In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis reminds us of the good news that God is offering salvation each and every person and that we are called to live out that salvation in the life of the community that we call the church. “God has found a way to unite himself to every human being in every age. He has chosen to call them together as a people and not as isolated individuals. No one is saved by himself or herself, individually, or by his or her own efforts” (§ 113). While we are each saved by God’s good grace, we are called to live this out in our lives as members of God’s own community. So it is in the context of being a community that we need to understand what it means to be an evangelizer.
To evangelize is to spread the good news; it is to share what we have found to be good and true and life-giving with all those around us. The Christian church was founded as a self-replicating community. In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus sends out his disciples to preach and baptize: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20). Each of us, as members of the community of disciples of Jesus, is called to participate in spreading the good news and inviting others into relationship with God through Jesus.
Some in the church are tasked with particular roles in the evangelizing mission of the church. The clergy are responsible for preaching and ensuring that we have access to the sacraments; teachers make sure that the faith is handed on to new generations. We even have missionaries who carry the gospel message to places where it has not yet been heard or embraced. But these are just a part of the overall evangelizing mission of the church. The church as a whole is called to be evangelizing; the church as a whole has a mission to spread the good news and invite others into relationship with God.
This means that we cannot rely on those whose official job description is to preach and teach. Pope Francis reminds us:
“In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples. All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients. The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization; indeed, anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love” (§120).
We are all a part of the evangelizing mission of the church. And this means that we cannot sit in the pews of our church and wait for people to show up to hear the gospel. We are tasked – by Jesus – to go out to the world and invite people into relationship with God. We do this through our everyday witness to our faith; we do this through the conversations and relationships we have; we do this by reaching out to those who need our help. But we have to go out to do it. To be an evangelizing church means that we are a church that goes out into the world in order to draw the world closer to God. It is an awesome task!
