Our Evangelists-in-Training

Collette is a middle name I chose myself. My actual name is Woyinkarara, which means the woman who worships the almighty God, not just God but ALMIGHTY GOD. And my twin brother, who is now a bishop, is called Woyinkarowei, which means the man who worships God almighty.

I never used to think of myself as an evangelist. I always thought of an evangelist as someone like Billy Graham – someone who is always winning souls. But what seemed to come naturally to me was pastoral care for people. Even at church, there was someone who seemed much more of an evangelist than me. We used to say that she was the one who went fishing (Matt 4:19), then I was the one who cleaned them up and looked after them. That did not seem like evangelism to me.

It wasn’t until I started exploring Church Army in 2014 that the penny dropped, and I got my “eureka moment”. I remember it very clearly: I heard about Church Army after I felt God calling me back to my Anglican roots. I went to the Anglican church close to my house. As soon as I got there, the vicar said to me, “Collette, I believe God sent you to us. We need you. I think you should consider evangelism.” And I thought, “Nope, I’m not an evangelist.” But I explored the idea, and God led me to train with Church
Army.

I came to realise that an evangelist is not just an extroverted type of person who always gets a response to telling the gospel. I now know evangelism is much more than that; it is about helping everyone everywhere to encounter God’s love and be empowered to transform their communities through faith – just like our Church Army vision says. You don’t have to be a Billy Graham type of person to be an evangelist; there are many more ways to be evangelistic. When I realised this, I thought, “Wow, all these community things that I have been doing, and all of the pastoral care that I give, is evangelism!” That was a big lesson for me. I’m currently involved in an outreach programme through a residential home. I don’t go there to preach the gospel, but I am going there to show God’s love in action in the things that I do for the people there.

I used to worry that if I spoke to someone about faith, I would do it wrong, especially if they didn’t come to faith after talking to me. I used to ask God, “What am I doing wrong?” But I now realise that evangelism can look different for different people. There are many more evangelists out there than we think.”