Evangelist (preacher)
In Christian revival movements, evangelists are people who are specifically called to evangelism - be it that they are officially employed as such by a church or a Christian work, or it is that they themselves see this as their special calling from God . Such a “job description” is mentioned in the Bible ( Acts 21.8 EU , Eph 4.11 EU , 2 Tim 4.6 EU ). In the post-biblical writings of the early church, however, this official title is no longer found. In Catholicism and Protestantism, the term missionary is used instead of the title evangelist .
The main task of an evangelist is to convey the basics of the Christian faith in clear words to non-believers and people of other faith and to invite them to conversion . This often involves extensive travel activities. Evangelists travel from place to place to carry out so-called evangelism or evangelistic activities.
Developments in England and the United States
Only in the 18th century this official title reappeared. George Whitefield is arguably the first to hold this post. On February 17, 1739, he evangelized in front of church workers at a Bristol coal mine. From that point on, Whitefield traveled tirelessly through Great Britain, Ireland and the United States. He had a close friendship with the revival preachers Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley , which led to the integration of evangelism into the revival movement. While the latter had primarily the spiritual revitalization of church members in mind, there was now a further objective: to reach people without church affiliation with the gospel.
These beginnings under Whitefield were the beginning of a movement which - according to Rendtorff - has been propagated in peculiar waves to the present day. When the Great Migration West began in the United States during the so-called pioneering period (1792–1825) and led hundreds of thousands to the newly developed settlement areas there, Methodist and Baptist evangelists followed them . They were mostly lay preachers. From 1800 onwards, its effectiveness led to great revivals and numerous church plantings among the pioneers.
These lay preachers who saw themselves as evangelists included Charles Grandison Finney and Dwight Lyman Moody . Finney was a lawyer and Moody was a trained shoe seller. Both became the most important evangelists of the 19th century. Moody in particular became a great role model for modern evangelists. In over forty years of service, he reached millions of people. Due to his effectiveness, which also led him to England, evangelistic societies soon emerged which contributed to the rediscovery of the early Christian ministry of evangelists.
Developments in the German-speaking area
The German-speaking area was also affected by these developments in the 19th century. Here too, however, they came across prepared ground. The pietism and initiated by him revival movements had resulted in many German regions evangelistic campaigns. Above all, Wuerttemberg ( Ludwig Hofacker ), Baden , the Rhineland , the Ravensberger Land , the Lüneburg Heath ( Ludwig Harms , the theologian in a peasant skirt ), the Wuppertal and the Siegerland and the eastern regions of the German Empire should be mentioned here . However, it was only under Anglo-Saxon influence that regular evangelization associations were formed. In this context, the Evangelical Society for Germany was established in 1848 . Evangelist schools were founded: 1841 in Chrischona near Basel and in 1886 the Johanneum in Wuppertal. Evangelists in this early phase of the German-speaking evangelism movement were Jakob Vetter , the founder of the tent mission , Elias Schrenk and Samuel Keller . For Switzerland, Franz Eugen Schlachter , the former collaborator of Elias Schrenk and translator of the miniature Bible, should be mentioned.
The prayer for the equipping of church workers with evangelistic talents was part of the intercession canon of the revival movement from the beginning. It was also reflected in their songs - for example:
“So give your word with great multitudes / who are evangelists in power. / Let help befall us quickly / and break into Satan's kingdom with power! / O, Lord, spread out over a wide circle of earth / your kingdom soon to the price of your name. "
present
Around 1918, under the influence of the Inner Mission founded by Johann Hinrich Wichern , the so-called Church People's Mission came into being . She tried to do justice to the original concern of Wichern, in addition to the social as well as the spiritual needs of the people. The Inner Mission had largely transferred its effectiveness to the diaconal field; The aim of the people's mission was to give answers from the Gospel to people who were looking for new orientation after the end of the First World War . The full-time employees of the church people's mission were not called evangelists, but people's missionaries . In 1922 there was a conference in Spandau in which various members of the people's missionary movements took part. This conference was the starting point for the establishment of the German Evangelical Association for People's Mission , which took place in 1926. In the decades that followed , the Office for People's Mission , which is located in the Protestant regional churches and which today employs the full-time regional church evangelists and people's missionaries, developed from this.
In 1960 the pastors Gustav Bolay († November 19, 1984) from the Methodist Church and Heinz Stossberg († November 12, 1974) from the Evangelical Community began with evangelistic radio broadcasts on Radio Luxembourg .
The evangelical free churches also know the office of evangelist. In the Federation of Evangelical Free Churches , for example, it is the so-called federal evangelists and the evangelistically gifted pastors who, in addition to their work in a local congregation, are active as evangelists across the region.
There are also a number of free and non-denominational works in which full-time evangelists are employed. These include the German Tent Mission and the New Life Mission .
Well-known evangelists
Well-known German evangelists from more recent times were or are Anton Schulte , Gerhard Bergmann , Wilhelm Busch , Heinrich Kemner , Theo Lehmann , Paul Deitenbeck , the former YMCA Secretary General Pastor Ulrich Parzany ( ProChrist ), Jörg Swoboda , Herbert Sczepan (both Protestant-free church ) , Peter Strauch , Manfred Bönig (both free Protestant ), Wilhelm Pahls and Dietmar Langmann from the mission work Die Bruderhand , Reinhard Bonnke ( BFP ) and Werner Gitt .
Probably the world's most famous modern evangelist was the American and Baptist Billy Graham . Other evangelists from the English-speaking world were Dwight Lyman Moody and the Salvation Army founder William Booth . More recently, Gene Robinson confessed to being an evangelist in an interview with The Times . Even women, such as B. Elizabeth Kaeton , are employed as evangelists.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Josef Schmid : Evangelist . In: Josef Höfer , Karl Rahner (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 2nd Edition. tape 3 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1959.
- ↑ H. Rendtorff: Article Evangelization and People's Mission , in: RGG, Volume II, Tübingen 1958, p. 771
- ↑ Broadcasting mission ( Memento of October 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Homepage of the Episcopal Church of St. Paul, Chatham (New Jersey) ( Memento of October 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
literature
- Gustav Bolay: Splinters from the mosaic . Verl. Sonne u. Sign; 2nd edition 1961
- H. Rendttorf: Article Evangelism and People's Mission , in: RGG, Volume II, Tübingen 1958, pp. 770–775
- Paulus Scharpf: History of Evangelism , Brunnen-Verlag Giessen and Basel 1964
- Pilgrimage life and pilgrimage , published by Ernst Röttger, Kassel, 1905 (autobiography by Elias Schrenk )
- Hermann Klemm: Elias Schrenk, the path of an evangelist , TVG, R. Brockhaus Verlag Wuppertal, 1961
- Friedrich Hauss: Fathers of Christianity , R. Brockhaus Verlag Wuppertal, 1973
- Franz Eugen Schlachter : DL Moody , a picture of life drawn from English sources, on commission at the Bureau der Evang. Company in Bern, Biel Buchdruckerei H. Schneider, 1894
- Franz Eugen Schlachter: A visit to London , self-published by Freie Brüdergemeinde Albstadt 2006