one who announces the good news: a person whose work is telling others the saving message about Jesus, above all where it has not been heard yet
This word is built straight off the verb that means "to announce good news" (εὐαγγελίζομαι), the way "baptizer" is built off "baptize". So it names a person by what he does: he is the one who tells the good news (εὐαγγέλιον). A Greek speaker heard the message itself inside the title, which is exactly what the English word "evangelist" hides.
The New Testament uses the word only three times and never stops to define it. What it gives instead is a person: Philip, the only man actually called an evangelist, and the earlier account of his work fills in the picture. He crosses into Samaria, explains the message to an Ethiopian official on a desert road, and goes on announcing it town by town up the coast. That is the closest thing to a job description the word has, going to people who have not heard and telling them.
Whether the word names a settled position in the church or simply a job that certain people do is a real question, and the three verses pull gently in different directions:
- Ephesians 4:11 sets evangelists in a list, between the apostles and prophets who laid foundations and the shepherds and teachers who care for a settled congregation.
- Paul tells Timothy to do the work of an evangelist without ever calling him one, which puts the weight on the task rather than on a title.
- Philip carries the word as a description of what he had been doing, not as a rank conferred on him.
Most scholars today read all three as naming an activity that Christ equips people for rather than an office someone is installed in, though the older picture of a recognized band of travelling missionaries has never been given up. Either way the word sits close to the apostles without being one of them: every apostle announced the good news, but announcing the good news did not make a person an apostle, since that required being called directly by the risen Christ.
Disputed
Whether the word names a distinct church office, a recognized order of gospel workers under the apostles, or simply the function of proclaiming the good news.
- majorityA functional description: the word names the activity of gospel proclamation and the gifting for it, not an institutional office. Ephesians 4:11 lists gifts and activities rather than positions, and 2 Timothy 4:5 charges Timothy with the task without conferring a title on him.; G. Friedrich, "εὐαγγελιστής," TDNT 2:736-737; H. W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Baker Academic, 2002); A. T. Lincoln, Ephesians (WBC 42; Word, 1990); F. Thielman, Ephesians (BECNT; Baker Academic, 2010); W. D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles (WBC 46; Nelson, 2000)
- minorityA distinct, recognized order of gospel workers subordinate to the apostles and continuing their missionary work: the structured list of Ephesians 4:11, together with patristic testimony to men who went abroad performing the work of evangelists, points to an early institutional understanding.; D. Guthrie, The Pastoral Epistles (TNTC, rev. ed.; IVP, 1990); Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.37
- minorityA mediating position: a genuine, recognized ministry of gospel proclamation carried by a gifted subset of believers rather than by every Christian, yet without the fixed, ordained character of later church office.; J. P. Dickson, Mission-Commitment in Ancient Judaism and in the Pauline Communities (WUNT 2/159; Mohr Siebeck, 2003); H. von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries (Stanford University Press, 1969); J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit (SCM, 1975)