‘To evangelise is so to present Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit that men come to put their faith in God through him, to accept him as their Saviour and to serve him as their King in the fellowship of his Church.’ So wrote the great 20th century Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple.
It’s our duty and joy as Christians to evangelise following the command of our Saviour who in today’s Gospel from Luke Chapter 9 ‘called the Twelve together and… sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to… so they set out and went from village to village proclaiming the good news’.
It’s my experience as a former parish priest that great blessings come upon a church if the majority of its membership is, in their own way, on the lookout for those near to God’s kingdom ready with an invitation to services. Fr Edward’s arrival could be a pretext for us to invite friends along as our Churches enter a new phase of life.
"Each one reach one" - that's a good motto - imagine, if each Christian in our churches were to reach another person every year or bring a lapsed communicant back to Jesus in his most holy sacrament? We’d double our members every year!
Could there be anything dearer to the heart of Jesus than souls won back from materialism and worldly pursuits to living faith in a living God? To a purpose for living and a reason for dying through the Christian faith?
There must be no end to evangelisation, to the sharing of the good news of salvation in our Lord Jesus Christ and no weightier concern for a Christian fully formed in the faith.
There can no more be an end to evangelising than there is an end or limit upon the love that flows from the Heart of Jesus.
I know that our church has many concerns – repairs, fund raising, children’s work and so on…but didn't Jesus say that if we sought first his kingdom and his righteousness then all other things would fall into place?
He did.
Do we?
Later in Luke 9 Jesus says 'The harvest is rich but the labourers are few' and that is still true.
Few are the ones who would really put work in for Jesus' kingdom and the harvest of souls he is gathering for his return in glory.
So often we raise money for church from our friends. We take and we do not give or share the most precious thing about the church - the knowledge we share as Christians of Jesus Christ as friend and saviour.
Of course sharing about Jesus takes prudence as well as courage. Coming back to Archbishop Temple though he was asked by some lay members about the dangers of people unlearned in theology sharing with others about Christianity. This was his provocative reply which I hope speaks to both you and I:
‘It does very little harm if an eager layman talks heresy, provided he shows and imparts a love for the Lord Jesus. It does great harm if a priest talks orthodoxy so as to make men think the Gospel is dull or irrelevant’.
Let’s put more heart this week into sharing about the Lord with those in our circle.
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