Lifestyle Evangelism or Lifestyle Discipleship?

Lifestyle evangelism is exactly what it sounds like – as you live the life of Christ, you share the Christ of your life. It has always seemed strange to me that we only associate this concept to evangelism. Why don’t we call it “lifestyle discipleship”? We don’t because it is assumed that our lifestyle is showing the life of Christ in us. In other words, what we learn about Christ, we live out in our daily lives. The same should then be said of evangelism. What we learn about Christ we share with others in our daily lives.

James 1:22 says that we are to “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves.” A strong statement that should be a motivation for every believer. James is sounding the warning loud and clear that plagues evangelism today – we love to hear and learn about evangelism tools techniques, and resources, but if we don’t do something with them, our lost friends remain just that – lost.

That’s the idea behind lifestyle evangelism. Like discipleship, evangelism becomes so much a part of your life that it is a natural extension of who you are as a believer. As you live the life of a follower of Christ, so you share the life of Christ with others. Yes, through your actions, but through your words as well. For if they see Christ in us but never hear about Christ, then they don’t know who it is that has given us this life and they don’t know how to find Him.

The emphasis in James is not on being the hearer, which is the easy part, but on being the doer of what we hear. One way to “do” is to develop lifestyle evangelism… a life that not only lives Christ, but shares Christ.

by: Mark Rae