God gave some to be Evangelists

I experienced God’s thrill of victory until the age of twelve, then I experienced six years of the agony of defeat.  I was the prodigal son sowing my wild oats.  I did not want to obey God’s call, but after six years I returned home to God. 

Several months had past and that Sunday night I was sitting on the back row at church with some other teens. I knew God wanted me to go forward during the invitation, but I found myself saying, “God, you have already forgiven me!”  With God’s help I obeyed and made that long trip down the center aisle of the Winchester, Indiana church.  As I knelt and prayed I began to sense bodies gathering around me and the warmth of the saints and the wind from their prayers.  I was already a Christian, but I had further business to do with God.  The song writer says it best. “I yielded myself to His tender embrace, and faith taking hold of the Word, my fetters fell off and I anchored my soul: the haven of rest is my Lord.” My prayer was simply, “All the talents I have I have laid at Thy feet; Thy approval shall be my reward.  Be my store great or small, I surrender it all to my wonderful, wonderful Lord.”  That sanctifying moment made the call of God stronger than ever.

 After three months of praying, “Please Lord!  Let me know definitely what you want me do?” God spoke. Twice He spoke the words, “evangelist-song evangelist”.  The call was definite as the peace that came with it.  As my heart welled up with praise and gratitude my eyes looked down at my watch.  God called me to be an evangelist and song evangelist at 1: 30 P. M., the twenty third day of January 1967 at Lynn, IN.

 Today the God-Called Evangelist is a threatened species much like the spotted owl.  In many American churches, people feel that the roll of the itinerant evangelist was a frontier American phenomenon that is now become an anachronism and we don't need them anymore.  But I will be forever grateful to the Church of the Nazarene for acknowledging the office of the God-called evangelist. From its beginning to the present the God-called evangelist is authorized by the church to promote revivals and to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ abroad in the land.  The Church of the Nazarene recognizes three levels of itinerant evangelism to which a district assembly may assign ministers: registered evangelist, commissioned evangelist and tenured evangelist.  Every believer has the mandate to go into the world and preach the gospel, but God called some to be Evangelists.  Why, “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4: 12).   

 I urge every reader to examine your call, renew your commitment so that together we can fulfill the great commission.  We face a humanity that is too precious to neglect.  We know a remedy too wonderful to withhold.  We have a Christ who is too glorious to hide. And we have an adventure that is too thrilling to miss.

Evangelist Duane Smith

Evangelist Duane Smith, Secretary

Committee on the Interests of the God-Called Evangelists