3 Ways To Share The Gospel
Today, we’re talking about three different ways to share the gospel.
I started to think through this evangelism thing. There’s all kinds of different ways to share the gospel. And it’s almost, I mean, in an infinite amount of ways to share the gospel. I mean, I know everything from feeding the hungry, making burritos for people, making cookies to going on the streets, and using signs, and filling stadiums. I mean, the list is endless when it comes to the different ways to share the gospel.
So I started to think through this, and I think there’s three main categories of ways to share the gospel. Now, it also happens to be 3Ps. come on. PPP.
So the first, one — Practical. There’s practical ways of serving people. So, feeding the hungry, getting clean water to people. I mean, I remember a story of a friend of mine. They know how to make these simple water filters out of locally sourced materials. So they went to a village and they taught them how to make these water filters. When they came back the next time, the leader of the village said, “Listen, before you taught us how to do these water filters, every single person in my village was sick. After you taught us how to do the water filters, we all got healed.” So something very practical served a village. And then they were able to bring in the gospel after that.
I remember we were in a Pygmy Village in Burundi Africa, and we brought a group of doctors to do free medical clinics for this Pygmy Village, and the only believer in the area was the chief. So we served them by doing free medical clinics, and we coupled it with the other forms of evangelism that I’d talk about. When we shared the good news of the kingdom of God, I watched this pretty much every single person in that village says, “I’m going to follow Jesus. Jesus will be the King of my life.” So, practical serving of people leads the ways to proclaim the good news of the kingdom.
Now, the second type or second way of doing evangelism is what I call Presentation Evangelism. So, this would be someone like Billy Graham or I used to travel with a group called Team Extreme, and we would put on shows and events and stadiums around the world and we would proclaim and present the gospel. Billy Graham would gather people in stadiums and he would proclaim the gospel. It was all of the proclamation, the presentation of the good news of the kingdom, and a very effective way to share the gospel with many people.
Now, the third way to share the gospel is what I call Power Evangelism. Power Evangelism is when you couple the presentation of the gospel with the demonstration of the power of God. So Jesus said this, he said, “These signs will follow those who believe. They’re going to cast out demons and they’re going to heal the sick.” Matthew 10, he sent them out to cast out demons, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers. Jesus, over and over and over again, whenever he would send out the disciples to go and preach the gospel, he would say, “Demonstrate the power of God.”
Corinthian says: “I pray that your faith might not just rest in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God” 1 Corinthians 4:20: “The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.” So, power proclamation of the gospel, proclamation with power is a great way. In fact, if you look at the biggest churches in the world, the biggest churches in the world always combine a proclamation of the gospel, which is a presentation, with a demonstration of the gospel, which is a demonstration of the power of God and the kingdom of God.
I did a study. It’s one of my main teachings. I do call it Causing a Jesus Epidemic where I looked at every single time in the Bible or in the four gospels in the Book of Acts where it says, “News spread quickly about Jesus or word about him spread quickly.” You know what I realized? Every single time it happens, it’s after God does something supernatural. Jesus heals the sick — news spread about Him everywhere. He raises the dead — news spreads about Him everywhere.
Same thing happened with the apostles. They would do something. Silver and gold, they don’t have. But what I do have, rise up and walk in the name of Jesus. And all of a sudden, boom, news about Jesus spread quickly everywhere.
So, I think the best way to share the gospel is some combination of the three of these, where you’re practically serving people. You’re caring for the poor, the orphan, the widow. There’s no way that people can get saved unless someone shares the good news with them. So it’s a practical presentation of the gospel, and the gospel is good news that people need to hear. It’s an announcement of a kingdom that’s worth everything. And then the power of God, where you’re demonstrating a supernatural power of God, you’re healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead. You’re coupling that with all three.
So I think those are the best ways. And look, how you do that is there’s exponential ways. You can always get creative in how you do one of those three ways. These are just categories. And so you can just go and do it. The best way to do it is a combination of all three.
Now, if you want to learn how to practically know what to say when you’re sharing the gospel, go check out Story Evangelism. It’s a simple way, three stories that everyone can do to share the gospel. So, if you want a practical way to share the gospel, go check out Story Evangelism, storyevangelism.com. It’s a simple training. It’ll help you out.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
