Witnessing means “to testify” or “give evidence” concerning something or someone. When you witness, you testify about Jesus Christ. Evangelism witnesses verbally about Jesus; service and example witness actively about Jesus. It looks like this:

Living witness is how you live, while verbal witness is what you say. As you can see, evangelism is a sub-category of witnessing.

Changing someone’s flat tire, helping someone move, bringing a hot meal to a homeless man, praying with an unbeliever who’s in pain, being honest about hours you’ve worked and working hard—these are a samples of being a living witness. You can also be a living witness by what you do not do, such as refraining from laughing at racist jokes or refusing to get wasted on alcohol at company parties.

While a living witness relates to what you do, a verbal witness relates to what you say. In the New Testament Greek, the word evangelism literally means “proclaiming the good news.” Serving is a living witness of Christ, evangelism a verbal witness of Christ. Both are necessary, both commanded in Scripture.

When someone’s witness is all verbal and no living, the lost see a hypocrite and are turned off. Years ago, I worked with self-claiming Christian at a machine shop. He was a gospel-preaching machine. But that’s all. From the same mouth spewed forth toilet humor, swear words, and verbal tirades on his coworkers. Frankly, he gave Christ a bad name. He was great at dumping the gospel, but couldn’t care less less about people. It seems the gospel he preached never really entered his heart and changed his life. I remember wishing he’d never tell people he believed in Jesus.

On the other hand, when someone’s witness is all living and never verbal, he takes Christ’s place and gets the glory for himself. People say, “Boy, he’s a nice guy,” or “She’s such a loving person,” but they never hear about Who it is that changed him, the One who deserves all the credit. A living testimony minus the gospel never saved a soul.

Being a living witness is easier than being a verbal witness. People will like you and respect you. But if they don’t hear about Jesus, they still end up in hell.

We must strive to do both. Our verbal testimony is what saves and our living testimony is what qualifies our verbal testimony.

If you are only a verbal testimony to your unsaved friends and neighbors, people will feel like all you care about is making them into a convert. They’ll feel like a project and that’s cold. You don’t want to be a gospel dump.

On the other hand, if you are only a living testimony to people, they might love you, but they’ll never love the Savior if they don’t hear about Him. A godly life with no verbal telling of the gospel is no better than humanitarianism.

But what about community evangelism, where you approach random people and talk to them about God? Isn’t this just verbal testimony? Not as described above. This is unique. You are asking permission to talk about God and that’s gentle and respectful. You don’t have time to become a living witness of the gospel and they don’t expect you to.

In Christ you have the perfect balance. “Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness” (Matt 9:35). He taught and proclaimed (that’s verbal), and He healed (that’s living). Jesus both lived and preached the gospel. It is every believer’s privilege and duty to do likewise.