Sermon quotes on evangelism
Jay Bakker
Jimmy Faye Baker once told Time Magazine in 1986 that if Jesus was alive today, “he’d have to be on TV. That would be the only way he could reach the people he loves. (for contrast)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him.”
George Carlin
Religion is like a pair of shoes…..Find one that fits for you, but don’t make me wear your shoes. (For contrast)
Jim Cymbala
One way to recognize whether we suffer from this disconnection is to look at our concern for people who are dirty… people who are “other”… people who don’t fit the core group’s image. The ravages of sin are not pleasant–but they are what Jesus came to forgive and heal. “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). Yet Christians often hesitate to reach out to those who are different. They want God to clean the fish before they catch them.
Martin Luther
If he have faith, the believer cannot be restrained. He betrays himself. He breaks out. He confesses and teaches this gospel to the people at the risk of life itself.
Brian D. McLaren
We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, or controlling orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is humble. It doesn’t claim too much. It admits it walks with a limp.”
A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional, evangelical,etc…
Eugene Peterson
Speaking to people does not have the same personal intensity as listening to them. The question I put to myself is not ‘How many people have you spoken to about Christ this week?’ but ‘How many people have you listened to in Christ this week?
David Platt
We email, Facebook, tweet and text with people who are going to spend eternity in either heaven or hell. Our lives are too short to waste on mere temporal conversations when massive eternal realities hang in the balance. Just as you and I have no guarantee that we will live through the day, the people around us are not guaranteed tomorrow either. So let’s be intentional about sewing the threads of the gospel into the fabric of our conversations every day, knowing that it will not always be easy, yet believing that eternity will always be worth it.
Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live
Francis Schaeffer
Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless.
The Great Evangelical Disaster
John Stott
We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.
William Temple
The church is the only cooperative society in the world that exists for the benefit of its non-members.
D. Elton Trueblood
Evangelism is not a professional job for a few trained men, but is instead the unrelenting responsibility of every person who belongs to the company of Jesus.
David F. Wells
In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.
No Place for Truth: or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?
George Whitefield
I believe I never was more acceptable to my Master than when I was standing to teach those hearers in the open fields now preach to ten times more people than I would if I had been confined to the churches.
Thomas Cahill
[St.] Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination-making it more humane and more noble while keeping it Irish.
Brennan Manning
The ministry of evangelization is an extraordinary opportunity of showing gratitude to Jesus by passing on His gospel of grace to others.
Rebecca Manley Pippert
When God is seeking a person, he will not allow my fear, my feeling of intimidation or my lack of knowledge or experience to prevent that person from finding him.
Out of the Saltshaker & Into the World: Evangelism as a Way of Life, InterVarsity Press.
Kenneth Latourette
The chief agents in the expansion of Christianity appear not to have been those who made it a profession or a major part of their occupation, but men and women who earned their livelihood in some purely secular manner and spoke of their faith to those whom they met in this natural fashion.
Christopher J.H. Wright
The Great Commission is an expanding and self-replicating task, not a ticking clock for the end times.
The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, InterVarsity Press.
Brian Zahnd
Our task is not to protest the world into a certain moral conformity, but to attract the world to the saving beauty of Christ.
Ed Silvoso
Prayer evangelism is talking to God about our neighbors before we talk to our neighbors about God.
Mark O. Wilson
Instead of being fishers of people, we’ve become keepers of the aquarium.
Pope Francis
Evangelization does not consist in proselytizing, but … in humbly drawing near to those who feel distant from God and the Church, those who are fearful or indifferent, and saying to them: ‘The Lord, with great respect and love, is also calling you to be a part of his people’
Evangelii Gaudium, p.113
Shannon K. Evans
Evangelism is finding Christ already present in the world, and inviting the other into the loving belonging of the inclusive family of God.
Embracing Weakness: The Unlikely Secret to Changing the World, Our Sunday Visitor, 2019.
Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson
Our churches struggle with being evangelistically effective because they are locked into a self-affirming subculture while the larger culture continues to move in other directions.
Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too, B&H Books, 2007.
C.S. Lewis
Jesus Christ did not say “Go into all the world and tell the world that it is quite right.”
God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2014), 293.
Pope Francis
Evangelization does not consist in proselytizing, but … in humbly drawing near to those who feel distant from God and the Church, those who are fearful or indifferent, and saying to them: ‘The Lord, with great respect and love, is also calling you to be a part of his people’
Evangelii Gaudium, p.113
Scot McKnight
Most of evangelism today is obsessed with getting someone to make a decision; the apostles, however, were obsessed with making disciples.
The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Zondervan, 2016)
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