Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – Evangelism and Discipleship

By Kumar Abraham
May 2007 At conversion, the Christ-follower experiences the “first love” stage. The individual still has his or her circle of unbelieving friends intact and is excited to share what Christ has done in his or her life. Instead of extricating him or her from his or her world of lost friends in order to join the newfound gathering of “saints,” we should strengthen the person to reach his or her lost friends for Christ. Instead of making the individual choose between the two worlds, we should disciple him or her on how to live in tension with both worlds. We should encourage the person to be “in the world but not of the world.”

A Biblical Model
There are at least four encounters Jesus had when the one who encountered him went on to share his or her testimony without any further discipling or spiritual growth experience. There are also at least two other New Testament examples of this phenomenon.

  1. The Samaritan woman in John 4. After her encounter with the Messiah, the Samaritan woman immediately left her water jar, went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” (4:28-30). The Samaritans first believed because of the woman’s testimony (4:42). She told them about the Messiah and the Holy Spirit gave instantaneous fruit to her witness. Afterward, Jesus stayed on for two days and many more believed (4:41-42).
  2. The demon-possessed man in Mark 5. Immediately after he was delivered, the demon-possessed man in the region of Gerasenes begged to go with Jesus (5:18). However, Jesus encouraged him to “Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (5:19). But the man “went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed” (5:20).
  3. The blind man in John 9. The blind man was willing to identify himself with Jesus even in the face of impending persecution at the hands of the Pharisees (9:25-34). After being healed, the man courageously declared, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I do not know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see” (9:25).
  4. Matthew in Matthew 9. Immediately after being chosen by the Lord to be a disciple, Matthew the tax collector invited many tax collectors and sinner acquaintances to join Jesus and his disciples for dinner (9:10-11). This gave Jesus an opportunity to share his mission statement (9:12-13).
  5. The early believers in Acts 2. After Pentecost, the church in Jerusalem instantly devoted themselves to their new lifestyle of discipleship. “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (2:47). Much of this could have been the enthusiastic witness of the three thousand who were saved that day (2:41). Today, much of the fruit of evangelism is through the witness of Christians going about their day-to-day lives.
  6. Paul in Acts 9. After Saul’s (Paul’s) conversion, he “at once began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God” (9:20-21).

The above six examples show that early Christians could not wait for the discipling process to begin. They had found something and they wanted to tell the world around them.

Evangelism and Discipleship Hand in Hand
The reason for placing discipleship before evangelism could be because of an over correction within the Church to a lack of good follow-up or discipleship. So often the local church and evangelists are quick to report “decisions for Christ.” Being a proclamation evangelist myself, I could say that faithful follow-up is the Achilles heel of evangelism as a whole. While there is no excuse for not following up on new converts, a lack of it should never determine whether we do evangelism or not.

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Dr. Kumar Abraham is a Sri Lankan national living in Melbourne, Australia and has served as a missionary in the Philippines for twenty-one years. He is an evangelist, a trainer of evangelists, equipper of Christ-followers in evangelism and a Bible school lecturer. He can be reached at: [email protected].