Dr. Joel Beeke emphasizes that the Lord's last command should be the church's first priority. He discusses the challenges of personal evangelism training, noting that new believers often face difficulties when sent out without proper preparation. Dr. Beeke reflects on his own experiences and stresses the importance of ministers equipping their congregation. According to the Puritans, the best evangelism training comes not from formal classes but from the minister's life and preaching, which should inspire similar passion and zeal in laypeople. Ministers are encouraged to model evangelistic behavior and offer structured training, including classes, practical experiences, and feedback, to effectively prepare their congregation for evangelization.

Our Lord's last command is our first priority. In the church, in the family, in the city, to the ends of the earth. Join us in October for White Under Harvest. In terms of personal evangelism training today, one of the great problems is that people are sent out as soon as they're saved. And I did that myself when I was a teenager.

As soon as I was saved, I started going door to door on my own thinking I could handle this, and I got into all kinds of problems because I wasn't equipped. I think pastors need to equip their people. Probably the best equipping for evangelization is not necessarily an evangelism class that can be helpful, but the Puritans would say the best equipping for evangelization is the life of the minister and the evangelizing that the minister does from the pulpit. And that should be something that is more caught than taught. And so when the layperson goes out and evangelizes, he has some of the same passion, the same zeal, the same scriptural, doctrinal, experiential, practical emphases that the minister is showing in his own life and from the pulpit.

So this puts a lot of burden, the Puritans would say, on the minister to model this in every possible way. And I think that when ministers do this faithfully and then couple it with teaching specific classes on evangelism to those who are interested and Then doing some shepherding and having other people whom he's trained shepherd others and have them go door to door or passing out tracks or getting neighborhoods together and showing those people through people trained by the minister how to evangelize and then letting them do it and the trainer observing the trainee and having the feedback go back and forth, that that's a very helpful way to prepare people for evangelization. You