What makes you an evangelist

Enjoys conversations with unbelievers. He often gravitates toward activities that involve non-Christians. In his conversations with them, he demonstrates a listening ear and a caring heart. The gift of evangelism brings with it an excitement and enthusiasm that often has a way of motivating believers. Many believers have felt called to a higher level of service as a result of hearing an evangelist. May be able to teach. He can do it by example. But, hey! Talking about the tattoos has opened up various opportunities to reach out to people who are on the fringes of society: to offer to pray with individuals, explain the gospel story, and talk about how Jesus has made a difference to my life — and I just love it.

When we pray for someone continually, we increase their chances of finding Jesus. I have recently been persistently praying for someone I met by chance in a shop. She might not be quite there yet, but she is seeking and wanting to find Jesus.

She is considering coming to church, which is just glorious. In these few small stepsm we see the spirit of evangelism — the gospel starting to come alive. I am currently undertaking M:Power training, which has contributed to my transformation and confidence, along with the urge to be an evangelist. The course has also provided skills in listening attentively to what someone is saying, which promotes a transition through the different layers to deeper honesty and openness.

Relating my own story of spiritual transformation and identifying the appropriate opportunities to talk about the gospel is becoming more natural to me. But I did — if you get my meaning — have the great privilege of being the midwife at quite a number of safe deliveries. Let me explain what I mean. Churches need to relevant and different, committed to justice but warm-hearted, suggests Robert Beaken. They exercise this ministry in many different ways: it is just as likely to happen while chatting at the school gates as while delivering a big, upfront talk.

When I was a parish priest, the best evangelist in the congregation was Margaret. She came to faith in her seventies. She did the opposite: she told everyone, and, through her testimony and witness, many people in her network of friends and acquaintances came to faith as well.

God the Holy Spirit was at work in Margaret. She was doing the work of an evangelist: people were being drawn to Christ. But, when it happens, it is a holy mystery. It is not something that we can create, coerce, or control.

None of us can say that it is our work. Evangelism, like a pregnancy, takes time. We all have a part to play. We can all be witnesses to Christ; and, alongside the evangelist, there are a whole host of other people, whose ministries of witness and welcome are a vital part of that process whereby individual men and women become disciples of Jesus. There is, therefore, also the ministry of teaching and catechesis and places of nurture — Alpha and Pilgrim courses — where people find out about the Christian faith and where faith can grow.

But that bit of evangelism which is coming to faith in Christ is always the mysteriously beautiful response of the human heart to the invitation of the gospel.

It is a new creation into a new humanity, and it is always the work of God. Here are just five of the many signs that you could be a natural evangelist.

There's an undeniable value for the lost. When a word is spoken about the broken and lost world that we live in or when you see a harassed and helpless crowd, it just wrenches your gut and makes you want to cry. Evangelists get God's heart for the lost automatically just as Jesus shared when He gave us the parables about the lost sheep, lost coin and lost son.

You can't help but share your testimony to others. When you meet someone -- Christian or not -- and you naturally find yourself gearing the conversation toward what Jesus has done for you and for the whole world, that could be a good sign that you're a natural evangelist.

In some ways, Christianity took a beating in the early s in America. The carnage of two World Wars and a Great Depression raised questions about whether God existed, and if so, whether God was both powerful and good. But in , the term went mainstream when a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter won the Democratic primary and then the general election. He became the first U. Pundits scrambled to understand who evangelicals were and how many existed. Not to be left out, more conservative evangelicals who diverged from Carter politically began mobilizing under new organizational banners like the Christian Coalition and the Moral Majority—collectively labeled the religious right.

These politically active conservative Christians were well funded and media savvy, but they were able to become synonymous with evangelicalism only with the help of American pollsters. When the NAE was founded, Wuthnow says, new reports estimated the organization represented about 2 million people.

Ten years later, in , the NAE claimed it represented 10 million. Lack of data made the number impossible to verify at the time.