Jesus never evangelised, or did He?

I sat in the pew. On my right side a lady who read from her Hebrew-Dutch bible and on my left my youngest daughter with two of her friends. The, what people call "worship time", went on and on and, as usual my mind was drifting somewhere outside the building, boldly exploring places and spaces where no one has ever gone before (that's what I want to believe but usually someone has been there before I get there). I usually switch off after ten minutes and start thinking about the "after church service coffee" or go through my notes one more time before being given the pulpit where I usually forget about my notes altogether (why bother bringing notes?).

Anyway, a thought hit me. Did Jesus ever evangelise? And the answer also hit me: "No, He never did evangelise". Before I started giving my speech I asked the church how they would answer this question. The whole church believed that Jesus actually did evangelise. No one raised his or her hand when I asked "whom of you says that Jesus never evangelised"? I was the only one with my hand raised high in the sky (with great zeal and a sense of urgency and fresh revelation). I couldn't care less that I was the only one believing that Jesus never evangelised. The fact that no one believed it with me underlines the sad reality of what went wrong somewhere in our church history.

Let me explain: The "evangelion" was just fine until we changed it into a verb and turned it into an activity. It's not something you switch on and, after you're done evangelising, switch off. Yet, that is exactly what many people do!
Jesus never had to make a deliberate choice to put "two hours of evangelism" in and then, after those two hours everything would turn back to normal.
No! Jesus was so full of the presence of the father that He could not not speak about it. He breathed life wherever He came. He never had to overcome emotional, theological, personal or whatever obstacles before changing into the evangelism mode. He was the mode. He was, and still is the GOOD NEWS!

I want the church to return to being and living the Good News. Is it that we need activities because without these our lives and churches don’t stand out enough to make a real difference? Why is it that we have to tell people that we actually are different? Maybe because otherwise they would never see it, or notice it?

Jesus says, “You are the light of the world” and “You are the Salt of the Earth”. If He says so, there is only one appropriate response to this error of needing activities to “show” the world and that is repentance and begging God for a new and fresh baptism of His spirit that will radically change me into the person Jesus says I already am.