The evangelist is one who preaches the gospel to those outside the church, an office named in the New Testament and revived with particular force in the modern period.
Preaching to the outsider
The evangelist is listed in the letter to the Ephesians alongside apostles, prophets, pastors and teachers as one of the gifts given to the church, and the distinguishing mark of the office is direction outward: where the pastor tends an existing congregation, the evangelist carries the message to those who do not yet believe. The same word names the four traditional authors of the Gospels, the writers of the good news, so the term holds together the writing of the gospel and the proclaiming of it.
An office revived
Though the office is ancient, it took on a prominent and distinctive form in the modern era, especially within Protestantism, where the travelling evangelist, the revival preacher and, later, the broadcast preacher became familiar figures, some of them building large followings and organisations around the work of mass evangelism. Entry to the work is less by formal ordination than by recognised gift and, often, by the sponsorship of a church or a mission body, and its exercise ranges from the local to the international. The evangelist thus stands at the outward edge of the church ministry, and the modern flourishing of the office, with its crusades and its media, is one of the marks of Protestant Christianity in particular.