Ministry of Evangelist

By Odon Bulamba (3rd Nov 2000)

An evangelist is someone who has been chosen to play his role in this ministry. This person is chosen according to God’s will and must submit in order to fulfill this task. This task is to evangelise the name of Jesus Christ to all sinners, so that anyone who believes in Jesus Christ will find eternal life. An evangelist goes and preaches the good news so that lost ones come back to Jesus Christ.

Let us see how we can recognize an evangelist. When we enter a church, we see many preachers and every Sunday there is a new one. How can we make a difference, and what are the signs to be an evangelist? It is not about saying you are an evangelist, but it is about knowing who really is. The Bible gave us a few signs for that, what are they?
- to do miracles.
- pray all the time and not worry about material things.
- leave wife and everybody behind and go for God’s work.
- be able to fast
- know the spirit within the people he is talking to.
- travels and everywhere he goes preaches the gospel
- cast out demons
- raise the dead
- what he says must match what he does
- love people
- spiritually alert
- be a student
- must know in advance where to go
- spiritually perfect
- must not fear death, or men
- can be sent to a place by the Spirit
- their voice often shout, speaks with authority
- John the Baptist
- never afraid to talk about sin, he preaches about repentance

There are many features, but the most important is that the evangelist never fears talking about sin. He will never say, because Odon is here I won’t speak about this particular sin.” You might get angry with him, up to you, but he will speak, and it is not even him who speaks but something in him urges him to speak. When he speaks he always gets to the weak point, where Christians always fall, where they need to repent.

An Evangelist is someone who travels, not for business but for God’s work. In Africa, there were evangelists who were given their visas, and took the opportunity to buy gold and ivory, diamonds: evangelism is just a cover up to do their business.

Evangelists have authority and when they speak crowds are attracted. When they speak each conscience wakes up. They also do miracles, they have power to cast out demons, heal the sick, heal those who paralyzed, or lame… they organize crusades. After praying for all of them so that they will accept Jesus Christ, they leave and call other ministries to carry on the work. But nowadays, most evangelists, after 5-10 crusades and they see a big crowd of Christians they decide to become pastor, saying: Ï have started this group so I must shepherd them.” This is a role that is not theirs. If you are an evangelist, when your mission is fulfilled, leave others do theirs. Their journeys must be organized by God and not by themselves.

Remember Jonah, when God told him to go a certain way and Jonah answered he would not go there but somewhere else. An evangelist can’t organize his journey without God agreeing. In Acts 8:26, we see what happened with Philip.

Acts 8:26

God gives the exact direction about where to go: if you must go north, He will say so, and if it’s South, He will say so.

So everything we talked about is the conditions God gave us through the Bible. You must not keep that as such but use it to recognize servants of God, when you meet people. Try to know what ministry this person has, so that you will know where you and him stands, their travels, their authority and so on: all of this have references in the Bible, they are not imaginary. The Bible is very specific, and I will ask you to look for all these signs with a verse in the Bible for next time.