An insight on the role of the Trinity in evangelism, from John Teter’s book Get the Word Out. Teter devotes the final three chapters to showing that “God is not distant in any dimension of our evangelism experience. He goes before us, he is behind us and he is even inside of us. We are offered endless intimacy and resources as we get the Word out –with God, never apart from him. We are not alone.” This is a great encouragement in a general way, but Teter unpacks it using categories from the gospel of John, arranged in trinitarian form: The Father sends witnesses, the Spirit fills them, and the Son follows the witnesses.

The Father sends, that’s abundantly clear from John’s gospel. And the Spirit fills, or as Teter says (quoting Darrell Johnson), “the Spirit of God comes into us to fill us with his passion to see the Father and the Son glorified.”

But the Son follows? You might expect to hear that we follow the Son, and look for a biblical theology of discipleship here. But Teter is not just plugging in whatever’s available, he’s actually trying to put the gospel of John’s theology of witness into operation. And as he listens to the gospel of John, Teter finds an intriguing pattern. Here’s what he finds in the gospel of John; see if you think it’s really there or if he’s hallucinating.
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