Evangelism the Task of the Whole Church

Evangelism means the whole church at work.

By Carlyle B. Haynes

Evangelism means the whole church at work. The whole church means  ministers as well as people and people as well as ministers. The work to be done is soul winning,—all the strength, the energy, the ability, the resources of the church directed to saving the lost. That is what the gospel commission means. Anything less than this, anything other than this, is a failare to carry out that commission.

There was a time when the idea of evangelism as the work of the whole church needed to be safeguarded from the false idea that this work was vir­tually to be done by a select body of men officially appointed. The time now is when this idea of evangel. ism as the work of the whole church needs to be guarded lest the idea gain the ascendancy that it is the work of the church members alone, leaving their leaders to manage, direct, ad­minister, with their time and energies absorbed by the demands of organiza­tions, institutions, boards, committees, and departments, while raising the rallying call to the people to keep up the work of soul winning.

Anything that calls leaders away from the work of soul saving is not evangelism. Anything that exhausts the energies and time of ministers in taking care of the saints, to the exclu­sion of saving sinners, is not carrying out the gospel commission. Anything that expends the money of the saved, given to save the lost, upon them­selves, upon the church, leaving little or nothing for evangelism, is not soul winning.

The time has come when it is of supreme importance to direct all the energies of this movement into saving sinners. That is the purpose of this movement. That is why it has been raised up of God. That is the reason for all its organizations, institutions, departments, and activities.

Sanitariums are built, not primarily for ministering to the sick, but to save souls. Colleges and schools are estab­lished to train soul winners and save souls. Publishing houses are planted to save sinners. Conferences are or­ganized to be evangelizing agencies. Committees and boards exist for soul-saving purposes. Departments are or­ganized to bring salvation to men. Offices are maintained to win men to Christ.

Were all these things to become so perverted as to exhaust their energies, time, money, and resources upon them­selves, just to keep the machinery turning over, they would have lost their only reason for existence. They are meant to advance, not retard, the great work of the church, in winning souls to Christ.

The urge toward evangelistic en­deavor begins when the individual is saved. It is based not merely upon the gospel commission, something from the outside pushing him into action, but upon his own inner expe­rience, something from the inside im­pelling him.

The saved person has passed from death to life. The new life is -not a modification, or development, or refinement of his old life. It is alto­gether a different, an entirely new life. It is the actual life of Christ in the soul. And when this Christ life becomes the life of the individual, then his motto is, "For me to live is Christ."

It is the nature of life to manifest itself. It is demonstrative, self-evi­dencing, communicative. The first impulse, the natural impulse, of the saved soul is to bring to others the salvation it has found. That is the beginning of evangelism. The saving experience seeks reproduction in other lives. It wishes to propagate itself.

So the language of every truly con­verted soul to the lost is, "I would that you were altogether such as I am, except my limitations and imper­fections." The essential nature of the new creation in Christ Jesus is evan­gelistic.

Because of the very nature of his own experience, therefore, the believer in Christ is ready to accept the gospel commission as the only task in har­mony with his new life, in harmony also with the mediatorial work of his Lord, in harmony with the deepest needs of the world. It is in this new spiritual transformation of the life of the saved that we find the truest mo­tive of evangelism by the church.

It follows that soul winning must ever be the supreme work of the en­tire body of redeemed men, that is, the church, both individually and or­ganically. If the spirit of the indi­vidual believer and that of the church as the body of Christ are not evangel­istic, both are failing to reproduce the mind of Christ, both are failing to ful­fill His redemptive purpose.

It is plain from this that evangelism is not exclusively a ministerial func­tion, nor exclusively the function of laymen. As it is essentially based upon the love of God, as it is author­itatively based upon the commission of Christ, and as it spiritually grows out of the experience of the believer, so the number of God-appointed evan­gelists should be equal to the number of the redeemed. The twofold purpose of life after being saved is to save oth­ers and to grow in Christian charac­ter. Ministers and people alike are held responsible for evangelistic en­deavor.

And, of course, in this the minister is to train, to lead, to set the pace, to show the way. He is not to push this task off upon the church while him­self doing other things. This is his supreme task. No other call is to be allowed to draw him away from this, whether administrative work, de­partmental work, institutional work, church work, pastoral work, district work, campaign work, or what not. These can all be utilized as channels for discharging his fundamental re­sponsibility. He has been ordained to preach the gospel, the good news. In whatever post he may find himself he must not neglect to preach that good news.

So it is important that while we talk every member evangelism we should not neglect every worker evan­gelism.

Battle Creek, Mich.


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By Carlyle B. Haynes

September 1931

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