The roles and qualities of an evangelist - a non-religious subtext
Sunday, April 29th, 2007by Kazeem Olalekan MRPharmS MBCS
Introduction:
Evangelism is a Christian movement for emphasizing personal conversion and the authority of the Bible or, by extension, any other form of preaching or proselytizing [ 1 ]. An evangelist may therefore travel from place to place, spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. Evangelism, as a concept, has been used in non-religious subtexts especially in IT and Marketing. A notable example is Guy Kawasaki, credited as being one of the first to use evangelistic methods to promote the Apple Macintosh computer platform [ 2, 3 ]. In his book: ‘Selling the Dream’, Guy Kawasaki describes evangelism as the process of convincing people to believe in your product or idea as much as you do [ 4 ] . A significant majority of Technology companies on the US Fortune 100 Best Companies to work for in 2007 has someone employed as an evangelist either to promote a specific product line or to promote the company in general [ 5 ].
I will now attempt to describe the different roles and qualities of an evangelist in a general, non-religious context whilst exploring any religious, psychological and motivational underpinnings.
