Evangelism and the Early Church

The overall objective of this course is to develop and implement a household strategy for reaching unbelievers with the gospel and incorporating them into the life of the church, based on biblical principles and patterns for the home and the church. Specifically, this means that each person studying the course would:

• Take a fresh look at evangelism through the eyes of the early church, looking for insights into their effectiveness and boldness, as well as identifying patterns which can serve as guides and models for today.

• Integrate the insights of the first-century church drawn from Acts with the mandates and exhortations of the Epistles to formulate a guide or model which can serve as an aid to shape our twenty-first-century strategies.

• Define the essentials of the gospel message, package them in a way that they can easily be shared with a nonbeliever, and develop a core set of answers to all the basic questions non-believers ask concerning the validity of our faith.

• Think through the issue of establishing a new convert in their faith, and study the role of baptism in this process in order to design a plan for incorporating a new believer into the life of a believing community--a local church.

• Design and implement a home-based evangelism strategy for your own household, and design a generic strategy which could serve as a guide for any local church in developing evangelism strategy at a corporate level.