I often get questions about why I chose the title Barefoot Evangelist for my website. The questions are mostly about the ‘evangelist’ part, if we are being honest.

The ‘barefoot’ is pretty straight forward. I prefer preaching in my bare feet, and once overheard a person in a church I preached at referring to me saying “you know, the one who preaches barefoot”. I liked it, and it was honest. There were already about eight “barefoot preachers” on social media at the time – most from Canada, interestingly enough – so I went with something else.

Evangelist…

I have had people not want to visit my website because they thought ‘evangelist’ automatically meant it was narrow minded, rightwing, conservative, and spoke of a doctrine of hate. A friend of mine said she encountered that when she recommended my website, and she quickly corrected their assumption. To the best of my knowledge that person listened, watched, and signed up to follow shortly afterwards.

Evangelist, evangelical, and evangelism are Christian words. It is unfortunate that these days they are associated with only one way of behaving that has nothing to do with the way people expect Jesus’ followers to act. Some who have never experienced people who are genuine Jesus followers assume that all Christians fall into that category, and that is both unfortunate and inaccurate.

There are many communities calling themselves Evangelical, and use the words evangelical and evangelism, who understand the historic meaning and therefore are using the word accurately.

Simply put, it means “Tellers of the story of Jesus” or “Tellers of the Good News”. That’s it.

Traditionally the assumed writers of the four Gospels have been referred to as Evangelists. Those who were travelling missionaries in the earliest days were also known as ‘evangelists’ because the task they took up was to share the story of Jesus and encourage people to follow Jesus’ teachings. The word appears in the Bible associated with certain people. In Acts 21:8 it is associated with a man named Phillip. In Ephesians 4:11, we read that with Ascension the Holy Spirit gave the gift of being an evangelist to some people. And in 2 Timothy 4:5, the writer told people to carry on with the work of being an evangelist even when the world was more interested in other teaching that ‘suited their own desires’.

To tell the story of Jesus makes us evangelists. Some of us do it casually, some of us more formally. But all of us who share the Good News of Jesus are by default, Evangelists.