I preached on the story of the calling of the first disciples from John this past Lord’s Day.  (I’ve been using the historic one year lectionary.)  I introduced the sermon by asking what people think of when they hear the words ‘evangelist’ or ‘evangelism’.  I used examples of people knocking on strangers’ doors, handing out the ‘four spiritual laws’ on the beach or a slick-looking TV preacher. 

As I continued the sermon the point I made was that evangelism is usually something simple like sharing the gospel with a neighbour, like Philip and Nathaniel in the town where Andrew and Peter were from, or sharing with a relative, like Andrew with his brother Peter.  I went on to explain how Peter had a prominent position among the disciples, but it was throught he invitaton of the lesser disciple Andrew that he came to Christ in the first place.  The point I tried to make was that through the seemingly small act of inviting someone to ‘come and see’ the Lord, we can have an even larger impact than we imagine.  To further illustrate this point I said that someone, somewhere once invited Billy Graham to meet Jesus.  Most of us don’t remember who that was, we couldn’t name them, but God called Billy Graham through someone’s invitation.

Anyway, as I was greeting folks on their way out someone told me that when I asked for what came to mind when I mention ‘evangelist’, they thought of Billy Graham.  I felt like there was a point in there somewhere.