📖 Pastoral Ministries — Unit 10: The Pastor and Evangelism

Orientation

A church without evangelism is a church on the way to extinction. It may have programs, beautiful music, polished preaching, full committees, and a healthy budget — and within forty years it will be empty, because no church survives that does not reproduce itself. Reproduction in the body of Christ happens through evangelism. The lost are saved. The new believers grow. They reach others. The cycle repeats. When the cycle stops, the church dies.

The pastor is not solely responsible for the evangelistic life of his congregation, but he is the principal driver of it. As the pastor goes, so goes the church. A pastor who does not personally evangelize cannot lead a church that does. A pastor whose heart breaks over lost people will lead a congregation whose heart breaks over lost people. This unit examines the pastor's role in evangelism — his own personal witness, the simple methods he can teach his people, the public invitation in the Sunday service, the discipling of new converts, and the spirit of the soul winner that must mark his life.

I. The Pastor Must Be Personally Evangelistic

Paul's charge to Timothy near the end of his life included a permanent instruction: "Do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry" (2 Timothy 4:5). Notice the phrasing. Timothy was a pastor. Yet Paul charged him with the work of an evangelist. The two callings are not separate. The faithful pastor is also a faithful evangelist.

This is one of the easiest ministries for a busy pastor to neglect. The sermons must be written. The visits must be made. The meetings must be attended. The counseling appointments fill the calendar. Before he knows it, the pastor has gone six months without sitting down with a lost person and explaining the gospel. His preaching grows more and more inward. His prayer life becomes a series of requests for the saints. His vision shrinks to the four walls of the church.

The pastor must guard against this. He must build into his weekly rhythm time for relationships with people outside the church — neighbors, business contacts, parents from his children's school, men in the gym, the people who serve him coffee. He does not have to be obnoxious or pushy. He simply has to be present, friendly, available, and willing to speak of Christ when the conversation opens. Romans 1:16 is the pastor's anchor here: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes."

II. Three Simple Methods Every Pastor Can Practice and Teach

Most Christians do not share their faith because they think evangelism requires skills they do not have. They picture themselves on a doorstep with a tract pressed into a stranger's hand, expected to argue someone into the kingdom of God in five minutes. That is not what evangelism is, and the faithful pastor must demonstrate and teach methods that ordinary believers can actually use.

There are three simple methods that almost every Christian — including the pastor — can practice without fear.

The first is the invitation to church. The Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 did not have a theological education. She did not have a memorized gospel presentation. What she had was a personal experience of Jesus and the courage to go back to her town and say, "Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" (John 4:29). The whole town came out to meet Him. When I meet people in everyday situations — at a restaurant, in a store, at a community event — I will often introduce myself and then simply invite them to come worship with us. There is nothing threatening about that. There is no argument involved. It is a simple, friendly invitation. Some say no. Some say yes. Some say no the first time and yes the third time. The invitation is itself a planted seed.

The second is the testimony. Every Christian has a story of how Christ has made a difference in his life. The story does not need to be dramatic. It does not need to involve a sudden conversion from a life of crime. It only needs to be honest. "This is what I was. This is what Christ did. This is what I am now." The blind man healed by Jesus in John 9 was challenged by hostile religious leaders to explain the theology of his healing. He answered with one of the simplest and most powerful testimonies in Scripture: "One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see" (John 9:25). A pastor who teaches his people to share that kind of personal testimony has equipped them for a lifetime of evangelism.

The third is the gospel tract. A good tract is essentially a written, portable gospel presentation. The believer who is nervous about explaining the gospel in his own words can hand a tract to a friend and say, "Would you read this with me?" Many tracts contain at the end a simple invitation prayer. The believer can ask, "Is there any reason you would not want to receive Christ right now?" If the person says no, they pray together. If the person says yes, the door is opened for further conversation. The tract has done what the believer felt unable to do on his own.

The pastor who teaches and models these three simple methods will multiply the evangelistic capacity of his congregation many times over. Personal evangelism stops being something only a few gifted believers do. It becomes something every believer can do, this week, with the next person they encounter.

III. A Message to Carry

There is an old true story from the Spanish-American War that captures the spirit of an evangelist. The American president needed to get a message to General Calixto García, who was leading insurgent forces somewhere in the mountains of Cuba. Nobody knew exactly where García was. A young army officer named Andrew Rowan was given the task. Rowan took the letter, strapped it over his heart in an oilskin pouch, landed by night off the coast of Cuba, disappeared into the jungle, and three weeks later came out the other side having delivered the message to García. Hubbard's essay about the incident — "A Message to Garcia" — became one of the most widely circulated American works of the early twentieth century, because it captured the kind of single-minded determination the world rarely sees.

The Christian has a message to carry. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is more important than any military communiqué. The lost are not in some distant Cuban jungle; they are in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our families. The pastor with the spirit of Rowan will not let obstacles stop him. He will not let the discomfort of asking spiritual questions stop him. He will not let the busyness of church administration crowd out the evangelistic conversations he is supposed to be having. He carries the message because somebody has to, and the Lord has put it in his hand.

IV. The Pastor as Multiplier

The pastor cannot evangelize a city by himself. Even the most gifted personal evangelist will reach only a few people in any given week. The pastor's larger evangelistic strategy is to lead the church into mission so that hundreds of believers, taught and equipped, are doing the work alongside him.

This means several practical things. The pastor preaches evangelism — not as guilt-trips, but as the joyful overflow of the gospel. He trains his members in the simple methods. He celebrates conversions publicly when they come. He keeps the Great Commission visible in the church's prayers, calendar, and budget. He builds outreach ministries — Vacation Bible School, community events, evangelistic services, mission trips — that give members of every age a structured way to share their faith.

A church without an evangelistic culture has lost something central to its identity. The earliest believers were not even called Christians at first. They were called "the Way" (Acts 9:2; John 14:6). They were the people who knew the way to the Father through Jesus Christ, and they were known for showing others the way. Every faithful pastor must labor to recover that name for his people.

V. The Sunday Invitation

Many pastors face a question that older generations did not face: should the Sunday service include a public invitation? In some traditions the answer has always been yes. In others the practice has fallen out of fashion. The faithful pastor must think this through biblically rather than fashionably.

Scripture is full of public invitations. Joshua at the end of his life called Israel together and said, "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve... but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15). Elijah on Mount Carmel called Israel to choose between the Lord and Baal. Peter at Pentecost preached and then "with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, 'Be saved from this perverse generation'" (Acts 2:40). The Bible knows nothing of preaching that does not call for a response.

The form the invitation takes will vary by congregation. In some churches it is a public coming forward at the end of the service. In others it is a quiet bowing of the head and a raised hand, with private follow-up afterward. In others it is a card the visitor checks marking interest in salvation, baptism, or membership. The form is secondary. The principle is primary: the gospel proclaimed must include a call to respond.

The pastor must be careful never to manipulate the invitation. He must not use emotional pressure, repeated verses of the closing hymn, or psychological tactics to produce decisions that are not real. The Holy Spirit converts; the pastor merely calls. But the pastor must call. To preach the gospel and then simply send people home is to leave the work unfinished.

VI. Discipling the New Convert

The moment of decision is the beginning, not the end. A new believer who is not discipled is a candidate for a faith that fades within months. The pastor's responsibility extends past the invitation. He must have a system in place for what happens next.

Most healthy churches have some form of new-believer follow-up. A trained member meets with the new convert that week. A simple Bible study walks them through the basics of the faith — assurance of salvation, prayer, Bible reading, the church, baptism. They are encouraged into baptism as soon as they are ready. They are connected to a small group, a Sunday school class, a discipler. They are introduced to people their own age and stage in life.

This connects directly to Unit 7. Evangelism without discipleship leaves spiritual infants behind. Discipleship without evangelism produces beautifully mature believers who never see anyone come to Christ. The faithful pastor refuses to choose between the two. He pours himself into both.

VII. The Pastor's Soul-Winner Spirit

There is a spirit that marks the evangelistic pastor, and it is recognizable from across a room. He genuinely loves lost people. He prays for them by name. He talks about them when he is at home with his wife. He weeps over them in his study. He sees them not as projects but as people God loves. That spirit cannot be faked, and it cannot be neglected. It must be cultivated.

The cultivation happens through prayer, Scripture, and the regular discipline of sitting with lost people. A pastor who has not had a real conversation with a non-believer in three months will, despite his best intentions, lose that spirit. His sermons will become abstract. His prayers will become routine. His evangelistic appeals from the pulpit will sound rehearsed because they will be rehearsed.

A pastor who is regularly with lost people, who is praying for them, who is pleading with God for their salvation — that pastor will preach with fire. His invitations will land with weight. His congregation will feel the urgency that he feels. They will catch from him the heart of the Lord who came "to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10).

Closing

The pastor is, in Paul's language, an ambassador for Christ. Second Corinthians 5:20 puts it permanently: "Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God." That word ambassador means a person who represents another, who speaks for another, who carries the authority of the one who sent him. The pastor stands in his community as Christ's ambassador. His invitation to the gospel is not his own; it is Christ's, through him.

When the pastor lives this way for a lifetime — personally evangelizing, equipping his people, calling for response from the pulpit, discipling new believers, walking with the soul-winner's spirit — the result is a church that grows for the right reasons. People come to Christ. New disciples are formed. The kingdom of God advances in that town. And the pastor, when he stands one day before the Chief Shepherd, will hear the words every faithful evangelist longs to hear: "Well done, good and faithful servant... Enter into the joy of your lord" (Matthew 25:21).

"How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: 'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!'" (Romans 10:14–15).

May every pastor reading this commit afresh to do the work of an evangelist, to lead his church into mission, and to fulfill his ministry until the day Christ returns or calls him home.

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