Dr. Joel Beeke explains in this video that as a pastor, he evangelizes in every single sermon as he brings out application from the text and points people to the Gospel. When he is not in church, he often finds that it's a good opportunity to evangelize on plane trips. You have to be intentional about evangelism.

Romans 10:14 (NKJV) - "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?"

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 evangelism in my own life, I really embraced the Puritan model. In fact, I'm often accused of being a modern day Puritan.

And I evangelize from the pulpit. I often preach sermons that are evangelistic from beginning to end, but I evangelize somewhat in every single sermon, particularly in applications that flow out of the text. I always try to connect it, of course, to the text. I also try to follow the Puritan model of praying my way through the congregation. Actually, I take one page from the church directory and try to pray my way as a pastor evangelist through that page on a regular basis, and then next day, next page, and so on.

And in terms of people outside of my church, I have a personal commitment in the presence of God, a personal vow to God as it were, that whenever I come into contact with unconverted people for any length of time, I will try with God's help to evangelize them. Now for me, that actually happens most often on airplanes because I do a lot of flying. I have a captive audience. When people are flying, they can't go anywhere. And so what I do is I talk to them.

And I do this about 85% of the time. Sometimes on Monday mornings flying back, I'm not too good at it because I'm tired. But I ask them about their family, find out about their work, show my interest, and then ask them if they're a Christian. Or they might look at me and say in the process, what do you do for work? And I say, well, I'm a minister and I train people, a men for ministry in a seminary.

And their response to that will also indicate where they're at spiritually. And eventually I get to the question, do you believe in the Bible? Because if they believe in the Word of God completely as the inspired Word of God, then I can do a lot of evangelizing in a short space of time. If they don't, of course, I've really got to go back to the very basics of what life is all about and do a lot of work in a short time. But in America, actually, believe it or not, more than 50% of the people will say they believe in the Bible when you're in an airplane.

Not in Europe, and not in most places in the world. But once they believe in the Bible, you see, then you can start evangelizing, asking questions. Is Jesus Christ really everything in your life? Do you know the joy of being a Christian? And often they'll fudge and they'll hedge about and they'll say, well I don't think you really need to be going to church to be a Christian, it's just a God in me thing.

Well I thought you believed in the Bible. Well, I do believe in the Bible. Well, would you mind if I show you in the scriptures where it says that you need to be in church on a weekly basis? And they say, well, the Bible doesn't say, well, would you mind if I show you? Well, okay.

And I show them, Hebrews 10, 25. Did you see that? It says, never forsake the assembling of yourselves together. That's weekly worship in the New Testament Church. And I've actually had people that I then get their names and emails and I send them, Send them a church name and I've had people start going to church through airplane evangelism In fact, I hope to write a book called airplane evangelism But my goal is always to get people's addresses and emails and start a dialogue with them after the airplane trip And what I often do is I give them free books.

And I've discovered over the years that what they really want is books that I've written because they have a personal connection with me. So I'll send them three, four, five books that I've written that are evangelistic in nature. And then I'll follow up with dialogue, ask them if they got the book, if they read them. Some people don't answer, some people do, some people start listening to my sermons, some people even send me money to pay for the things I've sent them. And so that's the kind of approach I use.

Getting close to people, then bringing them the Gospel, and then follow up. You see, the Puritans excelled in follow up, and that's extremely important, rather than just mass evangelism, have people raise their hand and come forward, and then they'll follow up. 98% of people that have said they accepted Jesus at a Billy Graham crusade, there hasn't been follow-up and it's proved to be empty. But Richard Baxter, the great Puritan evangelist, could say he saw six hundred conversions in his village of Kidimister under his ministry and he didn't know of a single one that fell back. But that was largely by God blessing His follow-up visitations.

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