How Should we Evangelise and What Isn’t Evangelism?
Updated: Sep 29
Date: 27 Sep 2026, 9.30 am
Speaker: Deacon Tan Jiayi Sermon Text: 2 Corinthians 2:15–17; 4:1-6; 1 Corinthians 3:5-6
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TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Good morning church! It is wonderful to have all of you here this morning, whether you are sitting here in-person, or tuning in online.
So throughout this month of September, our focus has been on missions. And over this past 2 weeks, we have been walking together through Mark Dever’s book, titled “The Gospel & Personal Evangelism”.
So far, we have heard from Dn Jeremiah and Dn Samuel about what is the gospel, why we should proclaim it and who are responsible for doing so, and I hope that by now, it is clear to us that as followers of Christ, it is our collective responsibility to evangelise and proclaim the good news of Christ, not because of a special gifting or personality that we might possess, but because it is God’s command to us and because we love God and those He loves.
That brings us to the final two questions of our series this morning: “How should we evangelise?” Just what should our posture and approach towards evangelism be? And just as importantly, we ask the question, “What isn’t evangelism?” What are some good and meaningful efforts that we often mistake or even substitute the gospel message with? Today, I will be closing this series by tackling these two questions head-on.
Before we begin, allow me to open us in prayer:
Dear heavenly Father,
As we receive your word to us this morning, we ask that you soften our hearts and open our ears to hear your truth. Place in our hearts a burden and joyful desire to make your gospel known. May your Holy Spirit help me now to speak your truth clearly and faithfully, for the sake of your glory.
In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen
I. Evangelize with Balance
I wonder how many of us still remember how our parents would often make up all sort of creative reasons to get us to obey them when we were young. Well, for me, there is this memory with my mum that stands out vividly (sorry mum!). I recall that on more than one occasion, she would realise she had forgotten to bring the umbrella out with her and she would turn to me with complete seriousness and say (and I am paraphrasing here), “Quick, go and get me an umbrella. If not, I am going to start melting in the sun!” And as the filial son that I was and genuinely fearful that my mum would really begin melting, I would often rush to fetch her an umbrella. Of course, as I got older, I obviously realised that she would not melt, and this was just an effective way to convince me to listen to her. I do not share this story with any judgement though – now that I'm a parent myself trying to convince a toddler to shower and sleep on time, I completely understand the temptation to manufacture a little drama just to get a result!
But the point is this: in everyday life, when we want people to respond a certain way, we often resort to exaggeration, sometimes creating artificial panic or even emotional pressure. And we may likewise be tempted to apply the same approach when we evangelise.
But biblical evangelism cannot be more different. God does not need us to manipulate or coerce people into his kingdom. In his book, Dever highlights that sharing the gospel faithfully requires a balance of three essential postures: we need to speak with honesty, with urgency, and with joy. Let’s look at what each of these means for us.
Firstly, we need to evangelise with honesty.
Personally, whenever I pick a movie or a TV series to watch, I’m always drawn to those with the tag: 'Based on a true story.' That is because this tagline gives the show a sense of credibility and realism, and there is an attractive power in the truth. But when you dig deeper into how these films are actually made, you quickly discover that directors often take heavy 'creative liberties' — dramatizing events and sometimes even distorting facts just to captivate the audience.
When we evangelise, we might face the same temptation to do just that, as we seek to win more people to Christ. But the gospel message does not need our embellishment, nor does it allow for our alteration. Proclaiming the gospel is not an opinion to be debated or selling a lifestyle product; it is simply telling the sober, glorious truth of what God has done in Christ for us. As Dn Samuel highlighted last week, we possess the same gospel message that the early church did. And so, there is no need for us to rewrite the script — we just need to be honest about the message.
What does this honesty look like in practice? It means accurately proclaiming the gospel without holding back any parts that might seem awkward, off-putting or even offensive to our modern ears. We need to be honest about our sinful condition and the reality of God’s righteous judgement. We need to be honest about our desperate need for a Savior in Jesus Christ alone. And we need to be honest about the cost of following Christ, which means denying ourselves and taking up our cross.
But doing so is not going to be easy. It would take a courage that only the Holy Spirit can provide. And I say this because speaking the gospel truth would run completely counter to the message of our world today which celebrates our self-worth or simply tells us that we are “good enough”. It even means actively rejecting the false promises of the prosperity gospel that guarantees material blessings for those with enough faith.
Dever says this in his book:
“So however we evangelize, we aren’t to hide problems, to ignore our own shortcomings, or to deny difficulties. And we are not to put forward only positives that we imagine our non-Christian friends presently value and present God as simply the means by which they can meet or achieve their own ends.”
The apostle Paul addresses this same issue within the Corinthian church, and encourages them to reject the temptation to make any changes to the gospel message. 2 Cor 4:1-2 reads:
1 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. 2 But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.
And so, with God watching, we must be honest when proclaiming the gospel.
Secondly, Dever exhorts Christians to evangelise with urgency.
If you wake up in the middle of the night and smell smoke within the house, you don’t roll over and go back to sleep or wait to check on it only when the sun rises. You get up and move. You check for fire. You wake up your family to evacuate if necessary. And the reason you act is because lives are at stake.
So it is with evangelism. It is genuinely a matter of life and death, in an eternal sense. We know that Christ is the only way of salvation and there is no alternative. Evangelistic urgency is not creating artificial panic – like the story about my mum melting in the sun. It is about recognising reality. We must not presume that tomorrow is guaranteed, for we do not know when the Lord will take us away, or when Christ will come again.
The apostle Peter speaks of this fact clearly in 2 Peter 3:8-10:
8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
Church, our time on earth is short, and the window for repentance will not remain open forever. That is why our witness must carry loving urgency. In practice, this means that we must lovingly call for a response after we share the gospel message. And if we receive a response of hesitation or rejection, it also means caring enough to gently ask what is holding them back from receiving Christ into their lives. I know that asking such direct questions may feel awkward and uncomfortable for many of us (I know it is for me), but it may just be a small price to pay when their eternal salvation is on the line. And so, we must proclaim the gospel with urgency.
Finally, Christians ought to evangelise with joy.
Honesty gives our message its integrity. Urgency gives it its weight. But joy gives it its beauty. Consider someone who is in a loving relationship. Nobody has to teach or force them to talk about the person that they love. It overflows naturally because genuine joy is always the natural fruit of a loving relationship. When someone has captured your heart, speaking about them isn't an awkward duty; it is a delight.
We, who were once lost, dead in our sins, and separated from God, have been given new life in Christ and have been welcomed into the kingdom through the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross. Do the blessings of forgiveness, purpose, freedom, community, certainty and hope bring you joy? Does the truth of a restored relationship with God bring you delight?
In 1 John 1:3–4, the Apostle John invites people into a living, loving relationship with both the Father and the Son, so that his own joy is made complete:
3 That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4 And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
And so, we ought to proclaim the gospel with a joy that overflows from our own personal experience with the gospel.
Deever concludes this section of his book this way:
“So that’s the balance that we want to see — honesty, urgency, and joy. Honesty and urgency with no joy gives us a grim determination (read Philippians). Honesty and joy with no urgency gives us a carelessness about time (read 2 Peter). Urgency and joy with no honesty leads us into distorted claims about immediate benefits of the gospel (read 1 Peter).” (p.60)
So we must evangelise with a balance of honesty, urgency and joy.
Dever also goes on to offer us some practical disciplines to guide us as we share the gospel. And I will go through these briefly.
The first 2 suggestions are to pray and to use the Bible when we evangelise. This may sound obvious, but they are foundational because it is God’s word, and it is God’s work!
We must remember to pray, and to persevere in it! We may be the ones delivering the gospel message, but it is God who is the one working in the hearts of those we evangelise to. As Paul says in 1 Cor 3:6
6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
And we must use the Bible, because it is God’s Word and not ours. In a time where it is so easy to use AI to get the information we want, we need to point people to the primary source and be intentional in using the gospels to present Jesus Christ to them. Allow the power and love of Christ to reveal itself as people learn more about Him through the pages of the Bible.
Next, we need to clearly define the Christianese terms that we use. Many of us grew up in church or have been in church for a long time, and we tend to take the meaning of some words for granted – words like “grace”, “prayer”, “sin”, “justification”, and so on. To our non-Christian friends, these words may sound foreign or carry a whole different meaning. As we evangelise, we want to ensure that our listeners understand the message, even if it offends them.
Evangelism is also not a monologue where we mechanically regurgitate a memorised script. We want to have a conversation with those we evangelise to. This means asking thoughtful questions that invite reflection, and patiently listening as they share about their doubts, worldviews and values. Help them to articulate their answers and the reasons behind them and explore them within the context of the gospel. Show a sincere interest in their lives and struggles. And doing so will allow us to evangelise in both a caring, yet provocative manner, just as Jesus did. Relevant to this is our editorial today, which covers what we can learn from Jesus about personal evangelism, and I would encourage all of us to read it.
Finally, we want to bring them to the church, to the community of believers that showcases the reality and goodness of God. This is central because the church is the gift that God has given us, not only to grow in the faith, but to multiply it as well. United, the church is the temple of the Holy Spirit and it is the way we relate to one another in love, truth and grace, and the way we live in the hope of Christ, that will be reveal how attractively different we are. This is exactly how the church is able to make visible the audible gospel as Dn Samuel shared last week, so that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to all.
Church, if what I have shared so far sounds like a lot of work, it is because it is. But, it is good work. It is the sacred, joyful work of proclaiming the good news of Christ for salvation. And this good work requires careful and intentional preparation. The reality is that opportunities to share Christ rarely arrive on our preferred timetables. It is like walking into an open-book exam: having the textbook on your desk won't help if you haven't opened it, because by the time you flip through the pages and figure out what to write, your time is up.
So let us prepare today. Let us prepare how to evangelise with a balance of honesty, urgency and joy. Let us prepare to ask thoughtful questions and have a conversation about the gospel using God’s Word, and be clear about the words we use. And let us prepare, as a church, to warmly welcome those whom God will bring into our midst.
II. Reject substitutes for evangelism
We have seen how we can evangelise rightly. But we can also evangelise wrongly. Let’s look at three things that we commonly mistake for evangelism. But before we do so, let me just clarify that none of these things are wrong. On the contrary, they are good, meaningful work and deeply Christian endeavours. But they are not substitutes for the gospel message.
The first substitute we often rely on is our personal testimony. And I suspect that this is because we are the most comfortable and familiar with it. It is our story after all. Sharing the story of our journey of faith and what God has done in our lives can certainly be impactful.
I am sure many of us are familiar with the articles and stories found on Salt & Light. We read about how broken lives are completely turned around, or how the terminally ill find their joy and comfort in Christ or how faithful believers persevere through trials. These stories are deeply moving, powerful, and inspiring because they reveal how God is actively working in the lives of people like you and I today.
But a personal testimony, on its own, rarely explains the full gospel. It might describe the comfort or encouragement that we have received during a troubling period, but it often leaves out the mention of sin, God’s righteous judgement, the cross or the need for repentance. Forwarding an inspiring testimony to someone or sharing our personal faith journey may be helpful to initiate a conversation about faith and it can certainly function as a bridge to the gospel. But it is not the gospel. People do not find their salvation by marvelling at our transformation; they are saved only when they hear, repent, and believe in the crucified and risen Christ.
The second substitute is social or political action.
Whether it is feeding the hungry, caring for the marginalized, or working toward justice in our community, doing good works is essential. It fulfils God’s clear command to care for the poor and broken in our midst.
However, doing good deeds in Christ’s name cannot save someone from their sins. Feeding, clothing or even housing someone meets a real, immediate physical need, and Scripture calls us to do those things with all our hearts. But meeting their physical needs alone is not enough. A person’s deepest problem is not physical poverty; it is their spiritual separation from a holy God. As Dever puts it in his book: works of mercy commend the gospel, but on their own, they share the gospel with no one. And so, we must still speak Christ to them.
The third substitute we often mistake for evangelism is apologetics, which is the defense of the faith. Christian apologetics, by its definition, is the religious discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse. It answers questions and tackles objections that people might have about God or Christ, or about the Bible or the message of the gospel.
Back when I was in university, I remembered that many of my friends had questions about Christianity that were really tough to answer – like why a good God would allow so much suffering in the world, or how modern science has made belief in God obsolete. More often than not, these conversations would spiral into a somewhat heated intellectual debate before I can even get a word in about the gospel.
And that is the danger: We must not let defending the faith distract us from proclaiming the reason for our faith. Dever draws the distinction between apologetics and evangelism this way:
“Apologetics is defending the faith, answering the questions others have about Christianity. It is responding to the agenda that others set. Evangelism, however, is following Christ’s agenda, the news about him. Evangelism is the positive act of telling the good news about Jesus Christ and the way of salvation through him.”
Answering someone’s question about science and faith might clear a stumbling block for them, and that is good. But we have not evangelised until we have actually told them about Jesus.
So if you have already been sharing with your friends your personal testimonies, engaging with them on Christian apologetics, or even pursuing social or political action, keep it going! But don’t stop there. Do not let them be the substitute for evangelism. For evangelism to take place, Dever emphasises that “the gospel must be clearly communicated, whether in written or oral form.”
III. Separate the task from the results
And this brings us to our final point of this sermon and this month’s series on missions: Just what is the goal of evangelism?
As Singaporeans, we are often very outcome oriented aren’t we. In my 11 years of working as a transport planner in LTA, it is common practice to identify the key performance indicators, or KPIs for short, as a means to measure the success of a project and to evaluate if public resources have been well spent. This kind of evaluation sometimes happens within the church as well. How often do we see Christians measure the success of their church services or ministry work by the size of their congregation, their Sunday service attendance or the number of baptismal candidates they have each year?
So, when it comes to personal evangelism, what is the desired goal? What are the KPIs that we track? Is success measured by the number of sinners we convert?
As an evangelist, that may be our prayer, but it should not be our goal. In fact, not even Jesus’ evangelistic ministry had a 100% conversion rate. Jesus told his disciples that his message will bring division, even within families. Consider the parable of the sower, where the same seed that is sown faithfully can produce entirely different outcomes depending on the soil it lands on.
2 Cor 2:15-17 reads:
2 Cor 2:15-17 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? 17 For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.
The apostle Paul points out to the Corinthians how the gospel will be the fragrance of life for those who accept it, and an offensive stench for those who would reject it. In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul also adds that the cross will always be a stumbling block to some and utter foolishness to others.
The goal of evangelism therefore, is faithful proclamation, not conversion. We must separate our task from the result, which rests solely in God’s hands. Evangelism, as it has always been since the early church, remains our job and responsibility while the work of conversion is God’s. This means that evangelism is successful when we deliver the gospel message faithfully, and it is not a failure if people choose to walk away.
Dever closes the chapter with this reminder:
“We don’t fail in our evangelism if we faithfully tell the gospel to someone who is not converted; we fail only if we don’t faithfully tell the gospel at all. Evangelism itself isn’t converting people; it’s telling them that they need to be converted and telling them how they can be.” (p.82)
Conclusion
Evangelism is not about “winning someone for Christ”. It is simply faithfully announcing the good news of King Jesus and lovingly inviting people to respond. But this requires intentional preparation and dependence on the Holy Spirit. So church, let us begin preparing today. Let us commit ourselves to evangelising with a balance of honesty, urgency and joy, rejecting any substitutes for evangelism, and not measure our success by its results.
Let us pray:
Dear heavenly father, we thank you for the good news of Christ that is available for all. We pray for courage as we heed your call to proclaim the gospel to those around us. Teach and guide us Lord, as we dedicate ourselves to this good work of personal evangelism and prepare to do so with a balance of honesty, urgency and joy. Empower us by your Holy Spirit to go forth and make disciples both in Singapore and beyond – that Christ be made known and you, glorified.
This we ask, in the precious name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Reflection Questions:
How has the message today challenged the way we evangelise?
Are there any friends or loved ones that we hope to share the gospel with? What are some steps we can take to prepare ourselves for the opportunities that God will provide us with?
How can we encourage one another, as individuals and as the body of Christ, to persevere in the good work of evangelism?
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