Take a step to be on a pathway to evangelism

Whether you’re a ‘hidden’ evangelist, a seasoned public preacher or you have an untapped heart for evangelism, Elim’s new Evangelists’ Community is there for you, says Mark Greenwood

Mark, please introduce the Evangelists’ Community
We launched it at this year’s Elim Leaders Summit. It’s our new pathway for finding, developing, equipping and releasing evangelists within Elim. Our aim is to build a fantastic community of evangelists. We currently have 50 members and the idea is that as the group grows, more established evangelists will begin mentoring and training new ones. Our long-term goal is to have evangelists in every church and for teams from the community to be supporting church missions all around the country.

What does it look like in practice?
We are planning three online meetings each year, all aimed at personal lifestyle – character, devotion, holiness, consecration, integrity and prayer life. We invite national and global evangelists to these. Zach Meerkreebs of the Asbury revival spoke in June and we’re looking to invite John Kirkby from i61m.

Then we have the Elim Evangelism Academy, which is like a personal evangelism course on steroids! It looks at what the gospel is and how we share it. We do sessions on things like apologetics, how to share your faith with people of other faiths – a lot of practical ‘rubber-hits-the-road’ stuff. Linked with that, we have masterclasses on topics like effective street evangelism.

And we have our annual conference too – next year it's on 20 September 2025.

Why did you launch the Evangelists’ Community, and why now?
The role of evangelist has been a bit latent for some years in Elim, and yet it’s our history – we were founded because two evangelists took the gospel out and we grew through other evangelists too.

Now, there’s a real sense that it’s a new season for evangelism and evangelists. Mark Pugh says it’s evident how much we need evangelists at the moment, so next year’s Elim Leaders Summit will be based around the five-fold ministry. This means our community feels really timely – it will resource people within the context of Elim’s national evangelism vision.

Who’s it for?
A broad array of evangelists – from people who might already be preaching, to others who do things like regularly bringing people to Alpha. Some people might not even know they’re evangelists yet, but God has placed evangelists in our churches and we want to find them!

As well as being for emerging evangelists, it’s also for hidden ones – people who’ve felt alone but have been faithfully serving the Lord in their churches. One 65-year-old lady from South Wales told me, “I wish we’d had this 50 years ago, because I’ve been beavering away by myself and feeling lonely.”

If Direction readers want to get involved, what should they do?
We want community members to have the backing of their churches, so if you want to pursue this, speak to your pastor. Then get in touch. If you have a heart for evangelism in any form we want you to join us!

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.

Enjoy this article? Don't forget to share