On the first Sunday in a new building, it would have been easy to make the morning about the walls and the windows. Instead the congregation was reminded of something older and truer: the church has never been the building. Four buildings have housed this congregation in Gunter since 1903, but the church has always been the people — the saints, the redeemed. And if we are the redeemed, then we carry a job that no new sanctuary can do for us. We are meant to bring the good news to a lost and dying world. This message, the first in a series on evangelism, sets the table for that calling.
Every Christian Is an Evangelist
We tend to hear the word “evangelist” and picture a title, a role that belongs to preachers and missionaries. Scripture does use it that way. Philip is called “the evangelist” in Acts 21:8, Paul lists evangelists among the gifts given to the church in Ephesians 4:11, and he charges Timothy to “do the work of an evangelist” in 2 Timothy 4:5. But the work itself belongs to all of us. Peter told ordinary believers to “sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). So why do you have hope? What is your story? Evangelism, at its simplest, is one beggar showing another beggar where to find bread. It is sharing the hope you have found in Jesus with someone who needs that hope. You do not need a title to do that.
We Never Know Our Impact
Consider a widowed piano teacher out in West Texas. Thirty-five years after their lessons ended, a woman named Colleen slipped past the police tape at that teacher’s burned home and left flowers and a note: thank you for teaching me to play, I still play when life gets hard, you gave me peace. One act of ordinary kindness echoed through a hard life for three and a half decades. Then there is the friend who called out of the blue to say, “I found Jesus, and I want to come tell you about Him.” When he learned his old friend had known Jesus all along, the question landed like a weight: “Well, how come you never told me?” We never know the impact our words and actions have on the people around us. Sometimes we see the impact we had. Sometimes, painfully, we see the impact we failed to have.
The Fields Are Already White
Jesus modeled the heart of it in John 4. Traveling from Judea to Galilee, He deliberately went through Samaria, a place most people avoided and most people looked down on. There, at noon, He met a Samaritan woman drawing water alone — an outsider even among outsiders, a woman full of sin. The disciples saw an interruption to their errands. Jesus saw a soul, and He saw a future evangelist. She left her water pot, ran into town, and said, “Come, see a man who told me all things that I ever did.” Many believed because of her word (John 4:39), and came to know Him as “the Savior of the world” (John 4:42). Then Jesus told the disciples to stop saying the harvest was four months away: “Lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest” (John 4:35). The harvest is plentiful, He said elsewhere, but the laborers are few (Matthew 9:37). The limitation is never God’s power; it is our participation. And no one carries the whole field alone — “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6). One sows, another reaps (John 4:37). God never asks you to do everything, only something. Changed people simply speak, which is why the early Christians “went everywhere preaching the word” (Acts 8:4).
A Call to Respond
Look around Gunter. Thousands of families are moving into new neighborhoods, raising children with no church home and no compass pointing to God, and they are searching for the very hope you already hold. The fields are white right now. One day, someone cared enough to share Christ with you. Who will you share Him with? If you have never obeyed the gospel, if you have questions, or if you simply need the prayers of this congregation, the invitation is always open. Come, and let us show one another where to find the Bread.