We are I think at a mid point in the journey and change in the role of the evangelist in the Church in the United Kingdom. Perhaps no other ministry has had to change and develop as rapidly over the last generation and the next generation.

The dynamic of change has been both outward and inward. Our society has shifted and altered very rapidly over the last century and particularly since the 1960's in its attitude to Christian faith and to religion generally. The churches have become more and more alive to the fact that we live now increasingly in a post Christian context and a context of mission. We have discovered partly through trial and error and partly through practice and reflection what is effective in this situation and what is not. And our role and understanding of the ministry of the evangelist has changed and adapted accordingly.

As it seems to me at the moment there have been two great Acts, two parts to this transition.

Part 1 began in the early 1980's and was largely completed and owned by the churches towards the end of the century. The change spanned about 20 years. It turned around the discovery that, as our society has changed, so it was no longer enough for the ministry of the evangelist to be only about the public proclamation of a summary of the gospel in the anticipation that men and women would respond with a saving faith and become, instantly, members of the church.

That pattern of evangelism was the norm, I would argue until the very early 1980s. It shaped the pattern of larger evangelistic initiatives and smaller parish missions. In its day it was hugely effective. It remains a helpful part of the ministry of evangelism today.

But it depends for its effectiveness on those who hear that evangelistic sermon already knowing the principle building blocks and components of the Christian faith. In the 1950s and the 1960s, the majority of people in any congregation or stadium would have learned that faith and the gospel story as children. As they listen to the evangelist preach the gospel message, the fire has already been laid. The preacher by God's grace brings the spark of the Spirit and that fire catches. The pieces of the jigsaw are already in place but they make no sense. During the worship service and the preaching the heart is touched, those jigsaw pieces are picked up, rearranged and set down in a new pattern.

What happens though if fewer and fewer people learned less and less of the Christian faith as children?

One sermon is unlikely to be enough to draw people to mature commitment. In the early 1980s, evangelists began to lay more and more emphasis on what was called at first follow up or nurture of new converts. It became apparent that more sustained teaching was needed. Nor was there a neat pattern of people responding to faith and then deepening that faith through teaching. Often they began to find faith through these small follow up groups. So did people who had been members of churches for many years. Eventually, the more forward looking churches simply began to offer these small group teaching and learning experiences on their own -   you didn't actually need the mission and the evangelistic speaker.

People needed to learn the faith as adults almost from the very beginning. That required much more than a one off encounter but an extended time for community, teaching, learning, prayer and relationships. In the late 1980's the course which would become Alpha began to take shape following these principles. In 1988, as a Vicar in Halifax, I began to experiment with a course called Christians for Life which the parish offered continuously for the next eight years in a very gentle, unspectacular way. Hundreds of people took part. Scores and scores of people came to faith. The course became in 1996 the nurture part of Emmaus the Way of Faith.

The ministry of the evangelist moved away from the one off encounter to a relationship and a community formed around fellowship and meals and time away and ongoing pastoral care as the first stage towards membership of the existing church and community. John Finney's key research, Finding Faith Today, identified the importance of this process. Scores and then hundreds of churches began offering Alpha and Emmaus courses and developing their own material. By the end of the decade, the process model had become the way in which the churches were doing evangelism - not occasionally but all the time. There is still a need for occasional guest services. But where this works best it is simply part of the ongoing life of the Christian community in every place. John Finney estimates that one million people took part in process evangelism groups in the 1990s. The vast majority found it a positive experience. Two in five churches offer this kind of group regularly. Five out of five ought to offer it. There is nearly always fruit.

So that is the first part of the change - the first stage of the journey. The evangelist moves from the pulpit at the guest service or the football stadium and comes into the church lounge, or the local pub or the vicarage and becomes someone you can laugh with, get to know, trust and learn from.