Is there a difference between discipleship and evangelism? – 1st Thessalonians 2:13–3:13, Preview

My church has changed the names of our committees numerous times.  Currently we have a Leadership Team and Serve Teams.  The reason for that is based in New Testament teaching about church leadership.  The writers of the New Testament have lots to say about church leadership, and what they say pretty much boils down to two levels of leaders.  Elders and deacons.  Elders are the ones who lead the church, and deacons are the ones who serve in the various ministries of the church.  Some lead, some serve.  And that’s where we got our committee labels: Leadership Team and Serve Teams.  

But it wasn’t always that way.  Before I started at Faith Church in 2002, there was an Official Board and Trustees and various other boards and committees.  Then just before my time, the Official Board became the Ministry Council, and all the other groups became Commissions.  Let me focus a bit further on those Commissions.  

In 2002, we had a Christian Education Commission and a Spiritual Life & Evangelism Commission.  But isn’t Christian Education nearly identical to the Spiritual Life?  What was the difference?  Frankly, it was hard to parse out the differences.  So we changed the names to specify that those two commissions had different purposes.  The Christian Education Commission became the Discipleship Commission, and for the Spiritual Life & Evangelism Commission, we just removed the words “Spiritual Life” making it the Evangelism Commission.  

That helped distinguish between the two.  Discipleship is not the same as Evangelism.  They are, however, often conflated as identical.  They are not identical.  Of course they are related, but in the New Testament, they are different terms, with different purposes.  Do you know how Discipleship and Evangelism differ?  It is not an insignificant difference, by the way.  We would do well to know the difference so we can live the way of Jesus faithfully.  

Join us this coming week as guest blogger Kirk Marks will be taking a look at how the Apostle Paul describes the difference between discipleship and evangelism. Check out the passage ahead of time, 1 Thessalonians 2:13–16 and 3:6–13, and we’ll see you on Monday! 

Photo by Small Group Network on Unsplash