When I was 14 years old a crusade came to town. I had participated in revival meetings every year of my life, but this was no ordinary revival. This was a citywide crusade. The nightly meetings were to be held at the local football stadium. Where better to have a worship service than the biggest “temple” in town? I am from the South, after all.
Evangelism training for youth was one of the special emphases for the week. A special leader would train us to use gospel tracts. We would then go share the gospel and invite people to the crusade later that evening. The leader shocked us by targeting the mall parking lot for the practicum portion of our training. You really have to understand Southern culture to grasp the full experience of this statement. We were not allowed on the mall parking lot because of a certain strata of our culture’s society that “parked” there. “Parked” is also a loaded word, for those not accustomed to Southern culture. We split into teams and began walking from car to car talking to people. Very quickly we encountered some of the town’s finest, accompanied by a strong aroma from their choice beverage, who told us of what we could do with our tracts. Then, in true Southern hospitality, they offered to help. We discerned this as God’s sign telling us to return to the stadium.
In my Christian learning, evangelism and discipleship served as two separate activities that occurred in different places with different kinds of people. I use to think evangelism was for non-Christians and discipleship was for Christians. In twenty-four years of pastoring, my position on the relationship of these two essential disciplines has changed significantly. Through study of the scriptures and pastoral experience, I have come to understand evangelism and discipleship as the “great marriage” of the gospel. For the gospel to have its full effect of saving and sustaining power in a person’s life, these two disciplines must remain together. Each complements the other. But due to, what I refer to as, the programming of Christianity, their separation has become the “great divorce” of the modern church. This is a separation that was never intended nor demonstrated in scripture. It ultimately strips both of their real purpose and leads to ends that are unhealthy and opposed to the mission of the church.
Evangelism without discipleship results in converts. Discipleship without evangelism produces self-righteous, religious people. Instead of bringing these two people together as one disciple, they isolate and set at odds those they are directed towards by creating a religious classification system between each another. Jesus’ mandate to make disciples demands that evangelism and discipleship remain together. A disciple cannot be made without mission. Mission requires that disciples share the gospel (evangelism) because it is the only power that saves, converts to Christ. Mission also requires that disciples continually live in the power of the gospel to grow in faithful obedience to God’s Word. When Paul is explaining a Christian’s maturity and growth in Ephesians 4:15, he says, “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ”. “Speaking the truth in love” is a clear reference to speaking the gospel to one another, or what I call “gospel-speak,” as a regular practice for discipleship.
The power of the gospel is as essential for a Christian to mature and grow as it is for the non-Christian to be converted to Christ. The issue of “where does evangelism end and discipleship begin?” creates a precarious line that is difficult, if not impossible, to navigate. If evangelism is sharing the gospel, then there can be no point at which we cease this practice in order to begin some understanding of discipleship. Disciple making is evangelism and discipleship practiced together to convert and mature for missional multiplication. May the church embrace the fullness of Jesus’ great commission to impact the world with the life-giving power of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ.