Most protestant ecclesiologists consider the Church to possess two active offices: elder and deacon (Allison; Hammett). The elder, synonymous with pastor and overseer, is a position of leadership with ecclesiastical authority. The deacon is a servant and facilitator of ministry. However, the evangelist is often missing from the discussion of Church polity. If God calls evangelists and gifts them to the Church just as He does pastors, would it not be imperative for Church health that the evangelist finds his home in the local Church? Today, most ministers who identify as evangelists create or join parachurch organizations to fulfill their work and earn a living. However, if the evangelist is a church office, then the disconnect between the church and the evangelist is not biblical and, therefore, not healthy.
Like the apostles and prophets, some argue that the office of evangelists has ceased, seeing the office holder as extraordinarily gifted (Calvin; Ames). Others argue that the evangelist is a missionary (Clowney). Few ecclesiologists, however, consider the evangelist as a church office. Consider that the two major Baptist systematic theologies, Erickson and Grudem, do not list “Evangelist” within their subject index. Following the lead of Everett Ferguson and B. H. Carroll, this paper will argue that the evangelist is an office of the Church performing the itinerate work of preaching, teaching, church revitalization, training and correcting of leaders, and evangelism. The thesis will be defended in four sections: 1) through an exegetical look at the three occurrences of the noun εὐαγγελιστής in the NT, 2) by demonstrating the work of the Evangelist in the ministry of Paul and Timothy, 3) by comparing Church offices to Jesus’s threefold ministry of preaching, teaching, and healing, and 4) by considering the historical reality of modalities and sodalities.