This is a guest blog post by Kent Sorgon. Kent is a 16-year-old with a passion for writing about Jesus. I recommend that you follow Kent on Tiwtter and that you check out his blog.
I know that there are some who are confused between the terms evangelism and missions. It’s important that you be able to differentiate between the two so that you can intelligently engage in conversations about either topic.
When people get the two words mixed up, they usually end up defining everything as evangelism and in the process, the definition of missions gets lost. I’ve also seen people define everything as missions and they end up misunderstanding what evangelism is all about.
Today, I’d like to set the record straight 🙂
Evangelism is when you try to share the Gospel to those around you. It does not need to be successful, because you only share it. Phillip the evangelist is one example. Evangelism is sharing the Word of God to those around you, in your community, state or nation.
Missions, on the other hand, are when you cross a different culture, i.e. learning a new language, studying the lifestyles and behaviors of a certain race. When you study a certain culture, learn a different language, acclimatize yourself with that certain place, you become missional culture-crossers.
Remember Hudson Taylor? He went to China and converted the Chinese. Eric Liddell, whose story was made into a movie, Chariots of Fire, also became a missionary to China. This distinguishes evangelism from missions.
On the spiritual gifts however, a file source shows that the gift of evangelism is the “Ability and drive to communicate the gospel to Non-believers. “
Meanwhile, the gift of missions is, “The special ability that God gives to certain members of the body of Christ to minister whatever other spiritual gifts they have in a second culture.”
In your own words, how would you define the difference between evangelism and missions? Is there one that you like more than the other?
[image courtesy of Jordan Battani]
Comments 9
Good post. How then would you explain living missional? Perhaps, leaving our cultural comfort zones while remaining where we were born and raised?
I don’t know how Kent (post author) would respond to your question Tereasa, but I would define missional living as, “adopting the posture, thinking, behaviors, and practices of a missionary in order to engage others with the gospel message.”
Ok, I take that back – that’s not my definition but it is Wikipedia’s 🙂 But the definition did make sense to me, unless you had some other meaning for missional living?
@MTereasa:disqus – I will be writing an article wherein this differentiation will have more depth. These “churchy” terms tend to confuse new believers,and that’s why I summarized the distinguishing of the two terms. As for your question,I quite agree with Pete. His answer got what I wanted to say.
Nicely put, Kent 🙂
Well said. Missions is more detailed..
The main post looks and reads very like one I have just read via a Google search –
http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/why-is-differentiating-between-evangelism-and-missions-important
I agree Debbie. The writer ought to be careful with this sort of situations….
Thank you for the post. I understand it differently in the sense that the bible evangelism as world wide not local. Mathew 28.:18-20 is the great commission which commads the disciple go to the whole world and make disciples……, Paul tells Timothy to do the work of an evangelist 2tim: 4-5.
I see evangelism as a subset of Missions. Evangelism can a part of missions but missions is not evangelism. It is on a wider scale. I also believe that we need to redefine missions a bit because lots of focus is on the enreached areas while we are losing our own countries which are said to be “Christian Countries”. Watching the thrillogy of God’s not Dead has brought me to the conclusion that the greatest missions has to be done right here in our own countries. There are more athiests within our own countries who are trying to stop the Gospel from being preached than ever before.
Think about it. In Europe…the country which introduced christainity to us churches are closing down and being turned into Mosques or Supermarkets. Children are growing up ‘liberal’ with no concept of God.
Hence the reason I believe that the term Missions has to be redefined for this time…because indeed there is a great falling away.