I think I’m done preaching sermons designed to motivate people to be evangelistic. Evangelism that has to be forced or coerced is no evangelism at all. Evangelism is the joyous announcement of the good news of Jesus Christ. To the degree that the gospel is real to us, the more evangelistic we will be. Rather than guilt-tripping or arm-twisting nonevangelizing Christians into sharing the gospel with their neighbor–or else, I’m going to make sure they understand the gospel and are putting themselves into position through the various spiritual disciplines to experience its truth and have their lives changed by it. When this is happening, evangelism happens. Could it be that we aren’t sharing the gospel with our neighbors and telling them what a difference God will make in their lives because quite honestly, he hasn’t made that much of a difference in ours? Are we asking folks in our churches to act like travel agents who hand out brochures to destinations they’ve never visited?

If we concentrate on obeying the two greatest commands of the law–loving God with everything we’ve got and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves–then evangelism should be the simple, and quite natural, act of introducing the neighbors we love to the God we love.