Is evangelism an individual sport or a team sport? Really, it’s both.
Think of fishing. There are times you might head down to the dock by your lonesome, dangle your feet off the side, and cast in a line. But ask the men on an ocean trawler what it takes to haul a ton of mackerel out of writhing seawaters. They desperately need one another.
The fishing analogy does not say everything we would want to say about the relationship between evangelism and the local church, but it’s biblical, and it’s a start. Jesus told the disciples to follow him, that he would make them fishers of men, and then he sent them out two by two to preach that people should repent (Mark 1:17; 6:7, 13). Like fishermen on a trawler, we need the church to do the work of evangelism.
Yet there’s a bigger picture to see in relating evangelism and the church. Think of the first chapters of Acts, where the apostles proclaimed the resurrection, and behind them was the church, living together and sharing everything in common, “praising God and enjoying the favor of the people” (2:47; also
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