In the mid-’70s, when I was finishing seminary, my dissertation for my Doctor of Ministry degree was “Prophetic  Preaching From A Pastoral Base.”  I never thought about any kind of ministry other than being a pastor in the local church.  I admired the ministries of the prophets in the Old Testament.  Jesus admired them, too, and certainly ministered in the prophetic spirit. His teachings were confronting and challenging, but they were also filled with love and hope.  He was a prophet and he was pastoral. I saw in their examples how I wanted to relate to my congregations in actions and word.

I was blessed to have served 12 years in the local church before I began feeling my ‘Call within a Call’ from being a pastor to a servant evangelist. I knew wherever the call to evangelism took me, I would never let it separate me from the local church. If I commit the rest of my life to this new specialized ministry, it would have to be in a way that helps and supports the local church.  And it had to be a ministry that mirrors the prophetic and pastoral ministry of Jesus … a ministry of love, confrontation, challenge, and hope.

It was a time when TV evangelists filled the airwaves with messages that were foreign to my belief with their lifestyles and the ways they preached the Good News. They put a disingenuous name on one of the great building blocks of the Church.  As much as TV evangelists upset me with their cheap grace and preaching less than the fullness of the Gospel, I am disappointed in us who have let their ways push us away from evangelism.  Do we do the same thing, in reverse, that they did?  The Gospel is a double edge sword.  It is personal and it is social.  It is saving souls and it is saving society.  Did we choose social justice and abandon evangelism?

This is why I named my ministry, “Evangelism in the Prophetic Spirit.”  Evangelism is being a messenger for God, and God’s message is love, and that love moves us to love others through acts of peace and justice.  We cannot compartmentalize evangelism into saving of self.  It has nothing to do with numbers and building mega-churches.  It is not counting heads, it is changing hearts.  For me, it is partnering with local pastors to challenge, revive and grow their churches.

Let’s stop pushing and pulling evangelism around to fit our narrow-minded agendas. Evangelism is the fullness of the Gospel in all its Kingdom building ways. Let’s reclaim the true meaning and action of evangelism ~ Evangelism in the Prophetic Spirit.