Evangelism is the activity of communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ to others. Its basic intent is to encourage the recipients or hearers of the message to establish and nurture a personal relationship with God the Father and to experience the life-transforming work of the Holy Spirit through submission to the lordship of Christ. In keeping with its purpose statement, Vallejo International has adopted being evangelistic as an underlying value in the performance of its ministries.
The gospel that evangelistic ministry promotes is specifically the biblical message of the one and only God who is on a gracious mission to reconcile all of wayward creation to a right relationship with him. The primary agent in this mission is the Christ, God the Son. In obedience to the Father, he became a human being and faced the full assault of sinful rebellion against God, even to the point of dying on the cross. Yet his death proved to be his victory over sin, for he did not give in to its pressure. And the Father validated his victory by raising him from the dead. Now, those who acknowledge their sinfulness and, through faith, submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ are restored to a right relationship with God. And the Spirit empowers them to live their lives in a new way, in keeping with the restored relationship. This is gospel … good news! (See Ephesians 1.8-10; 2.8-10)
I recognize that evangelistic activity has received negative criticisms. But I believe the criticism is due to a misunderstanding of what evangelism is about. Critics confuse evangelism with another religious activity—proselytism. Proselytism is the activity of seeking to convert someone from one religion to another. Oftentimes its main objective is simply to get the person addressed to join “my group.” In its crudest form, proselytism does not give adequate importance to a person’s devotion to Christ as long as he or she becomes a member of the group.
While Vallejo International does have the desire that others would eventually join the church, this is not its primary goal. The final instruction that Jesus gave before he ascended to the right hand of the Father was that the church “make disciples” and to “teach these disciples to obey all the commands” that he gave (Matthew 28.19-20 NLT). Evangelism is about producing disciples of Christ. Being evangelistic demands that the church must always point to Christ through its ministries, and not engage in an overblown promotion of itself. What matters most is to see people establish and cultivate a secure faith in Jesus Christ.
—Keith Y. Jainga