The way from God to a human heart is through a human heart.
Samuel Gordon
The world is far more ready to receive the Gospel than Christians are to hand it out.
George W. Peters
“I know I’m supposed to witness, but I tried it once, and I felt like a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman, trying to sell something nobody really wanted. After that I told myself, Never again.” Most pastors have heard something like that over and over.
Getting people to do personal evangelism is one of the toughest challenges we face. Many parishioners remain plagued by fear, guilt, and negative attitudes in this area, and consequently they don’t reach out to others. How can we get around these walls of inactivity to make effective witnesses out of ordinary Christian lay people?
Becky Pippert, an evangelism specialist with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, has found keys to making personal witness both enjoyable and fruitful. From years of experience in the field, she shows how one-on-one evangelism can be changed from an “ought to” to a “want to.”
I‘ve discovered that most church folk, whatever their denomination, have a similar reaction to evangelism: “That’s just not my cup of tea, thank you.” You can almost hear the iron gates clanging shut in their minds.
When I ask people why they don’t evangelize, I’ve heard:
“I’ve never been fond of imposing something on someone.”
Or, as one Reed College student so succinctly put it, “Evangelism is how many people I’ve offended this week.”
Or one of my favorites, “You know, I would evangelize if I didn’t love people so much.”
Most Christians are so afraid of being labeled part of the lunatic fringe that they say nothing about their faith, save in the friendly confines of the church. Any effective evangelism training begins by realizing people are plagued by guilt, fear, and negative attitudes, which must be identified and exorcised before we can get anywhere.
Where do these negative attitudes come from? No Christian group has as its conscious aim “Let’s totally violate their personhood and mow them over for Jesus.” Yet that’s the stereotype: buttonholing and forcing tracts on people.
I’ve been amazed how consistent church people are in their reasons for not evangelizing. And the reasons are nearly always what evangelism should never be in the first place.
Most Christians intuitively know that evangelism belongs not in the sales department but in the context of loving relationships. Common sense tells us we must both proclaim the Word and live it out among the people our lives naturally intersect. Whenever evangelism majors in technique and strategy and minors in love and respect for individuals, we’ve gotten into trouble.
But some of us have swung too far the other way, majoring in relationships and minoring in a clear proclamation of the gospel and the call to commitment. The result is mere friendship and no evangelism.
How do we avoid the extremes and encourage a biblical evangelism that is sensitive and loving, respectful of the individual? I’d like to suggest three elements that need to be part of our training.
The first two have been suggested by Gabriel Fackre, who says we must get the story straight and get the story out. I’d like to add that we must take the story in, meaning that our training must deepen our spiritual resources as well as build content and communication skills.
Getting the Story Straight
We in the West always have been fairly effective in stating gospel truth through theological propositions or four-point outlines. We are now beginning to discover what our brothers and sisters in the East have known all along — truth is also communicated through storytelling.
I recently read how Lewis Alemen breaks down the verbal message into three parts: (1) telling God’s story — the drama of his deeds, particularly the life, death, and resurrection of Christ; (2) telling my story — which isn’t the gospel message but illustrates its power; and (3) telling their story — how God’s story relates to the person to whom we are witnessing.
Genuine witnessing integrates all three stories. I’ve found, however, that most people need special help in learning how to tell the Lord’s story. We usually can explain the gospel through outlines and diagrams. But can we talk about Jesus in a way that makes him come alive? Can we tell his story and parables in a way that others can see their relevance for daily life?
One of my frequent activities as an Inter-Varsity staff member was giving evangelistic “dorm talks” in which I would speak to skeptical students about Christianity (usually dealing with apologetics) and then would open it up for questions. The atmosphere frequently was stimulating and charged. Often we would have a lively debate into the wee hours.
Then one day I heard a colleague and popular speaker, Gene Thomas, give a “dorm talk” at a college in Washington state. To my surprise, he simply described what Jesus was like as a person and the things Jesus valued — people, in particular. He spoke of the quality of relationships Jesus desired and indeed enabled us to have. As he spoke, my first thought was, But they need to know it’s true and logical. My second thought: If you’re going to talk about Jesus, shouldn’t you discuss the cross?
When it came time for questions, the students spoke on a very personal level: how competitive and insecure they felt, how much they abhorred phoniness and elitism. They voiced their surprise that Jesus was concerned with such things. There also were valid questions about the truth of Jesus’ claims, but the atmosphere was one of beauty and grace.
As we filed out, three seniors went to Gene and said, “In all our years here, being on various committees and going to meetings, we’ve never experienced a meeting like this, where people were so open and there was so much love and acceptance.”
Gene casually said, “Oh, well, that’s because Jesus is here. We feel these qualities because that’s exactly what Jesus is like.”
They looked at Gene with wide-eyed astonishment, and I realized then that more had been accomplished evangelistically than in any of my dorm talks. They hadn’t been converted, they still didn’t understand the whole gospel, they still had lots of unanswered questions, but they had been tremendously attracted to Jesus. It was a vital beginning. Later when we asked if anyone would like to study the person of Jesus in the Gospels, an unusual number signed up. That experience confirmed what I had been growing to suspect: I needed to rediscover Jesus and be able to communicate him in fresh and descriptive ways to make my evangelism more effective.
A few months later, I arrived at Harvard during a one-month speaking tour. Instead of the rather cerebral talk I had planned, I decided to follow Gene’s example and speak about Jesus. I retold one of Jesus’ own stories, in this case the parable of the Prodigal.
The body language of the group was fascinating. I walked into a room jammed with bright, skeptical students, some looking hostile, some looking as if it were great sport. Many were slunk back in their chairs, looking amused and waiting for a chance to attack. As I began telling the parable, I noticed the change. They couldn’t help getting involved in the story. Slouches turned to straight backs, and finally to bodies leaning forward in their chairs. Then I drew theological principles and opened it for questions. While the questions weren’t especially different from those asked in other dorm discussions, the students’ attitude had changed dramatically — from hostility and arrogance to genuine interest, curiosity, and involvement.
What this taught me, first, was the power of a good story. Everybody loves a story, partly because it utilizes both sides of the brain, sparking our creative, imaginative side as well as the conceptual, rational part of us. And the Gospels are full of wonderful stories, packed with profound theological truth about God and ourselves. To a nonbeliever who does not have a theological framework, an isolated Bible verse may not make sense. But if we tell a story out of life — as Jesus’ stories were — and since life is already a shared framework, the meaning of the story may take root.
Again, I’m not suggesting we abandon our gospel outlines or theological propositions or apologetics. I’m merely saying let’s add to our evangelistic repertoire the ability to talk about Jesus in natural and fresh ways and to tell his stories spontaneously and freely.
Getting the Story Out
Jesus always seemed to be doing two things: asking questions and telling stories. Christians always seem to be doing two other things: giving answers and “preaching.”
All four are necessary — at the right time and in the right place. But we tend to forget that the God of the Bible was an extraordinary communicator; we ignore Jesus’ example of how to start a conversation, and we jump in prematurely with answers and sermonettes before the listener’s curiosity is aroused.
I frequently ask people at a conference to tell me where they struggle in witnessing. Their answers fall into three categories: 2 percent say they struggle with intellectual questions they can’t answer; 1 percent say they struggle with mechanics (How do I lead a person to Christ?); and 97 percent say they need help with their communication skills (How do I move from secular conversation to spiritual in a natural way? How do I disagree or not participate in an activity without seeming “holier than thou”? How can I be myself when I feel the world puts me in a Christian box?).
It seems ironic that so much current evangelism training focuses so heavily on content skills when people seem to be saying they need more help with communication skills. Again, it’s not an issue of either/or, but both/and. We certainly need to know what to say, but we also need to know how to say it.
The communication process is so complex and multifaceted that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. The key to all good communication is the ability to love as Christ loved. Jesus constantly taught that if we’re to be his followers, our lives must bear the stamp of profound love — to God and to our neighbor. Our lives must be dominated by his love, not merely religious activity. How we treat people will be the clearest signal to them of what God is like. Nobody wants to be someone’s evangelistic project. People want to be loved and taken seriously.
I’ve seen Christians who’ve broken nearly every rule of communication and yet have been effective evangelists because they genuinely loved the person they were talking to. Ultimately, love is everything.
After establishing Christ’s love as the foundation for communication, we can analyze our own communication style, finding our strengths and weaknesses: Are we shy and timid? Is it difficult for us to start a conversation, much less get it around to God? Do we miss detecting people’s needs? Do we listen well?
There is surprisingly little in the Christian market in this area. Certainly, James Engel’s Contemporary Christian Communications: Its Theory and Practice and Em Griffin’s The Mind Changers are good resources. The secular research on information and communication theory is also beneficial.
I’ve found it immensely helpful to devise relational exercises for the specific communication skills I’m trying to teach: listening skills, affirming skills, dealing with hostility, disagreeing without being disagreeable, and so on.
For instance, information theorists tell us that to communicate effectively, we must recognize our own stereotypes of the person to whom we’re speaking. So I developed this exercise: I say, “Turn to the person next to you. Assume this is a Christian friend. I want one of you to say, ‘Hi. How was your weekend?’ Then the other person needs to reply where he or she has been this weekend and one thing he or she learned from the conference.”
After a few minutes, I then say, “Now reverse the roles. This time the other person says, ‘How was your weekend?’ and you answer. But this time you know the person asking the question is not a Christian.”
The contrast in reactions from step one and step two couldn’t be more stark. In step one, everyone chatters, and the atmosphere is relaxed. After step two, there is initial silence, then groans, nervous laughter, and uneasiness. Afterward I ask them to tell me how they felt in going from one to the next. The answer is always the same: “I felt fine and relaxed in the first but very uncomfortable in the second. I just knew they wouldn’t be interested. I knew they would think I was a jerk. I felt very defensive and uneasy.”
Then we examine why, having been told nothing about the person except that he or she wasn’t a believer, they assumed the worst. Was that fair? Why did they do it? How did their assumptions affect their ability to communicate? If that’s their basic attitude toward every nonbeliever they meet, it’s no wonder they feel uncomfortable witnessing.
Then we work on developing different mental attitudes to stop judging others unfairly before we really know them. The helpfulness of these exercises is that it involves people in the learning process. Their minds may have grasped the concept, but it simply takes practice to get our behavior in accord with our minds.
Taking the Story In
Finally, we must be increasingly transformed by the message itself. We don’t simply give the gospel — we are the gospel.
When Wesley was asked, “Why do people seem to be so drawn to you, almost like a magnet?” he answered, “Well, you see, when you set yourself on fire, people just love to come and see you burn.”
That is evangelism: not a program but a fire within.
People will be drawn to the warmth of God’s fire within us even though they may not at first be able to name its source. We must continually stoke and feed the fire as we are transformed by the presence of Christ within us through prayer, Bible reading, deeper sensitivities to the Holy Spirit, and learning to walk in the Spirit and not the flesh. All are a part of the resources that make our witnessing powerful and penetrating.
Copyright ©1988 Christianity Today
