1.1 The biblical origin of evangelism

The origin of evangelism is found in the activity of God. In Gen 3:15, immediately after the sin of Adam and Eve, God announced that the offspring of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. This passage is interpreted by Christians to refer to the coming of Jesus Christ, who would gain final victory over evil and save creation from sin and death. Based on this, the passage is called the protoevangelium, or first telling of the good news.

This passage has two important insights for evangelism and witness: first, God promises salvation rather than granting it immediately. This means that creation must endure the presence of evil and death for an undisclosed amount of time even as it anticipates God setting all things right. It is this reality that creates the condition for evangelism. People must be reminded of the coming salvation of God lest they believe that evil and death are triumphant based on their immediate experiences. This gives rise to the second insight: God communicates. God not only planned to save creation so that it can share in abundant life; God desired for creation to know this plan. This provides an initial authorization for being a witness of the good news.

The biblical narrative unfolds around how God carried out this plan, by working through the people of Israel to provide a Saviour who would redeem all creation. Along with revealing this plan, the Bible describes how God communicated the good news either through conveying it directly or, more often, through people God commissioned to deliver it. While the overarching good news of God’s salvation for all creation is always present, the precise presentation of the good news is dependent on the historical context of those receiving it. In the Hebrew Bible, the focus is on God’s relationship with Israel. In the New Testament, it is on the reign of God inaugurated by Jesus.

1.2 Evangelism in the Hebrew Bible

The office of ‘evangelist’ does not exist in the Hebrew Bible, nor is Jesus explicitly mentioned (though many Christians would contend that there are numerous prophecies that foretell his coming as the Jewish Messiah). Notwithstanding, there are people who witness to the good news of God’s gracious activity and invite their listeners to respond to it. The Hebrew verb bsr is usually translated into English as ‘to bear glad tidings’. It appears in passages that praise God for good things God has done for Israel (Ps 40:10; 96:2; Isa 60:6) and that announce the good news of God’s victories on behalf of Israel (Isa 40:9; 52:7; Nah 2:1). It also is used once to declare God’s goodness specifically for the poor (Isa 61:1). The New Testament reports that this last usage is quoted by Jesus (Luke 4:18; Klaiber 1997: 21–22).

Beyond specific passages, the entirety of the Hebrew Bible can be understood as a declaration of good news. Drawing from the Chaoskampf genre of ancient Near Eastern literature, in which a divine warrior overcomes the forces of chaos and death, Walter Brueggemann contends that the Hebrew Bible announces God’s hidden victory over chaos and death. Even though the victory is hidden because the forces of chaos and death remain formidable, the people of God are assured that these forces have no ultimate power (Brueggemann 1993: 41).

Brueggemann goes on to explain that God calls the people of Israel as a whole to be a witness to this victory. They do this through proclaiming it to three audiences: (1) Those outside of Israel who need to hear a new story for how to order their lives. (2) Themselves, so they do not forget the victories God has already granted them and stray from God’s covenant. (3) Their children, to form them as those who honour God and not as participants in the remaining structures that promote chaos and death, including oppressive political and economic structures (Brueggemann 1993: 48, 71, 93).

Passages in the Hebrew Bible that describe God’s pending salvation for Israel and, through Israel, all other nations, witness to this assured victory. These often involve a picture of shalom, or wholeness, in which all things are set right among God, Israel, the nations, and creation itself. Two examples of this are the vision of the Peaceable Kingdom in Isa 11:1–9 and the nations beating their swords into ploughshares in Mic 4:2–4. Some of these passages emphasize the role of a uniquely appointed servant of God in bringing this salvation (e.g. Isa 53), whom Christians later identified as Jesus.

This vision of shalom is not the same as the later Christian notion of ‘heaven’. As Brueggemann explains, the Hebrew Bible authors were not as interested in offering hope for what happens after death so much as ‘hope […in an] embedded, shaped, placed, lived reality’ (Brueggemann 1999: 108). This promise of wholeness in the present resonates especially among those who face marginalization and oppression. It has also helped fuel a postcolonial critique of Western soteriology. For example, Emily J. Choge Kerama, an African theologian, suggests that the minimized ways the Western churches have come to understand salvation neglects the needs of African people. This is disappointing because originally ‘when missionaries came to Africa they did not divide the temporal and the sacred […] Missionaries knew they had to minister to the whole person, but today that holistic aspect is not seen’ (Kerama 2020: 386).

1.3 Evangelism in the New Testament

Multiple Hebrew Bible scholars contend that the announcement of God’s victory in the Hebrew Bible becomes what can properly be called evangelism with the advent of Jesus in the New Testament. The work of Jesus, especially in the resurrection, is the decisive act that demonstrates the veracity of the Hebrew Bible’s proclamation that God has triumphed over chaos and death (Brueggemann 1993: 38; Rae et al. 2008: 1–22). The terms evangelism and witness are both explicitly used in the New Testament in reference to this proclamation.

The English word ‘evangelism’ is a transliteration of the Greek words eu, meaning ‘good’, and angelos, meaning ‘messenger’. When combined, these words form the noun euangelion, which is translated into English as ‘good news’ or ‘gospel’, and the verb euangelizesthai, which is translated into English as ‘to [share the] good news’ or ‘to evangelize’. The specific word ‘evangelism’, which describes the abstract concept that reflects on the gospel message and how to share it, is not found in the New Testament. This suggests that New Testament authors were less concerned about conceptualizing a Christian practice than articulating the gospel message and sharing it with others.

The earliest extant uses of the verb euangelizesthai date to the fourth century BCE in Greek literature. It is used to describe announcing anything that was cause for celebration. The noun euangelion was used most notably in 9 BC to describe the ‘good news’ that Octavian had ascended to the Roman throne and become Caesar Augustus (Barrett 2000: 10).

The New Testament authors repurposed the idea of evangelizing to focus on the message of what God did through Jesus Christ to bring salvation. An example of this is found in the words of the angel who announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds: ‘Me phobeisthe, idou gar euangelizomai humin’ (literally: ‘Fear not, for behold I evangelize you’, Luke 2:10, SBLGNT). The authors placed a strong emphasis on the importance of sharing the good news, with the noun euangelion and various conjugations of the verb eungeliszesthai combining to appear 132 times in the Greek New Testament (Barrett 2000: 11).

The authorization for Christian evangelism comes in two ways in the New Testament. The primary way is in the Gospels, which record how Jesus practised evangelism and commissioned all who would follow him to do the same. The second is in the book of Acts and the epistles, which provide examples of how the first Christians practised evangelism and exhorted each other and future generations of Christians to continue this work.

3.1 Starting point

Each Christian has a reason that they are willing to be identified publicly with Jesus Christ. For individuals, this reason is usually linked to a personal experience of God’s goodness. For Christian communities, the reason is often a central, soteriological belief that stands at the centre of their theology. This reason is the starting point for evangelism because it provides Christians with a belief so good that they want to share it with others.

Teasdale contends that the starting point is not expressed as a propositional truth but as a narrative (2016: 34). Often for individuals it is a story about how God rescued the person from trouble and provided assurance of God’s graciousness to sustain them in the present and give them hope for the future (Richardson 2006: 25–26). For Christian communities, the story is often told around a central soteriological event. In either case, the belief is so good that it energizes Christians to share it. The opening of the Catechism of the Catholic Church offers an example of this, describing in a brief narrative how God saved humanity through Jesus Christ and how those who have accepted this salvation are prompted to share about it with others:

God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life […] He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life […] Those who with God’s help have welcomed Christ’s call and freely responded to it are urged on by the love of Christ to proclaim the Good News everywhere in the world. (Catholic Catechism 2019: 7)

Because the starting point is always grounded in a unique experience of God’s goodness, no two Christians or Christian communities express their starting point in the same way. These variations in experience will set Christians on different trajectories for developing their understanding and practise of evangelism.

While starting points are unique to each Christian witness, there are some common experiences and beliefs that Christians include in their starting points. One such belief that has had a major influence on Christianity in the West is that God is good, and God offers humans an eternal existence with God in glory, free from death and all danger. Thomas Aquinas stated it this way: ‘Man’s essential reward, which is his beatitude, consists in the perfect union of the soul with God, inasmuch as it enjoys God perfectly as seen and loved perfectly’ (Aquinas 2006; Supp.III.96.1).

This belief has remained at the centre of Western Christianity, though the emphasis has shifted over time. Martin Luther wrote in his Large Catechism (1529), ‘we see that the Father has given himself to us with all his creation, and how he has abundantly provided for us in this life and, further, has overwhelmed us with unspeakable and eternal blessings’ (Luther 1967: 82). For Luther, this goodness included God’s temporal and eternal care of humanity, and it beckoned people to live in a right relationship with God to enjoy this goodness unhindered in the present world and throughout eternity. The Westminster Catechism (1647) opens by emphasizing human responsibility and blessedness based on God’s goodness: ‘Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever’ (Bower 2010: 67). This enjoyment is possible because those God redeems are promised that they will be ‘received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory’ (Bower 2010: 82).

This emphasis on relating to an eternally good God also served as the primary motivation for evangelism during the evangelical revivals in the United States and Great Britain from the eighteenth century through the twentieth century, including the First (1730–1760) and Second (1800–1830) Great Awakenings. While the specific theology differed between the awakenings and among the denominations and evangelists that participated in them, a consistent starting point was to prepare people to enter the presence of God eternally. For example, John Wesley (1703–1791), who founded Methodism, exhorted his preachers: ‘You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work […] save as many souls as you can; to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance’ (Wesley 1984: 854). This same theme was espoused by Billy Graham (1918–2018), perhaps the best-known evangelist of the twentieth century, who called people to have ‘peace with God’ through faith in Jesus Christ so they could face the struggles of life in this world with the assurance that they will live eternally with God (Graham 1995: 168–172).

Many Christians outside of the West agree that God is good, but the emphasis on relating to God primarily in terms of eternal life and spiritual blessing is an inadequate starting point. Their lived experience demands salvation from evil powers and oppressive structures in the present world, such as unjust social, economic, and political systems. This is especially true for Majority World Christians.

Latin American theologians express this need for a more holistic understanding of salvation by making the reign of God their starting point. Mortimer Arias, a Bolivian Methodist bishop and evangelism scholar, states ‘the good news of the kingdom is for the whole person—physically, intellectually, and spiritually’ (2001: 3). The comprehensive nature of God’s reign provides a powerful motivation to evangelize. This is a sentiment echoed by other Latin American theologians, including Catholics Gustavo Gutiérrez, Oscar Romero, and Jon Sobrino, and Protestants Orland Costas and José Míguez Bonino.

James Cone, known as the author of Black Theology, merged the Latin American notion of liberation with the experience of Black people in the United States and developed an understanding of evangelism premised on a starting point of salvation as ‘freedom in history’ (Cone 1993: 534537–538). Likewise, Letty Russell constructed a feminist approach to evangelism by establishing her starting point as liberation relating to equality of the sexes (Russell 1978: 129).

African scholars agree that the soteriological starting point should be holistic, encompassing both the present and eternity. In addition to liberation from human oppression in this world, they add deliverance from evil spiritual forces and broken relationships. Kerama declares that salvation entails God’s protection from ‘all sorts of enemies, including spirits and sorcerers [as well as] political power that allows rampant corruption, nepotism, and various forms of social injustice’ (2020: 386). This insistence on including spiritual deliverance as part of the starting point is reflected in Pentecostal movements around the world. As Finnish theologian Veli-Matti Kärkkäinnen explains, for Pentecostals ‘the rebirth of a person by the Spirit is the anticipation of the transformation of the cosmos’ (2005: 44).

Postliberal and process Christians have a narrower starting point. They are less concerned with an eschatological reign of God than they are with human relationships being restored completely on Earth. For the postliberal, this happens chiefly through the establishment of a virtuous community that lives according to the ethical teachings of Jesus (Stone 2007: 48–49). Process Christians would agree with this, though would not see Jesus as the only ethical teacher they could follow.

This brief review of starting points demonstrates that the lived experience and core soteriological beliefs of Christians lead to a variety of ways to express the good news of the Christian faith. Being animated by their distinctive beliefs as starting points, Christians have authenticity as a witness on behalf of Jesus Christ as well as a motivation for engaging in evangelism.

3.2 Theological reflection

While the starting point provides the motivation to evangelize, theological reflection allows Christian witnesses to develop a fuller articulation of the evangelistic message. It does this by bringing their starting point into conversation with the Christian tradition, which provides insights into who God is, how God acts, and how God desires humans to respond (Teasdale 2016: 47). These insights allow Christian witnesses to explore and claim doctrinal teachings to build on and clarify their respective starting points.

The Christian tradition is not univocal. There are multiple theological traditions within it, each offering interpretations of God’s nature and action. This requires Christian witnesses to discern how they will draw from the overarching tradition to inform their starting points. Minimally, this involves determining what they believe are sources of divine revelation as well as the hermeneutics they will use for interpreting those sources (Teasdale 2016: 52–58).

The specific areas of theology that tend to have the most impact on the practice of evangelism deal with the human condition, sin, and God’s action to save people. While there are numerous approaches to these three areas, there are certain theological traditions that are more frequently related to evangelism.

Evangelicalism is perhaps the most recognized theological tradition vis-à-vis evangelism, with the words ‘evangelicalism’ and ‘evangelism’ frequently being confused. Classically, historian David Bebbington (1989) describes evangelicalism as having four major attributes: biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. Biblicism means that evangelicals accept the Bible as the foundational source of divine revelation. Crucicentrism identifies the centrality of Jesus’ crucifixion in evangelical theology. Evangelicals believe that humanity is guilty before God because of the original sin of Adam and therefore stands condemned unless forgiven by God. God grants this forgiveness through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ upon the cross. This forgiveness includes assurance that humanity can enter God’s holy presence and live eternally in God’s glory. Conversionism explains that the only proper response to this gracious act is for people to believe in what Jesus did, repent of their sins, and promise to lead a new life under the lordship of Jesus. Activism describes how converts can order their lives in accordance with their new belief in Jesus (Bebbington 1989: 2–3).

While these broad characteristics are true for all evangelicals, there are differentiations within evangelicalism. For example, evangelicals who are influenced by Reformed theology will tend to emphasize the moment of conversion, as they hold this to be the pivotal outward sign that someone has been forgiven and is assured of eternal glory. Those influenced by Wesleyan theology tend to conflate conversionism and activism because they understand conversion as an ongoing process as people are sanctified over the course of their lives in preparation for eternal glory.

Catholicism agrees with the evangelical assessment of humanity’s plight. Drawing from Augustine of Hippo, Catholics contend that humans inherit the original guilt of Adam and so stand condemned before God (Augustine 2001: 607). They likewise hold that God acted decisively in the death of Jesus Christ to forgive that sin and restore humanity to a right relationship with God. Where Catholicism differs is related to the role of the church. While evangelicalism, and Protestantism more broadly, tends to emphasize the individual repenting and claiming God’s salvation, Catholics believe that God established the church and its sacraments, especially baptism, as the normative vehicles through which people partake in salvation. As the Catholic Catechism teaches,

the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism. (Catholic Catechism 2019: 224)

While Catholics do hold that God’s grace is sufficient to offer salvation to people outside the Church and baptism, this is not the norm. The expectation is that those who know the truth of the gospel and affirm it must respond by receiving baptism and participating in the life of the Church.

Hailing from Catholic and Protestant churches, liberation theologians contend that sin and salvation are both personal and social. According to Latin American theologian Jules A. Martinez-Olivieri, this means salvation takes three forms: (1) sociopolitical, which liberates the marginalized and oppressed; (2) anthropological, which provides a community of equals for all people; and (3) theological, which forgives sin and allows for a renewal of relationships between all people and God (Martínez-Oliveri 2020: 406). To make this expansive salvation available, Argentinian theologian Nancy Bedford explains that God sent Jesus, whose ministry and teachings emphasized the reign of God in a way ‘that does not follow the logic of violence, intimidation, and retaliation that most often characterizes human empires’ (Bedford 2021: 27). Instead, Jesus provided a way of living that offered grace and solidarity to the hurting while demonstrating nonviolent resistance to the oppressive structures of the world. By following in the way of Jesus, the marginalized and privileged alike are invited to form a new community of grace and justice in the present world, subvert existing oppressive structures, and experience the forgiveness of their individual sins and find eschatological hope.

Mercy Amba Oduyoye and Elizabeth Amoah, both Ghanaian womanist theologians, contend that Jesus not only offers a way of living, but identifies with people in their daily lives. Drawing from their African context, they describe how Jesus has been claimed by male African Christians in a variety of ways, including the ‘universal ancestor’ who serves as a mediator between the human community and God to overcome all powers that bring harm, including the power of the devil (Amoah and Oduyoye 1988: 40). They likewise claim that African women can perceive and accept ‘Christ as a woman and as an African’ because Jesus suffered in his body and sacrificed to order the community around him, taking on the pains and roles so often expected of African women. Because of this, ‘[f]ears are not swept under the beds and mats but are brought out to be dealt with by the presence of the Christ’ who women can look to as a friend, companion, and liberator (Amoah and Oduyoye 1988: 45).

The central theological idea for the Eastern Orthodox churches is theosis, or deification. This is not a matter of humans becoming gods, but of becoming perfected in virtue like God. Greek Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware explains that God created humanity with the potential to become perfect by choosing to live into the fullness of God’s nature. However, humanity sinned and so had their internal understanding of God and native desire to become like God distorted. This resulted not in the original guilt articulated by the Western churches, but in a darkened nature that lost the potential to become like God (Ware 1993: 222–223). Overcoming this necessitated the incarnation of God, so that by God becoming human, humanity might again become like God (Ware 1993: 225). God accomplished this through Jesus of Nazareth, who was both fully God and fully human, and who broke the power of sin and death over humanity through his death and resurrection (Ware 1993: 229). The appropriate response to this is for people to use their free will, which Jesus has liberated from sin, to seek after God through worship and piety both individually and in community with the church.

Postliberal and process theologies are less concerned with personal sin than with building virtuous communities. The post-liberal understands this as an outworking of faith in Jesus Christ, whose life and teachings demonstrate how people can live together in a way that resists all coercive power, with each being individual respected and treated with justice. Given the opportunity to enter this virtuous community, people are called to convert by shifting their convictions away from anything that promotes violence (Stone 2007: 257) and are invited to ‘come home’ to God by letting go of the ‘false self’ they have cultivated as a defence mechanism within a bruising world (Heath 2008: 82).

Process theologians contend that God and humanity are co-creators of the universe. God offers humanity insight into how to live a flourishing life, but God has no power to compel humanity to accept this. Rather, God must wait to see how humanity chooses to use its power of creation to determine what God will do next. God does this patiently and lovingly, as a ‘nurturant parent’, guiding us toward flourishing (Lorenzen 2006: 2).

This brief overview of specific theological traditions offers a glimpse into how each engages in theological reflection, interpreting the Christian tradition in a way that fleshes out their starting point to practise evangelism. This interpretive activity makes it possible for Christian witnesses to articulate the gospel message more fully.

3.3 Contextual awareness

The starting point and theological reflection deal with the internal formation of the Christian witness prior to practising evangelism. The witness clarifies the content of the gospel message in a way that is both authentic to the Christian’s experience of God’s goodness (starting point) and better explained in conversation with the Christian tradition (theological reflection).

Contextual awareness provides a bridge that moves from this internal work to the external. Having clarified the content of the gospel, Christian witnesses listen to both their internal and external contexts.

The internal context has to do with the witness’ own proclivities for relating to other people, such as their personality (for individuals) and gifts and passions (for individuals and communities; see Teasdale 2016: 66–67). This allows the witness to evangelize in a way that is not only authentic to their experience, but in a way that draws on their strengths.

The external context includes the individual, cultural, social, and communal influences on the people that that the witness seeks to evangelize (Teasdale 2016: 66). The witness is enjoined to listen carefully and learn this context before presenting the gospel. This is essential because one of the most severe criticisms of evangelism is that it has been deployed to legitimize violent acts of conquest in the past. In these instances, the witness has carried the gospel message and demanded that others accept it without any interest in how the people they were evangelizing were already living. Contextual awareness demands that the Christian approach any evangelistic activity humbly, open to hearing what those being evangelized have to say. Ideally, this is done through forging a relationship between the evangelist and the evangelized in which mutual sharing can take place (Teasdale 2016: 94–95).

This capacity of Christian witnesses to adapt their practice of evangelism to various contexts is related to the ‘translatability’ of the gospel message. Lamin Sanneh, a Gambian missiologist, describes this translatability as the capacity for Christians to convey the gospel with all its salvific power in any context or language (Sanneh 2009: 56). Sanneh contrasts this to Islam, which insists that the Qur’an is only genuine if read in Arabic.

Majority World theologians advocate for contextual awareness related to evangelism because Western transcultural theologies that deal primarily with the spiritual and eternal have often ignored the lived experiences of indigenous and marginalized peoples (Martínez-Oliveri 2020: 405). Even Majority World theologians who otherwise identify with a specific theological tradition agree on the need for contextuality. For example, Ruth Padilla DeBorst, who is an evangelical from Latin America, explains that ‘Majority World evangelicals […do] not necessarily fit the portrait’ of Western evangelicalism (2016: 141). This is because they are forged in relative poverty and yearn for God’s grace to save them as much from the hardships of daily life as from their personal sins. As such, they ‘affirm that conversion is needed both at a personal level, in the hearts of men and women, and at a societal level, in the structures and powers that govern the world’ (DeBorst 2016: 141, original emphasis).

One of the reasons that Western theologies do not resonate well in other cultures is that they were developed for specific Western cultural and historical contexts. The emphasis on eternity, especially, came about as a response to the fear of imminent danger and death. For Roman Catholicism, this fear came initially because of the sacking of Rome and the need to find a source of security outside the Roman empire. The church, which represented God on Earth, became that. Augustine opened De Civitatae with a moving description of how the barbarians destroyed the city of Rome only to halt in awe before the church buildings where the survivors had fled for refuge (Augustine 2001: 4).

Evangelicalism, especially as it arose in the United States during the nineteenth century, built on the idea of finding security in God by emphasizing an individual’s agency to accept or reject God’s offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. This agreed with the strong sense of self-determination that many early US Americans had developed in contrast to the social order they had fought to be freed from during the Revolutionary War, which defined a person’s station in life at birth (Hatch 1989: 25). Denominations that refused to acknowledge the need for this contextual emphasis on self-determination, either because of theological rigidity or institutional inertia, found themselves as ‘losers’ in the religious economy of the early American Republic (Finke and Stark 2002: 96–104).

Postliberal and process theology are also Western theologies. Both were developed out of a desire to overcome the influence of Western individualism had on Christian theology. At the same time, both also assume sufficient individual autonomy to either join a virtuous community (postliberalism) or to work toward the common good (process).

Eastern Orthodoxy developed out of a different context. Within the relative stability of serving as the state religion for the Byzantine empire, it was more reflective about what it meant to respond faithfully to God’s work through Jesus Christ. This reflection entailed (1) careful exposition about the Christian faith, highlighted through the Ecumenical Councils (Florovsky 2003: 117), and (2) a deep spirituality that resisted too much attachment to earthly pleasures and power, demonstrated through an emphasis on mysticism and monasticism. Through both careful reflection on God’s revelation and dedicated attendance upon God’s mystical presence, people could hope to be deified (Schmemann 2003: 198–199).

Evangelism scholar Jeff Conklin-Miller describes the call of the church to be an evangelistic witness as one that requires ‘leaning both ways’ by simultaneously staying faithful to the internal logic of the gospel and engaging meaningfully with the world on its own terms (Conklin-Miller 2020: 12). Contextual awareness provides Christian witnesses – whether individuals or congregations – the means for leaning into the world so they can share the gospel they have learned to articulate by leaning into their experiences of God’s goodness (starting point) and the Christian tradition (theological reflection).

3.4 Creative practices

Joining the first three items together allows Christian witnesses to develop creative practices of evangelism that are authentic to their respective experiences of Christ, faithful to the Christian tradition, and appropriate to the context in which they are evangelizing. Based on this, there are limitless ways to present the gospel and invite others to respond to it. This is evident in the wide range of practices that are espoused by Christians, including variations among those who have only partial differences in the opening three items of the equation.

For example, William Abraham, an Irish Methodist pastor and evangelism scholar, along with many Latin American liberation theologians, would point to the reign of God as their starting point. However, their different theologies and contexts would lead them to different practices of evangelism. For Abraham, drawing from a Wesleyan soteriology in a Western context, evangelism should call individuals to be ‘initiated into the Kingdom of God’ in multiple ways, including communally, intellectually, morally, experientially, vocationally, and spiritually, so that they reflect the holiness of God and God’s reign (Abraham 1989: 102–103). For Latin American liberation theologians, the practice of evangelism entails proclamation, a call to conversion, and action (Pope-Levinson 1991: 156). Proclamation includes both an announcement of God’s liberation of the marginalized through Jesus Christ and a denunciation of the unjust powers and structures that dehumanize people. Conversion involves people becoming more aware of the unjust structures around them. Action involves living in solidarity with the marginalized as they all work toward overcoming the unjust structures.

Other liberation theologians have different practices based on their context. Ray Aldred, who is a member of the First Nations in Canada, deals with a context in which Indigenous peoples and the descendants of those who colonized the Indigenous peoples’ lands remain in a contentious relationship. Evangelistic practice involves Christians who are descendants of colonizers acknowledging the wrongs inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples and making necessary reparations. Christians who are Indigenous evangelize by offering forgiveness to the descendants of the colonizers in effort to build a more just society for all (Aldred 2020: 442–443).

Letty Russell, reflecting on the implications of being a feminist liberation theologian within the United States where church growth and marketplace success is prized, contends that evangelism is practised through ‘calculated inefficiency’. This involves spending more time ‘invest[ing] ourselves in the outcasts and marginal people’ rather than just seeking to increase the size of the institutional church (Russell 1978: 130).

African theologian Emily Kerama and Pentecostal theologian Daryl Grundmann agree with the need to help the marginalized but hold a different pneumatology than Russell. They point to relying on God for movements of spiritual power that overthrow demonic forces, heal people who are ill, and reconcile broken relationships between individuals and among larger groups of people (Kerama 2020: 387–389; Grundmann 2005: 69). All this is evangelistic, demonstrating the power of Jesus alongside that of preaching the gospel.

Evangelicals, driven by the high value they place on conversion, have long emphasized proclaiming the gospel and inviting people to make a personal decision to become disciples of Jesus Christ as the chief practice of evangelism (Bebbington 1989: 5). However, they also recognize that their evangelistic practice must shift according to the contextual worldview of the people they are evangelizing. Evangelical evangelism scholars W. Jay Moon and W. Bud Simon, both US Americans who served as missionaries in other countries, identify four worldviews: guilt/justice, shame/honour, fear/power, and indifference/belonging with purpose (Moon and Simon 2021: 30–37). People in each category require being approached with different evangelistic practices that emphasize different aspects of the gospel.

Eastern Orthodoxy, with its emphasis on theosis and its strong mystical approach to theology, understands its primary Christian witness to be eucharistic. The Eucharist presents the eschatological hope of Christ that is already present in the church and available to redeem all creation (Schmemann 2003: 198). The Eastern Orthodox proclaim the gospel along with serving the Eucharist through the Divine Liturgy. To remove as many barriers as possible for people to participate in and understand the Liturgy, the Orthodox practise autocephaly, with the Orthodox faithful granted self-governance and the ability to offer the liturgy in their respective nation’s native tongue. So, while there is one Orthodox starting point and theology, there are fifteen national Orthodox churches (e.g. Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox) (Meyendorff 2003: 80–81).

The Catholic Church, with its emphasis on salvation through baptism in the Church, separates out the concepts of evangelism and evangelization. Evangelization entails all the activities involved in moving people from unbelief through receiving baptism to being active communicants within the Church. Evangelism is the specific activity of declaring the gospel to people who are not yet believers, and so only occurs as a specific act within the larger framework of evangelization (Westerhoff 1994: 156). While the content of the Catholic doctrines that people are to be taught as part of the evangelization process remain unchanged in all contexts, the expectation is that Catholics will adapt how they present the doctrines to fit with the ‘culture, age, spiritual maturity, and social and ecclesial condition among all those to whom it is addressed’ (Catholic Catechism 2019: 11).

Postliberal theology contends that the best way to be a Christian witness is to form virtuous communities that serve as an example of God’s goodness to all those who are still participating in the violent, profit-driven structures of the world. People outside the community will see the beauty of this virtuous community and seek to enter it, committing to its precepts. The virtuous community will in no way invite people to join, as this could be coercive, and the virtuous community is above all noncoercive. However, it is welcoming to all who choose to come to it of their own accord (Stone 2007: 262–263). Neomonastic movements are an example of this witness, meant both to invite new people to faith and to call the church to a more faithful way of presenting the gospel to others (Heath and Duggins 2014: 34–35).

Process Christians engage in Christian witness through advocating for a flourishing life for all people. This includes being part of a community, but also entails political and social activism with the hope of overthrowing unjust systems and working for the common good of all people. There is no need for people to repent nor even to believe in Jesus to share in this good (Epperly 2006: 22–23).

The above brief descriptions are not an exhaustive picture of ways Christians can serve as witnesses for Jesus Christ through practicing evangelism. The Evangelism Equation allows for every nuance in a Christian witness’ starting point, theology, and context to shape how they will practise evangelism, which leads to endless permutations of possible practices.

There is an important caveat to this wide latitude for what can be understood as evangelistic practice by the equation: not all Christians agree that what other Christians call evangelistic counts as evangelism. At least one major division during the twentieth century occurred because of this, when the Lausanne Conference (1974) was organized by evangelicals to affirm a narrower understanding of evangelism than the one being developed by the World Council of Churches at the time. Evangelicals asserted that evangelism only entails the verbal proclamation of the gospel to bring someone to faith in Jesus Christ, while the World Council of Churches accepted all forms of Christian witness, including social action and humanitarian aid, as evangelism. This is an ongoing point of disagreement today.

4.1 Conquest, the doctrine of discovery, and social control

The conversion of people to the Christian faith was often used as a justification for imperial expansion. Especially during the Age of Discovery (1492–1783), European monarchs often cited the goal of converting Indigenous peoples as a chief aim of the colonial expeditions they authorized.

This practice led the Catholic Church to articulate the doctrine of discovery, which declared that European explorers could claim any land in the name of their country so long as another European monarch had not yet claimed it (Indigenous Values Initiative 2018). This extended to the explorer’s nation having sovereignty over the Indigenous people who lived on that land. The church saw this as beneficial for all involved. A Christian nation would expand, the Indigenous people would become Christians, and the church would gain new converts.

The doctrine of discovery also justified efforts to erase Indigenous cultures. Believing that the Christian faith had made white Europeans (and, later, white North Americans) superior to all other peoples, explorers reordered the lives of Indigenous peoples, rejecting their existing beliefs and customs. Converting people to Christianity became conflated with ‘civilizing’ them based on white European or US American norms. The mission schools for First Nations people in Canada and the United States are examples of this (Teasdale 2014: 131–134).

Although the doctrine of discovery was formally propounded by the Catholic Church, Protestant missionaries operated with a similar understanding. As early as 1651, John Eliot, an English Puritan, had established ‘praying towns’ where Native Americans would follow the same rhythm of life that New England Puritans did (Richter 2001: 95). Ironically, as Protestantism came to the fore in the United States during the nineteenth century, Catholic immigrants to the United States were often identified as targets to be civilized through conversion to Protestantism.

Evangelism was also used by privileged groups to extend social control over less privileged groups in the same country. By accepting the idea that one’s wealth and social status were markers of God’s blessing, evangelists linked the cultural and social norms of the privileged groups to the gospel and sought to persuade converts that becoming Christian included accepting those norms. If people from other ethnicities, races, and/or socio-economic classes became discontented with the new norms they were being taught, evangelists could pacify them by focusing their attention on the eternal glory they would inherit if they persevered in the new norms rather than working for social, political, or economic change (McLoughlin 1978: 141–145).

4.2 Prosperity gospel and emotional manipulation

The prosperity gospel narrows Christ’s offer of abundant life to emphasize God’s desire to bless people with health, wealth, and victory over all possible tribulations. It combines Pentecostal theology with magical thinking, promising that if people will believe hard enough, God will bless them in every way. If they fail to receive those blessings, then they have failed to demonstrate sufficient belief (Bowler 2013: 7).

The prosperity gospel preys on the poor and marginalized, offering them wish-fulfilment wrapped in Christian vocabulary. It does not question the justice of their situation or the choices they have made. There is no call to repentance and discipleship, much less to participate in the mission of God as witnesses to others. There is only a requirement that they demonstrate faith, usually through sending donations to a specific ministry and claiming the victory God has for them with positive thinking.

Beyond promising wish fulfilment, the prosperity gospel also often uses psychological manipulation through hosting rallies that are calculated to make people highly emotional and less rationally engaged with the message being presented. This critique is not only aimed at the prosperity gospel, but some forms of revivalism that use similar tactics to evoke decisions to become disciples of Jesus Christ. Sinclair Lewis’ novel Elmer Gantry is a biting satire of how conmen could use this style of evangelism to cheat people out of large sums of money.

4.3 Celebrity and scandal

A celebrity culture that lionizes Christians who generate large audiences, whether in-person, online, or through publications, has become a feature of evangelism in the West. Researchers have found that megachurches (congregations with more than 2,000 people attending their worship services) are especially involved in manufacturing and promoting Christian celebrities (Kidwell and Borer 2021: 56). Those who reach celebrity status were often protected by the church because of their visibility.

These celebrities have proven to be problematic for evangelism in two ways. While they can draw a crowd to hear the gospel, they also can eclipse the gospel and become the centre of their audience’s attention (Kidwell and Borer 2021: 58). Worse, if a Christian celebrity is implicated in a scandal, it can severely harm the Christian witness in the larger culture and even cause existing Christians to be less committed to participation in religious activities (Smith 1992: 361–362).

5.1 Theoretical

While the definitions of witness and evangelism are broadly accepted, they remain in perpetual flux as cultural factors affect them. In the West, the growing number of people who do not subscribe to specific belief systems, often referred to as ‘nones’, has especially challenged what the outcome of evangelism looks like. New interest has generated around missiologist Paul Hiebert’s ‘bounded set’ and ‘centred set’ theory, which suggests that evangelists should be less concerned with whether someone is inside a bounded set of faith because they have intellectually assented to a particular belief than with whether people are moving toward the centre in their behaviour (where Hiebert places Jesus), regardless of how far away they are from explicitly professing the Christian faith (Hiebert 1978: 26).

The changing demographics of the global Christian population is also affecting the study of evangelism by creating greater engagement with Majority World scholars. By 2050, the Pew Research Centre estimates that Sub-Saharan Africa will hold 38.1% of the global Christian population, Latin–America–Caribbean 22.8%, and Asia–Pacific 13.1%. This contrasts to Europe having only 15.1%, North America 9.8%, and the Middle East–North Africa 0.6% (Pew 2015: 60).

As seen throughout this article, the contextual realities facing Majority World scholars cause them to defy Western theological categories, often combining evangelical beliefs with Pentecostal acts of power to engage the spirit world and aligning with liberationist concerns for the plight of the poor and marginalized. Their theology calls the Western church toward a more holistic understanding of salvation, which affects theories of mission, evangelism, and witness.

One way Majority World scholars are influencing how the church understands evangelism and witness is through their published reflections on the World Council of Churches’ major documents on evangelism. For example, Samuel Escobar, a Latin American evangelical missiologist, appreciated how the document Together Toward Life helped the Western church articulate

the end of the imperial age of mission, in which the Gospel was presented ‘from above’ by Spanish conquistadores, British merchants, and American enthusiasts who sometimes followed too closely the colonial or neocolonial patterns of their nations. Now the younger churches are carrying on mission ‘from below’. (Escobar 2014: 193)

As examples of mission from below, he included specific references to immigrants from the Global South who serve in menial capacities in Western countries yet share their faith through their relationships with their employers. While applauding this, Escobar criticizes the Western churches for being hostile toward this evangelistic witness because they fear Westerners being formed in a faith that the Western churches have not officially endorsed (Escobar 2014: 194).

Escobar’s idea of ‘mission from below’ agrees with Oduyoye’s reflection on the World Council of Churches document ‘Mission and Evangelism’. She calls for the church

to develop and strengthen the mission of the whole people of God. This means those who do not wear the title ‘theologian’, ‘missionary’, ‘pastor’, or ‘evangelist’ but are still members of the body of Christ and who care for the united mission of the church, and its effectiveness in this world for which Christ died. (Oduyoye 1987: 344)

This fits with Oduyoye’s African Womanist theology which seeks to ennoble those who are marginalized by identifying them with the presence of God through Jesus Christ.

5.2 Practices

The broadening theoretical framework for understanding witness and evangelism, driven by the church’s development of more holistic theologies that are reflective of the multiplicity of contexts in which Christians are living, has allowed evangelism scholars to consider more creative evangelistic practices. Many of these are in response to specific needs either in the world or within the church.