Evangelship

Lawrence Perez is one of those people who would get the same description Peter and John got in the book of Acts: "He is one who has been with Jesus.” When you spend some time with him, you know it’s the kind of joy that comes from someone who has spent years watching God work in ordinary places.

He started a church while he was still a probation officer. And he didn’t do all the strategy stuff that is normally associated with church planting. He simply began paying attention to where people already lived their lives — barbershops, gyms, lunch breaks, conversations before work — and planted the gospel there. Over time, a church emerged because disciples emerged.

Lawrence carries a deep conviction that many Christians admire the message of Jesus while quietly ignoring the method of Jesus. We gather, we schedule, we program, we invite people into religious space, and then wonder why faith feels active in church but passive everywhere else.

He noticed it in his own community. The people he was pastoring believed in evangelism and discipleship, but they only knew how to practice them during events. So he began reshaping imagination instead of adding activity in order to shift the paradigm.

He started helping people see evangelism and discipleship not as two assignments, but as one way of life.

His word for it is Evangelship, breathing in the life of Jesus and breathing out the love of Jesus. The inhale and the exhale were never meant to be separated.

While for many of us who have been pursuing movemental forms of Christianity, this won’t be unfamiliar, for the everyday person, this can be a significant shift. Lawrence is making it practical. You’ll feel it in the way he trains people to be come story-catchers before storytellers. Listening long enough to notice where God is already present in someone’s life before explaining anything about God. Instead of bringing answers into a conversation, you begin by honoring the person’s lived experience. You listen until you can name the grace they could not yet see.

Still…Larry has stories. Really good ones, actually, and they are worth hearing.

You can hear our full conversation below.

If we are going to become a people formed in the way of Jesus, we will have to learn to breathe in the life of Jesus and breathe out the love of Jesus.