I learned of a joke while at seminary: “What do you call someone who owns three sermons and a bus?” – “An Evangelist!”
Abraham Lincoln is attributed to the saying, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
Jesus spent 30 years preparing to reach 12 men and then focused the next three years in a close relationship with them. He proclaimed the Kingdom in front of them. He then proclaimed the Kingdom with them. And then he sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom ahead of him. And from that core group, he exemplified what it meant to enter the Kingdom; he changed the world.
Compare that to all our other forms of modern evangelism. We roll into a town, proclaim a message, take an offering to help offset expenses, and move on. The Good News was never demonstrated to be a “one and done” effort, but a life lived as summed up with “The Kingdom of God is like…” And from that, a life lived where people can see, up close, a life lived out, they choose to follow.
Unspoken Theology 