Even as a pastor, there are still many aspects of my faith life where I want to grow. During this pandemic, there is one prayer that I’ve been continually asking God for. I’ve been praying ‘Lord, please help me to become a pastor who can teach about prayer both biblically and experientially’. It is because I still feel that prayer is an area I need to grow further.
Similarly, there was a time when I earnestly prayed to God to help me become a pastor who can teach about evangelism. It wasn’t because I didn’t know what evangelism is biblically or how to evangelise. But I wanted to be a pastor who can demonstrate how it’s done in real life situations, so that others can easily follow my lead.
At the time of 2012 London Olympics, a group of Korean Christians from all over the world came together to evangelise. Over the course of 2 weeks, we received evangelism training and evangelised near the Olympic stadium and the main tourist attractions across London. At the time, I was tasked to organise and allocate the teams to different locations and routes. From the UK, our church and another regional church participated in this event. Every member of our congregation participated through donations, kitchen volunteering as well as around 50 members coming to evangelise in person.
On the last day of this evangelism event, the Holy Spirit asked me whether I could carry on evangelising in London. I responded yes and from that point on, I’ve been doing street evangelism in central London with our church every Saturday. There were many moving and emotional experiences. Also, many members of our church grew into evangelists and have been sent out into the world. I still struggle with my English now, so I was only comfortable to give out gospel tracts back then. Even so, I felt great joy as I continued to do so. I came to a stage where I could demonstrate to others how to boldly give out gospel tracts.
But after 3 years of just giving out gospel tracts, I began to challenge myself to engage in conversations whilst evangelising after seeing a previous member of our church do so. Then the joys of evangelism multiplied for me. By meeting many different types of people throughout the years, I gained a deeper understanding of the gospel and how better to evangelise.
During university, I was part of Korea CCC (Campus Crusade for Christ), which placed the most emphasis on evangelism. I was trained there for 4 years and throughout my pastoral ministry, I had given evangelism training to all age groups from Sunday school children to adults. Nevertheless, evangelism had always felt uncomfortable to me. However, through participating in the weekly Saturday evangelism meetings in London, I really came to experience the true joys of evangelism. Inevitably, I do feel a little tense and nervous in the morning before I go out to evangelise. But I no longer evangelise out of a sense of duty or obligation, but by true desire and joy. I still have a lot to learn as an evangelist. Our Saturday evangelism meetings have been very meaningful to me, as it taught me that evangelism is the greatest joy that only Christians can experience.
I am looking forward to this coming Saturday as we restart our weekly street evangelism meeting, which we had to suspend due the pandemic. I pray that many members of our congregation will come to experience the joys of evangelism.
