pat loughery

We’re working on a new sermon//discussion series in our church, starting last Sunday. The goal is to try to understand how it was that Jesus evangelized his community.

Yesterday we explored what it means to evangelize, and we began to chip away at a definition of evangelism. A short version would be something like this

Evangelism is demonstrating and proclaiming that good news of the Kingdom of God in words and deeds.

and we expanded it into this working definition:

Evangelism: Proclaiming and demonstrating the good news that, in Jesus, God is present and active in and passionate about our everyday lives, and saving us from our own worst errors – and that the result is even greater than we could have dreamed or hoped.

I’m not entirely satisfied with that definition, but I’m happy with how it’s beginning to be expanded. It’s helpful for me to think about the gospel including facets of salvation, redemption, incarnation, service, healing.