To understand ‘an evangelastic’ one first needs to understand that it is a play on words with an evangelical. An evangelical is a broad adjective to describe Christian, ‘an evangelical Christian.’ All Christians should be evangelical because evangelical, euangelion in Greek, simply means Gospel. And the Gospel is at the heart of the Christian faith. It is the good news of Jesus death and resurrection (1 Cor 15:3–5), the proclamation of the good news of a king who’d won victory over sin and death and hell so that sinners who repent and trust in this King might have forgiveness and new life.

That is not all an evangelical is. Evangelicals, like all Christians, uphold the early Creeds as expressions of Biblical teaching, and as Protestants, uphold the core Reformed tenets of the Reformation (like the 5 solas, or the major confessions of Protestant orthodoxy, etc). Historian David Bebbington further identified 4 categories common to most evangelicals: biblicism: a focus on Scripture, crucicentrism: proclaiming Christ crucified, conversionism: the need for change, to repent and believe; and activism: spreading the good news and helping the poor.

So, if this is a glimpse of what it means to be evangelical, what is an evangelistic?

Enter the rubber band, first patented in 1845. Bands to hold things together that were elastic quickly became part of the office landscape (and toyscape too!). Elastics are stretchy.

Thus, when a friend of mine heard a native Cornish speaker from Cornwall, England, with his thick accent try to say ‘evangelical,’ my friend mistook him to have said, ‘evangelastic.’ Because of the stretchiness of many modern evangelicals, he loved it and the term was coined. I have since used it extensively.

An evangelistic is someone who generally holds to the above but has departed from some aspect (or aspects) of the old evangelical consensus. Sometimes this is for want of sound teaching, but more often because they are seeking to be less offensive to the culture, conform to prevailing trends, be seeker sensitive, etc. Thus they ‘stretch’ their beliefs beyond the form of the original.
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We should of course be adaptable to the times, however, we should never abandoned key evangelical tenets for convenience’s sake. Let us not be evangelastics!

How wonderful it was last Lord’s Day to welcome a new family into the church through the right hand of fellowship and, likewise, a young lady into the fellowship through baptism. It is a good time to pick back up on our blogs on our church covenant.
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Read pt. I here, pt. II here, and pt. III here. 

​Life can be full (sometimes too full and we need to reevaluate our priorities and use of time). However, it should never be too full for the Lord. One way we express our love for Him is by being lovingly committed to our local church.
 
Now, even in a small church it is difficult, and unnecessary, to attend everything. However, as a church grows this becomes impossible. So how does one express their commitment through membership and in time to the local church? Let’s walk backwards.
 
The cornerstone of the Christian week and life is the Lord’s Day, which we believe is ‘in a unique sense, the appointed day of worship.’ It isn’t that we don’t or can’t worship God the other six days, but this is the day that is His and He has commanded, and indeed is worthy of, our public and corporate worship. It is the day when the whole church gathers. As members we put God first and connect with each other when we gather for our two main weekly gatherings, the morning and evening worship gatherings each Lord’s Day. This, I tell all people, is the starting point. Now sometimes you may have to work early on Monday and can’t come to the evening service, or perhaps you are sick, or away on vacation and so can’t come to the morning service or either, however, the normal expectation is that we’ll be there (and take advantage of online options when we can’t, or visit another church when we’re away). While not commanded by God, our quarterly members’ meetings are similar for it is when the church gathers to discuss important matters for her life and ministry. We should seek to book these in our calendars and plan to attend.
 
Once we’ve put the Lord first in these basics we can engage, ‘as the Lord directs and personal circumstances permit,” in other activities and ministries of the church. We should all have at least one area where we serve as we are able. If there are extra events we should attend and support them as interested (i.e. not everyone loves the science of CMI or getting up early for a men’s breakfast; some ministries are also for specific groups within the church: children, women, seniors, etc), or are able (i.e. some events might conflict with work trips, or a family vacation or another event in our life like a hobby).
 
The premise of this article in our covenant is that we commit to putting the Lord’s Day first and then building outward from there. 

[Ref. Sermon-Witness in Jerusalem: The New Covenant Community, Acts 2:43–47, January 22, 2023]
What are principles of a healthy church?

This question is different than what is the Church?  The universal Church is made up of all those called out from the world and united into the body through faith in Christ. The local church is where this is made visible through the ordinances, public worship, the preaching of the word, regenerate membership and discipline, pastoral care and discipleship, the ‘one anothers,’ evangelism, etc. True churches may be weighed as more pure or less pure depending on their faithfulness to the Scriptures.

There are many principles we might ascertain from Scripture as to what a healthy church is (vs. the human intuition and wisdom many church growth specialists rely upon [though this has its place]). However, an excellent near one stop shop is to find the principles of a healthy church is Acts 2:43–47. Luke provides a cameo of life in the early New Covenant Community that provides measurable principles by which later generations of the Church may fairly be tried. So, how does our/your church compare to the early Jerusalem church?

​After reading this passage take the following test to find out.

A DEVOTED COMMUNITY, v. 42
The Church was devoted, committed, to the Lord, each other and the things He had ordained for church life.

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AN APOSTOLIC COMMUNITY, v. 42, 43
The teaching and practice of the church was that of the Apostles and Jesus Himself as we find faithfully recorded in Scripture.
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A FELLOWSHIPPING COMMUNITY, v. 42
The Church was committed to the fellowship (membership) and to fellowship (sharing in the bond of the Spirit).
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GATHERING COMMUNITY, v. 46
Day by day, in formal and in informal ways, the church met together.
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A LEARNING COMMUNITY, v. 42
Topping the list the church studied together and grew spiritually.
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A WORSHIPPING COMMUNITY, v. 42, 46, 47a
The church was marked by gladness and expressed this in personal and public worship.
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A PRAYING COMMUNITY, v. 42b
They not only prayed, they prayed together (“the prayers”).
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A GENEROUS COMMUNITY, vv. 44–45
Related to fellowship, the church met one another’s needs as the family of God. Living as God would have them live as redeemed humanity.
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AN EVANGELISTIC COMMUNITY, implied in v. 47b
Since ‘faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God’ (Ro 10:17) they had to share the Gospel in order to grow. There good works adorned the Gospel (Tit 2:10).
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A GROWING COMMUNITY, v. 47a
Just as healthy organisms grow the Church grew as they did what they were supposed to do.
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Out of 100, how did you do? What areas must you devote your attention to become a healthier Church/Christian?