Patience in Evangelism

Sowing the Seed

The Christian call to evangelism, often referred to as the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20), is fundamentally tied to the agricultural metaphor of "sowing the seed"—a process that inherently requires faith, consistency, and, most importantly, patience.

1. The Seed, the Soil, and the Sower

The primary text that defines the patience required in evangelism is the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:1-23, Mark 4:1-20).

• The Seed is the Word: Jesus clarifies that the seed represents the Word of God, or the message of the Kingdom. The sower's job is not to manufacture the seed, but simply to disperse it faithfully.

• The Soils are the Hearts: The parable emphasizes four different types of soil (the path, rocky ground, thorny ground, and good soil), representing four different conditions of the human heart and how they receive the Word.

• The Need for Patience: The sower in the parable casts seed indiscriminately. The outcome is not immediate, nor is it uniform. The first three soils fail to produce lasting fruit for reasons beyond the sower’s control (predation, shallow roots, worldly worries). This teaches the evangelist that patience is essential because:

  • Results are varied: A good seed is no guarantee of immediate fruit. We must accept resistance, distraction, and even rejection.

  • Growth is temporal: The seed that springs up quickly on rocky ground but withers (Mark 4:17) shows that immediate, emotional responses are not the goal; deep-rooted, lasting transformation is.

The patience of the sower is demonstrated in the sheer act of continuing to sow, knowing that only the good soil will yield a lasting harvest (some thirty, some sixty, and some a hundredfold).

2. Sowing, Watering, and God's Increase

Patience in evangelism is rooted in understanding the division of labor between the human messenger and the divine Author of salvation. The Apostle Paul speaks directly to this in his first letter to the Corinthians:

"I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase... So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth." (1 Corinthians 3:6-7, emphasis added)

This passage offers two key principles for cultivating patience:

1. Our Role is Process, Not Outcome: The evangelist is responsible for the acts of "planting" (introducing the Gospel) and "watering" (discipleship, encouraging, follow-up). We are responsible for faithfulness, not success as measured by conversion statistics.

2. Only God Changes the Heart: The spiritual "increase" or growth—the actual conversion and sanctification—is solely the work of God. This divine sovereignty takes the pressure off the sower. We are not responsible for forcing the seed to germinate or the soil to become fertile. True patience, therefore, is a quiet act of trusting God’s timing over our own hurried desire for results.

   
   

3. Enduring in Hope

The biblical model of patience (Greek: makrothymia, or "long-suffering") is not passive resignation, but active endurance rooted in hope.

• Waiting for the Harvest: James encourages believers to model the patience of the farmer: "Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains" (James 5:7). The farmer prepares, plants, and tends, but knows the harvest is dependent on the weather (divine providence) and time.

• A Long-Suffering God: Our patience with others mirrors God's own patience with humanity. Peter reminds us that the Lord is "not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).

  
  

By adopting the mindset of a patient sower, the evangelist remains faithful in delivering the message, even when facing silence, resistance, or long delays, because they know the power is in the seed, and the timing is in the hand of God.