace. Such a renewed gathering also breaks up the constant work expected by chrematistic institutions. The gathering in God’s name to proclaim the message of grace, reminding each other that all are invited into partnership with God, and giving thanks for a creation that has enough for all is an act of defiance in the face of chrematistic institutions promoting works righteousness, limited success for only the most devoted apostles, and a philosophy of private ownership and scarcity.

Because cultures and languages are constantly changing and because the apostolic testimony must be attested in ever-new circumstances, it is a necessary feature of the apostolic tradition that it both guard the original testimony and make it understandable in new culture settings. Failing either is to default on the apostolic tradition. Far from implying unbending immobility, apostolicity requires constant adaptation of the primitive apostolic testimony to new historical challenges and languages, yet without altering or diluting the primitive witness.

Because children already have a realization of their weakness, is this not the best opportunity to apply the gospel to their hearts?

Before they are preachers, leaders or church planters, the disciples are to be lovers! This is the test of whether or not they have known Jesus. This remains the case today: this cross-love is the primary, dynamic test of whether or not we have understood the gospel word and experienced its power...It is our cross-love for each other that proclaims the truth of the gospel to a watching and skeptical world. Our love for one another, to the extent that it imitates and conforms to the cross-love of Jesus for us, is evangelistic. pp. 56-7

Before we can influence our culture, our visions must die.

Because we convince ourselves that people won’t accept our testimony about God’s work in our lives, we’re not usually ready to share it. We might prejudge their reactions or simply lack confidence. Soon, staying silent becomes a way of life. We become accustomed to the monotony and forget our calling in the world...We are called to action. Verbalizing, with humility, what God has done for us is an important part of faith. We shouldn’t shy away from it or doubt that He will use it to bring others to Himself. This should bring us to a place of confidence and humility. And it should compel us to speak.

Captivated by the Truth of God, the witness must only declare the wonderful works of the Holy One.

But some of it (evangelistic persuasion) is going to come through service. The deficit that many Christians face is that people look at followers of Christ more for what they’re against than what they’re for.

Cause every task of your day to be a sacred ministry to the Lord. however mundane your duties, for you they are a sacrament.

Christian education begins where evangelism ends, helping believers grow in their faith.

Christian myth, reveals the truth that "the Christian was (and is) still like his forefathers a mortal hemmed into a hostile world.

Christians often fail to get in touch with the shocking message that can lie at the heart of evangelism: “I am here to change you, and I’m going to change you so that you become like me.” There are some obvious dangers here once we think about all this. If we approach people in this way, we are not treating them as people. We are not respecting them. We are treating them as part of our own program, like an objective and a statistic, and this is self-centered as well as disrespectful. An obnoxious smell of superiority is apparent. Further, we are judging people as fundamentally inadequate. *We* are okay, of course. Missionary work conducted in this spirit is a well-intentioned but self-centered power-play… We can avoid this instrumentalizing of potential converts - a making of them into something like an instrument or tool that then does something for us - only by approaching them for their own sakes and hence not as potential converts at all. We must value our initial relationships with people for what they are and not in terms of what we want out of them. This means that we must want to become their friends. Moreover, it must be a friendship with no strings attached. We must seek out relationships because we are interested in and value other people for who they are, right where they are. Conversions would be nice, but they are not our main agenda. We hope and pray for the best for our new friends, but that is not our principal motivation for relating to them. In this way and only in this way do we avoid colonizing people as we convert them.

City of God interprets all of the human story, from Creation to the Last Judgment, as the drama of divine providence and human free choice, especially the choice between the two most fundamental options of membership in one or the other of the "two cities." The City of God is the invisible community of all who love God; the City of the World is all those who love the world and themselves as their God.

Cop-out excuses and catch-phrase dismissals can only work so long before the holes in the religious argument cannot be ignored any longer.

Conversions were easy, but making full-time disciples was hard.

CS Lewis's humor supported his exposition but never dominated or diminished it.

Do I not well deserve to be turned into hell, if the scorns and threats of blinded men, if the fear of silly, rotten earth, can drive me thither (588)?

Dharma is not about believing in God. It’s about making the right choices, doing the right things and leading the right life.

Disgust at idols strengthened his love for idolaters, and the man who once held Gentile neighbors at a distance now listened to their problems, fears, and temptations.

Don’t wait for people to locate you. Rather, reach out to people and help to bring them to Christ

During all my years as an evangelist, my message has always been the Gospel of Christ. It is not a Western religion, nor is it a message of one culture or political system . , .it is a message of life and hope for all the world.

Finally, the work of the minister tended to be judged by his success in a single area - the saving of souls in measurable numbers. The local minister was judged either by his charismatic powers or by his ability to prepare his congregation for the preaching of some itinerant ministerial charmer who would really awaken its members. The 'star' system prevailed in religion before it reached the theater. As the evangelical impulse became more widespread and more dominant, the selection and training of ministers was increasingly shaped by the revivalist criterion of ministerial merit. The Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual and educational leader was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter. Theological education itself became more instrumental. Simple dogmatic formulations were considered sufficient. In considerable measure the churches withdrew from intellectual encounters with the secular world, gave up the idea that religion is a part of the whole life of intellectual experience, and often abandoned the field of rational studies on the assumption that they were the natural province of science alone. By 1853 an outstanding clergyman complained that there was 'an impression, somewhat general, that an intellectual clergyman is deficient in piety, and that an eminently pious minister is deficient in intellect.

Every church has a marketing plan! The only difference is that some are better than others! When I think of marketing I think of building a relationship with those within reach of your ministry who know nothing about your church or are disconnected from your people.