“As inefficient as it may seem to us, God the Spirit has left to the office of preacher the ministry of announcing the good news and it through that act, announcing the incarnation, obedience, righteousness, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Christ that he has promised to bring all of his elect to new life, to faith, and through faith alone to justification and salvation.”

In evangelical Christianity, to some degree after the so-called First Great Awakening and certainly after the so-called Second Great Awakening, the line between lay witness and the official (done from a particular ecclesiastical office) of preaching became blurred. The Reformed theologians who composed and edited the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) and the churches who adopted it did not blur this line. They certainly expected believers to talk to others about the faith (objective) and about their own, personal appropriation of Christ and his gospel through faith alone (subjective) but the left the preaching of the holy gospel to the church and particularly to the office of minister:

84. How is the Kingdom of Heaven opened and shut by the preaching of the Holy Gospel.

In this way: that according to the command of Christ, it is proclaimed and openly witnessed to believers, one and all, that as often as they accept with true faith the promise of the Gospel, all their sins are really forgiven them of God for the sake of Christ’s merits; and on the contrary, to all unbelievers and hypocrites, that the wrath of God and eternal condemnation abide on them so long as they are not converted. According to this testimony of the Gospel, God will judge men both in this life and in that which is to come (Heidelberg Catechism).

As inefficient as it may seem to us, God the Spirit has left to the office of preacher the ministry of announcing the good news and it through that act, announcing the incarnation, obedience, righteousness, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Christ that he has promised to bring all of his elect to new life, to faith, and through faith alone to justification and salvation.

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (John 20:21–23; ESV).

The pronoun “them” refers to the disciples mentioned in v. 20. The resurrected Christ showed his hands to the disciples. He commissioned the disciples. To them he gave the authority to “forgive sins” and to withhold the same. In Romans 10 the Apostle Paul says that it is only through the hearing of the gospel that God’s people are brought to faith and saved and that hearing come through preaching and preaching comes from being sent:

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ (Rom 10:14–17; ESV).

Remarkably, there is little clear evidence for what is often called “every-member ministry” or even lay evangelism in the New Testament. I think a case can be made from John 9 for lay witness but there is abundant biblical evidence that the officers whom God has called are commissioned to announce the good news everywhere:

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