Not that such evidence is wholly lacking: Paul holds open the possibil-
ity that non-Christian husbands or wives will be won by the deportment
of their believing spouses (1 Cor. 7:16); he takes for granted the presence
of outsiders at church gatherings, and is concerned that the Corinthians con-
duct their meetings in such a way that outsiders will turn to God (1 Cor.
14:23–25); he is aware that his imprisonment has encouraged “most of
the brothers...to speak the word with boldness,” resulting in the further
spread of the gospel (Phil. 1:12–14). But such secondary evangelism is
nowhere thematized. Evangelism does not appear, for example, in the lists
of gifts (1 Cor. 12:4–11; Rom. 12:6–7); nor is it addressed in the pareneti-
cal sections of the letters. (The list in Ephesians 4:11–12 contains “evangel-
ists,” of course. But even if this can be taken as a reflection of Paul’s
thinking, it needs to be observed that a distinction is made here between
the “saints,” i.e., Christians in general, and those endowed with special
gifts of church planting and leadership, including evangelists.) When Paul
speaks of the work of local leaders, it is generally in terms of their ministry
to the saints, that is, work directed inward rather than outward. For exam-
ple, while Stephanus’s household might represent the “first fruits of
Achaia,” since then “they have devoted themselves to the service of the
saints,” not to the task of bringing in the full harvest (1 Cor. 16:15; also Gal.
6:6; 1 Thess. 5:12). The closest we get to evangelism is the statement that
Euodia and Syntyche “have struggled beside me in the gospel” (Phil. 4:3);
but, even here, the reference is backward looking and devoid of any sug-
gestion of independent evangelistic activity on the part of these two women.
In short, there is nothing to suggest a strategy in which local congregations
were mobilized to spread the gospel throughout the rest of the city and
the surrounding territory.
Not that Paul was silent on the topic of evangelism, of course. But he
tends to describe it as an apostolic activity: the work of himself, his trav-
elling co-workers and other apostles, as distinguished from the members
of a congregation in general. The Corinthian congregation is the plant or
the building, Paul and Apollos the gardeners or the builders (1 Cor. 3:5–15);
those who proclaim the gospel have a right to be supported by those who
have received the gospel (1 Cor. 9:3–14); death is at work in the apostles so
that life may be at work in their converts (2 Cor. 4:12; cf. the whole of
2:14–6:12), and so on.
This distinction between the evangelists and the evangelized might
suggest an alternative, however: i.e., a strategy wherein Paul expected the
gospel to spread outward from his churches through the agency not of the
local congregations themselves but of other workers like Apollos, who came
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