Evangelism Matters

Yesterday we had a Synod event taking the theme 'Evangelism Matters'. We wanted to stress that evangelism important and to offer some tools for engaging in it. When we talk about mission, that usually offers a much broader canvas - and the church is called to mission in all sorts of ways. That's important, but we should not use other parts of mission to evade the challenge to evangelism. Our guest speaker was my predecessor, Revd. Liz Caswell. Liz challenged us to consider the how, why, when, what and who of evangelism. She stressed that everybody is valuable to God. Liz told us a little us a little story about something that had happened to her, and then got us - in pairs - to tell each other about something interesting, amazing, important, whatever, that had happened to us. She then asked us how readily we would tell that story, whatever it was, to folk we encountered. Next she asked us to consider how equally, or not, ready we are to tell those we meet something of the story of Jesus and how we have engaged with it. It is interesting to consider how readily we share our faith stories.