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Wiki MarkupI realize now that I was mistaken in my earlier answer to the question, What is evangelism?, as well as unjust to those representing the alternative answers I singled out for criticism (see "What is evangelism?" \ [ June 1984; rev. May 1987\]).

Evangelism is not, as I held, simply "the explicit witness of the church." Why? Well, because there is a real and important difference between the explicit witness of the church as addressed to those who, having (already) explicitly accepted this witness, are themselves authorized bearers of it and the explicit witness of the church as addressed to those who, not (yet) having explicitly accepted the witness, are not themselves authorized witnesses.

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In the same way, one can appreciate the distinction that Furnish and Marxsen, among others, both make between the two different phases of Paul's ministry as an apostle appointed, as he believed, to establish the gospel. As an apostle, Paul was a sower or a parent, but he recognized a difference between the "missionary preaching" whereby he had sown the seed of the gospel or given birth to his children (cf. 1 Cor. 3:6; Gal. 4:19) and the "pastoral teaching" whereby he (as well as others) nurtured and cultivated the plant or exhorted and trained the children. Here, again, one need not make the pertinent distinction by a questionable use of the distinction between "preaching" and "teaching." Whether addressed to unbelievers or believers, the explicit witness of the church involves proclamation as well as teaching. But the relevant point is that there is a real and important difference between explicit witness's, and therefore both preaching and teaching's, functioning to generate faith and its functioning to confirm faith already generated.

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