In this thought-provoking Sunday School class, Michael Gewecke delves into the topic of evangelism in the New Testament. He examines the historical context, relational encounters, and the power of writing in spreading the gospel message. Discover the importance of building meaningful relationships and engaging in honest conversations about faith. Join us as we explore the scriptural foundations of evangelism and how it applies to our lives today.
Timestamps:
- 00:00:26 – Introduction and purpose of the six-week series
- 00:02:25 – Understanding the concept of evangelism and its historical context
- 00:04:41 – Examining the Great Commission in Matthew 28
- 00:08:23 – The apostolic mission and the significance of relational encounters
- 00:12:25 – The role of writing in evangelism and clarifying personal beliefs
Don’t miss this enlightening discussion that will challenge and inspire you to embrace your unique role as an evangelist. Subscribe now and join the conversation!
Transcript:
00:00:00:43 – 00:00:26:24
Michael Gewecke
Okay. I think we should get going. Today going to be it’s going to be short. You know how well I do. It’s short. So that’s an aspiration. We I’m aware of the fact that we have the reception and I played with this idea. Should we start it today? Should we not? And I thought to myself, there’s enough content here that we’re going to be glad that we got a little bit of a head start here.
00:00:26:24 – 00:00:56:40
Michael Gewecke
So what we’re going to do is we’re going to start with an intro overview of of the purpose of what we’re going to accomplish in the next six weeks. And now we’re going to look at a little bit of a survey of how we’re going to attempt to do that. So let’s start with the first. So the idea behind this is rather simple that the topic of evangelism in the Presbyterian Church has historically, in the last 60 years, not been the most popular.
00:00:56:45 – 00:01:29:08
Michael Gewecke
I think one of the reasons for that is because Presbyterians have historically not been universally comfortable with the term evangelical. Does anyone have a sort of definition of evangelical or working definition for us? Curious. So an evangelical would be someone who historically would be has in the church been a little bit more theologically conservative, but been more comfortable with the idea of the gospel being something that calls you out to share the good news with other people.
00:01:29:13 – 00:01:51:24
Michael Gewecke
I don’t think evangelicals at their best are the people you might think they was the ones who stand out on the street corner with their floppy bible doing this. Are people right? Well, that does happen. And the mainline church does have some negative impressions of that because of the outward ness of that. And we tend to be a relatively reserved Christian mainline.
00:01:51:28 – 00:02:25:33
Michael Gewecke
But at our best, I think even Presbyter Koreans are able to affirm the gospel, calls us to be witnesses to the good news of Jesus Christ, and that is evangelism. Evangelism is sharing with others the good news that you’ve received. The thing that you’ve seen. The four gospels are three witness accounts of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection. And we are taught in those gospels the way that our lives are supposed to be witnesses to the good news of the life, death, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
00:02:25:33 – 00:02:48:37
Michael Gewecke
And so we’re going to be looking at evangelism from that frame. We’re going to be looking at it historically, and then we’re going to try to build into those historical reflections some more present day kind of. So what applications? And it would be very much impossible, I think, to start a conversation like this without turning, of course, to the end of Matthew 28.
00:02:48:37 – 00:03:14:19
Michael Gewecke
This is the great seminal charge. This this is in Matthew’s account. Jesus’s command to all those who come after him. So we’ll begin here. 2816. The 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain road. Jesus had told them to go when they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, Anybody in heaven on earth has been given to me.
00:03:14:24 – 00:03:49:55
Michael Gewecke
Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I’ve commanded you, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age. And so this was the command. This is the order. No. And make disciples of all nations. And at its rate, every Christian family throughout history, whether that has been the renewal movements within the Catholic Church, something like the Benedictine movement was framed as a mission movement.
00:03:49:55 – 00:04:15:12
Michael Gewecke
It was framed as an opportunity and a goal to go and make disciples of all nations, all the way to the reformers. Of course, in the 20th century, Presbyterians were chief among the global mission efforts of the church. We sent missionaries to every major continent, I think, except Antarctica. And we we took very seriously the idea of going and making disciples.
00:04:15:12 – 00:04:41:42
Michael Gewecke
So this is, I think, the wisdom of Scripture foundation. This is the the rock bed upon which everything that we’re going to talk about stands. Another place that you could have gone to look would be the transition between Luke and Acts, because Jesus calls the disciples to go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
00:04:41:42 – 00:05:09:27
Michael Gewecke
And if you know your geography, you know that each one of those regions is farther out. So in other words, it’s like a bull’s eye. Jerusalem’s the center. Judea, Samaria ends of the earth is this progressive movement from. And if you read the book of Acts closely, what you’re going to discover is the movement of the church follows that exact frame, that every new movement of the church goes out from those geographic regions.
00:05:09:27 – 00:05:31:31
Michael Gewecke
And so Luke wants you to know that the Gospel is spreading concentric lit. So by the general scheme. Today we’re going to talk about the New Testament. We’re going to look at what it looks like to be evangelists in the broadest sense in the new tap from the frame of the New Testament. Then next week we’re going to talk about that from the frame of the ancient to the medieval church.
00:05:31:40 – 00:05:55:14
Michael Gewecke
So what that looked like in terms of that wide swath of time. Now we’re going to look at it the week following that on the perspective of the modern church. And then we’re going to look at maybe the mission forms and movements that we’re comfortable with that exist to our day, at least the structures of them. And then the three weeks that follow that the remaining weeks now three weeks.
00:05:55:19 – 00:06:20:40
Michael Gewecke
I think I did the math there. Right. Those those weeks were going to then change the frame and start looking at it from a historical ends. We’re actually going to turn it inward and look at it from a Christian discipleship lens. In other words, you may not be going to Africa. Does that mean you’re not an evangelist? You may not stand on the street corner and flop your Bible at people, but there’s I mean, you’re not an evangelist.
00:06:20:42 – 00:06:41:24
Michael Gewecke
I’m going to make the case that. So every one of those you are an evangelist. Now you are called to bear witness to the gospel that you’ve received. The question is, how were you uniquely equipped to that task? And then being faithful to that and the tricky part of that being that will change throughout the course of your entire life.
00:06:41:24 – 00:07:07:53
Michael Gewecke
In other words, the way that you witness will be different. If you are a person in a vocation, then it will be if you’re a person who’s not and trying to think seriously and intentionally about how we are evangelists in the way that’s true to us. Because I won’t be 100% upfront about this one and one wants you to be the worst version of a used car salesman, right?
00:07:08:07 – 00:07:40:34
Michael Gewecke
Because that is neither one fraction of the truth. The Gospel Who is Jesus Christ? Nor is it particularly honest. If we don’t believe a thing we shouldn’t be telling other people about that thing. And so it doesn’t look like to be courageous enough to be honest with our selves about what voice we have to offer in evangelism. And in those last three weeks, my group is going to be to make the case that it’s just one step beyond inviting people to church.
00:07:40:39 – 00:08:00:14
Michael Gewecke
Now, some of us need to get to that first step, and we’ve never invited someone to church, and that’s not a good one to hit other people. It’s just to say we can do more than just invite people to church, because as you all know, being Christian is more than church. What’s supposed to be. I sure hope it is and will engage those conversations once we get there.
00:08:00:14 – 00:08:23:13
Michael Gewecke
But today we’re looking at the New Testament and I promise to be short. So if we go any questions about that? Why you think that? I didn’t say that you’d like me to cover in the scope, because I’d love to add that if you’ve got things that you want to explore. So let’s jump in. All right? If you brought your Bible and you can if you want, we’re going to turn to Acts chapter 13.
00:08:23:18 – 00:08:52:49
Michael Gewecke
I will also see if I can bend this to my will today. I’m only partially successful. We’re going to jump into verse one here. This will be the kind of thing that you could spend a lot more time with yourself. And the first thing I want to talk about today, the church, the New Testament account of evangelism is quite simply travel and relational encounters.
00:08:52:49 – 00:09:17:00
Michael Gewecke
The idea that you might call in apostolic kind of mission. So here the reason I selected Chapter 13 of Access because of the particular kind of movement that it contains, you have this idea all the best of Saul. They finish their mission, they return from Jerusalem, which is, by the way, the center of the religious life. That’s the center of faith is Jerusalem at this point.
00:09:17:13 – 00:09:47:45
Michael Gewecke
Still, they’re bringing with them John And Mark, that’s the relational kind of movement. Antioch is a not party, only Gentile church. So they’re bringing, you know, all of these different sort of traditions all together now in the in the sort of burning part of the early part of the church’s life. And then we have this idea that they are what we would call ordained, that they are essentially set aside for ministry.
00:09:47:58 – 00:10:09:23
Michael Gewecke
And then they are and this is critical for Luke, they are sent off. And so what follows in this chapter is going to be the result of sending this thing to our thing that we as modern readers of Scripture, going to struggle to get our minds around my family. We just got the opportunity for Thursday and Friday night.
00:10:09:23 – 00:10:32:28
Michael Gewecke
We went down and stayed at the hotel by the Mall of America and we travel around the mall with two girls and lots of clothes stores. When I traveled to Minneapolis, the first thing I thought was, I’m going to need a place to stay. So what did I do? I went on the great big interweb and I found a hotel whose only job is to provide lodging.
00:10:32:33 – 00:10:58:41
Michael Gewecke
And then I found a place that I was willing to part with my mother. Yeah, And we went and stayed there. Right. This is germane. We all understand this. The ancient world. There was no Hilton. We know that. There’s no Marriott for a century. Jerusalem. Now, we might know up here, but think about what that means. Every time you went somewhere, you were not pre-booking around.
00:10:58:46 – 00:11:27:49
Michael Gewecke
Every time you went somewhere, you show up in the city and you started knocking on doors. Best case scenario, you have a second removed cousin married to someone else that you would knock on their door and say. And he surprised. Right? With the whole scenario, you all of a sudden you’ve never been where they speak a language. You don’t speak because they’re from a different culture and you hope for their hospitality.
00:11:27:54 – 00:11:57:43
Michael Gewecke
That becomes the center of what Christians are proud of when they talk about Christian hospitality. This is written throughout the New Testament, the call to be hospitable people. Once again, we live in a city. How many thousands of people do we play host to in the course of a summer? Right? I mean, if you just think of that from a regional perspective, that’s not nearly the kind of spiritual practice of hospitality of one.
00:11:57:43 – 00:12:25:37
Michael Gewecke
That person shows up at your front door and knocks and says, Do you have an extra sandwich? Now I’ve begun to learn the art of hospitality as my daughters keep bringing home children, and it turns out that we need them also. So it still exists. Right. But the point I want to make clear, very simple, that when they’re going to do this kind of relational work, when they bring a group and they go travel, that’s by definition evangelistic.
00:12:25:37 – 00:12:53:57
Michael Gewecke
Why? Because it’s engaging in people’s homes. It’s engaging in people’s real life. Maybe the closest that we have today is how would you guys be willing to go out for dinner and then you go to that place or come over for dinner and you have that time around table and it becomes a relational moment. In that moment, we begin to be able to make connections with other people and talk about the things that matter.
00:12:54:01 – 00:13:21:41
Michael Gewecke
And what’s striking to me is people make jokes, right? You go out to dinner, don’t talk about politics, right? That’s a good goal. Don’t do that. But why? Why do we say that? But because we know you don’t yet have the relationship to navigate that together. You’re not there yet. Yeah. That some point you have found the vulnerability and the honesty and you will have all understood each other now that you can have that constructive conversation.
00:13:21:41 – 00:13:40:40
Michael Gewecke
Right. But you just go do that willy nilly. And so the same with the evangelistic and apostolic work of the early church. We were told that Paul would go into a city and you go on a trip like this and then you would live there for a year and you would do tent making and other work in that community.
00:13:40:40 – 00:14:10:57
Michael Gewecke
He’d go into the synagogue and need real people up because they wouldn’t love this Gentile preaching. And then at some point after he had built relationships and equip the church, he would leave that place. So I think this man seemed like a warm place to pause. But I wanted to bring this back around. You may not be going in knocking on stranger’s houses, asking if they have an extra room for you, but you are making choices about how you engage with other people in relationships in your daily lives.
00:14:11:02 – 00:14:39:42
Michael Gewecke
And the invitation would be, Am I building meaningful relationships that become ever deeper opportunities to share the things that matter to me? And at some point down the road, your faith, if it is indeed important to you, would be one of those particular factors. It becomes a moment for you to get to share about that. It doesn’t require you leaving out long trips, but it does require intentionality.
00:14:39:46 – 00:15:04:25
Michael Gewecke
But questions way back. But let’s move on. Let’s talk about writing. I have some scripture passages. You could write these down and look through them. I think for sake of time we won’t go through them. But. ROMANS Chapter one verse. Peter Chapter one, verse. John Chapter one. All of those would be good ones to read because for us, we skip past them.
00:15:04:30 – 00:15:23:43
Michael Gewecke
It’s a little bit like you getting to a commercial on TV is like, Yeah, I know, I just want to get past this. But you wouldn’t feel that way if you knew Paul personally. He was writing to you right now if he’d asked, Hey, Tony, how are the kids? Are they doing while you had that move, go right.
00:15:23:43 – 00:15:56:54
Michael Gewecke
That would be incredibly professional and incredibly meaningful. And we forget these are letters delivered to real people with real relationships. And I think we have people in the congregation who are intentional writers that they go they’ll do a writing club or they’re intentional spiritual journalist, a beautiful gift. The writing is that you create an opportunity through a relationship for other people to understand your faith and therefore understand how it might apply to that.
00:15:56:54 – 00:16:32:48
Michael Gewecke
Now, I won’t be hypotheticals about this. We’re Presbyterian. You’re not going to write scripture, but. Right. Are the tenants closed? We’re not adding to it, but I think it’s absolutely an important task to write down what we believe, not just because they might be delivered to someone else and they might mean something to them, but because it has a way of clarifying for you, what is it that I believe and I want to argue, Tony, correct me if I’m wrong on this, we ask, are a conformation mentors and mentees to benefit?
00:16:32:49 – 00:17:05:46
Michael Gewecke
Write out responses to their statement of faith. And I believe that’s a clarifying process for both parties involved. Is that fair? It the opportunity to answer the question again, Why do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior provides an opportunity for you today to reflect upon why that is the case. And I think thinking about evangelism from scriptural from the standpoint of writing the Scripture may seem odd to you, but think about it.
00:17:05:50 – 00:17:36:02
Michael Gewecke
Every time Paul sat down and wrote a letter, some of them in your Bible, some of them have been lost to history. Every time he did that, he was evangelizing because, A, he was either forming an understanding of who God was in a kind of spiritual, relational conversation with God in the process of writing or he was sending that to someone who, in a real human relationship found it edifying in their own seeking to follow Jesus Christ.
00:17:36:07 – 00:17:57:54
Michael Gewecke
We might not think of that as evangel ism now, but it’s been loud. It has indeed been a deepening our relationship and also inviting other people to have that relationship himself. So for you, that may be a spiritual practice. It’s certainly in ancient New Testament practice that we write to one another things that would edify and support one another’s faith.
00:17:57:59 – 00:18:28:34
Michael Gewecke
And I want to take a leap on this one. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve had people come into the office often shortly after the death of a parent or a loved one, and they’ll bring the Bible that came from that person’s home. And inside that Bible will be scrawled, reflections and notes, and sometimes tucked into those pages will be actual journal articles or things written.
00:18:28:39 – 00:18:53:06
Michael Gewecke
And I had one church member tell me maybe most pointedly said, I’m careful to only go through the Bible to read those things occasionally because I want to keep them spread out. They mean so much to me. I don’t want to read them all at once and don’t forsake the legacy of evangelizing Even beyond that, today, we think of evangelism as you know.
00:18:53:09 – 00:19:14:53
Michael Gewecke
Let me share my patience. You tell me. But I think there’s a real gift in your Bible to leave a record of your faith circle. One thing that matters to you leave in the margin what that means. That’s a conversation with God. And it might have a kind of evangelistic power that you’re not even aware of at some point in the future.
00:19:14:58 – 00:19:51:34
Michael Gewecke
we will have time for we need to be we’re going to skip some things. Let’s Quick Walk Acts Chapter six one through seven that this is going to be a familiar text for all of you. I think. But here in six one, three, seven, we’ve got the disciples of Jesus. These are the 11. And of course they added another so that they could be back to the number 12.
00:19:51:36 – 00:20:20:09
Michael Gewecke
So these are the 12 disciples and they are overseeing what is essentially a Meals on Wheels program. It’s a distribution of food to widows within the crushing congregation, and the 12 become so overwhelmed by the extent of that effort that they say to one another, We need to choose those. We’re going to be able to oversee this effort on our behalf.
00:20:20:09 – 00:20:42:52
Michael Gewecke
So they choose this list. They are prayed over. They are once again, they’re ordained to that task. By the way, this is exactly where Presbyterians get the idea of the diaconate, the people who are called to serve. This is the taxpayer. Presbyterians turn, amongst others, to sort of give us an understanding of what that should look like. And then what are those seven?
00:20:42:52 – 00:21:15:05
Michael Gewecke
This is what’s so powerful. So the word of God spread that word. So is powerful there, because on one hand it’s the disciples continuing on with their teaching ministry. And so we can easily see so because they were doing their work faithfully, the word of God spread. But I think that Luke leaves open to us. I think we need to also understand saying and so means because they weren’t doing the work, because they were serving and Jesus says name.
00:21:15:05 – 00:21:38:25
Michael Gewecke
I want to be very specific about this. What is a really tricky task for a Presbyterian congregation in the year 2024 to continue to serve funeral lunches, to get very specific with You know why? Because that takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of effort. And there’s a thousand good things that you could do on that given day.
00:21:38:27 – 00:22:02:38
Michael Gewecke
Right. Well, let me tell you the difference it makes when someone you were never in any other circumstance set within a church ever would I go to church and they come and they see people who prepare the meal for them that’s living out what this is, what this text is pointing us towards. That doesn’t include the Meals on Wheels, on the serving.
00:22:02:38 – 00:22:29:01
Michael Gewecke
Those are the the that all of those things. Yes. But the reminder that Christians have an evangelistic witness by what we do now, what we advertise. And that’s a big difference. I’m actually I’m going to I know don’t have time for the right conversation different time it’s not about that we market to other people that that’s false. We’re not trying to put on a front.
00:22:29:06 – 00:22:49:25
Michael Gewecke
We have people who serve. That’s who we are and that’s what we do. And hopefully others will see that if they look in through the walls of the church, hopefully they will see that service. But we all need to put up a billboard with a video of that happening. One thing is staged and the other is who we are, and that’s who were called to be.
00:22:49:30 – 00:23:14:22
Michael Gewecke
And that’s what evangelism is. It’s not a it’s not a sales pitch. It is people seeing the truth of the gospel that we’ve received. And the disciples understood that one way that they lived out their faith was serving food. And so therefore they did that service faithfully and they equipped others to do it well. And when they did that, then word of God spread.
00:23:14:27 – 00:23:39:28
Michael Gewecke
So to start here, looking at the New Testament, so a framed just where we been, the actual process of hospitality, of being with one another, creating relationships, traveling and all the things that that meant. It was an evangelistic effort. We also have in there the idea of writing these epistles, writing these letters, creating an account of your faith and sending that to another person that’s also in the New Testament.
00:23:39:28 – 00:24:03:15
Michael Gewecke
And then, of course, we have here at the end the idea of this service of the church that what the church actually did was a way that they proclaim the gospel to those in the world who wouldn’t have seen it themselves. And all of those are reflections of evangelism that we see in the New Testament now, others that we could talk well, but I think this gets the conversation started.
00:24:03:19 – 00:24:31:48
Michael Gewecke
Well, if you come back next week, I hope you will. And I hope you’ll bring a friend that see what I did there. If you come back next week, I believe that there’s a lot of interesting content in the medieval church because we’re going to be challenged to ask, how do we understand evangelism when the church becomes paired with culture and becomes paired with nationality?
00:24:31:53 – 00:25:03:51
Michael Gewecke
And I will stop there so you can come back and we can engage what that will look like next week. Let’s take a quick break and we’ll conclude our dog. We are grateful for the time. Together, we confess that the word evangelism may or may not be a comfortable word, but we know that we are called this people by the grace of Jesus Christ to give voice and witness to the good news of who He is and what he’s done for Grant a strength that we might continue to be open to the transformation of your spirit.
00:25:03:55 – 00:25:14:58
Michael Gewecke
And of course, Lord, we pray that you might equip us and prepare us, that we might share that good news with others whose lives would be blessed by it. We ask it in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.