What is Evangelisation?

Why evangelisation matters to God and us.

Author: Leonard Koh

What is evangelisation?

Evangelisation is admittedly an uncomfortable topic with us Catholics. The word often conjures up memories of our over-zealous Christian friends or perky strangers with bibles on the bus asking ‘are you saved?’ It is something we hear about in Church that we are supposed to do but often struggle to find the courage, the confidence or even the motivation to do so. In this article, we want to take a look at what evangelisation is, how it matters to God and why it should matter to us.

The word ‘evangelisation’ comes from a Greek root euangelizesthai that simply means ‘to bring good news.’ This Good News is the message that Jesus has come into the world and by His work on the cross, has set us free from the sin that separates us from God. Through Jesus we now have access to a loving relationship with our Heavenly Father both in this life and forever in the next. Sharing this Good News is not the same as convincing someone that our Catholic worldview, our set of convictions and perspectives are right. Rather, the Gospel is the gateway by which a person’s worldview is changed. The Gospel of God’s unconditional love has the power to change a person’s heart first. It is out of this transformed heart that changes in emotions, behaviours and perspectives follow. Evangelisation is faithfully sharing the Gospel with the people that God has brought into our lives, and trusting God to change hearts.

JOIN THE SEARCH

God’s masterplan to search out every lost person has always been to recruit those who have been first found by Him to join in on the mission. So it should not come as a surprise that at the very onset when Jesus called His disciples, He set the agenda of discipleship as becoming ‘fishers of men.’ The first followers of Jesus were probably scratching their heads as to what Jesus meant when He told them that “from now on you will catch men.” But follow Him they did and by the end of the Gospel, that was exactly what Peter, James, Andrew and John had become. They took the message Jesus preached and learnt how to share it with others within their spheres of influence and according to their own personalities and giftings. Those who heard the message of Jesus from them soon came to their realisation that to follow Jesus also meant becoming a ‘fisher of men’ themselves. Subsequently, they too learnt how to share the good news they have heard to a whole new generation of people in different places, who themselves learnt that to follow was to fish. Fast forward to over two thousand years later, on a tiny island of Singapore, we hear the good news of Jesus because others have understood that to follow Jesus was to join him in His mission to ‘seek and save the lost’ (Luke 19:10).

In an address to the members of the parish evangelisation cell system in 2019, Pope Francis reminds us, “If we have encountered Christ in our lives, then we cannot keep him only for ourselves. It is crucial that we share this experience with others as well; this is the main road of evangelisation.”

The call to evangelisation

Have we heard the call of Jesus to follow Him as a disciple? If we have, then we have also heard the call to become a fisher of men, a participant in God’s universal search-party. All of us must do our part to keep our eyes open constantly to whom we can reach out and share the Good News of God’s love with. Like the one in the search party who finds the missing person sitting in the dark, and calling out excitedly to the rest, ‘I’ve found him!’, there is no adventure greater and no joy sweeter than being used by God ‘to seek and save the lost.’

To follow Jesus means to become a ‘Fisher of Men’ yourself.

This article is part of The WWWH of Evangelisation, a four-part series that explores the foundations of evangelisation. Continue the journey by exploring the other articles below.