Witnessing: A Way of Life or a Way with Words?: To Share God’s Message I Must Be God’s Person

Igrew up in a conservative church. From my youth I have been taught the importance of witnessing for Christ. I’m not sure my church knew how to do it, but it did teach that “the supreme task of the church is the evangelization of the world.”

I believed it then. I believe it now.

I am certain that most Christians believe this too, and take Christ’s last command seriously. You are to “go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation,” he told his followers (Mark 16:15).

But how many of us, if we will be truly honest, actually enjoy witnessing for Christ? How many find it easy? How many have tried but were always scared? How many have quit witnessing because they became too discouraged?

And how many still feel they ought to be witnessing more for Christ but feel guilty because they’re not?

If you feel this way, you are not alone. Time and again I have asked congregations how many among them really love to witness. Very few respond in the affirmative. But when I ask how many, like me, are afraid to witness, almost everyone quietly slips up his or her hand.

One can almost feel a great relief among people when they discover they are not alone in their struggle—and that even many Christian workers and ministers, like me, feel the same way.

Sad to say, much legalism and false guilt have been used to try to motivate people to witness. Legalism and guilt are poor motivators, with damaging side effects. Could this be why so many of us “hate” or are afraid to witness? Or why so many of our witnessing programs seem to break down? As Paul said, man-made guilt produces death, and legalism kills the soul (2 Cor. 7:10; 3:6).

To communicate the Christian message effectively is not to follow a set of rules or be motivated by guilt. It is primarily a way of life, and it is at this point that all effective witnessing for Christ needs to commence.

Australian And Christian

While I have spent a number of years in North America, I am an Australian by birth and raising. By virtue of the fact that I am an Australian, I am automatically a witness for my country. I may not choose to be and I may not want to be. I just am. I may be the only Australian many Americans meet. If they find me distant and unfriendly, they won’t feel warm toward me. If I happen to be an ocker Australian (loud-mouthed, boorish, self-opinionated, arrogant), they will undoubtedly dislike me. Unfortunately, if I am the only Australian they have ever met, they will tend to project their negative feelings onto all other Australians. And they probably won’t ever want to go to Australia.

The opposite is also true. If they find me to be warm and friendly, they will feel drawn to me and like me quite well, and they will tend to project their positive feelings toward me onto all other Australians and like them too. I don’t have to say one word “of witness” about Australia. They will automatically judge all other Australians on the basis of how they feel toward me.

The same principle operates in my Christian witness. By virtue of the fact that I am a Christian, a member of God’s family, and a citizen of heaven, I am automatically a witness for Jesus Christ and a representative of his kingdom. I may or may not be a good one, but I am one nevertheless, simply because I am a Christian.

Jesus did not say to his disciples, “After the Holy Spirit is given to you, you will go out and do witnessing.” He said, “After you receive the Holy Spirit, you will be witnesses unto me” (Acts 1:8).

What you do is important. There is no question about that. But what you are is considerably more important and is by far the most influential. It is like the old adage that says, “What you are speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say.”

So the question is not how to do witnessing or how to become a witness. If we are Christians, we are already witnesses. The question is, How can we become better witnesses and more effective communicators of Christ’s message?

It has been said that Christianity is not merely following a creed but following a Person, experiencing his divine love and forgiveness and communicating that to other people.

To communicate Christ’s message of divine love and forgiveness effectively, we need therefore to be God’s person before we do God’s work, and thereby establish our credibility to verify our message.

Being God’S Person

In our Western culture we are so programmed to perform that it is difficult to change gears from doing to being. It begins well before we start school. In our homes, approval is given more on the basis of what we do than on who we are. Then, throughout all our years of education, in sports, in our work and social life, much emphasis is placed on what we do rather than on who we are. Oftentimes it takes a personal tragedy, serious suffering, for us to change our values.

Charles Colson, ex-hatchet man for President Nixon and founder of Prison Fellowship, has said that he is not proud of the fact that he has been a prisoner. But he agrees with Alexander Solzhenitsyn who, after ten years in a Soviet prison, wrote, “Bless you prison, bless you for having been in my life.”

Said Colson, “Solzhenitsyn wrote from a prison cell that it was there, lying on that rotting prison straw, that for the first time in his life he understood that the purpose of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturing of the human soul.”

That is true. God is much more concerned with our growth and maturity than he is with our doing, or even our happiness. It is God’s will to make us mature. Any goodness or positive actions will then be an expression or the fruit of our maturity. That is, we are not mature because we do good deeds, but we do good deeds because we are mature. What we do is important, but it is only a part of God’s total will for us. It is who we become that is most important to God. And it is who we are that gives our witness for Christ credibility—or lack of credibility.

Verifying Our Message

“The impact of a message often depends on who says it.” This conviction has been a long-accepted belief. Aristotle, 2,500 years ago, believed the same thing. “We believe good men more readily than others,” he said. “It is not true, as some writers assume in their treatises on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the speaker contributes nothing to the power of persuasion: on the contrary, his character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses.”

Of course, a speaker’s credibility is not entirely dependent on who he is but also on who perceives him. No matter how good a person is, not everybody will listen to or accept his message. Adlai Stevenson had a strong reputation that established credibility for him in almost any situation—but not with the John Birch Society.

But even though credibility is partly in the eyes of the beholder, we cannot control that factor. We can only control ourselves. If people like us, they are more likely to give us a hearing. If they don’t, we barely stand a chance of gaining a hearing.

Avoiding Pitfalls

If we have not already established credibility in the eyes of our audience, we could affect them in adverse ways. Some of these are described as: the boomerang effect, the regression effect, the sleeper effect, and the focusing effect.

• The boomerang effect. If a person does not like me, or feels that I am not being honest or fair to his point of view, my words may backfire. He may not only be opposed to what I am saying, but move further away from my position, deeper into his own territory of beliefs.

• The regression effect. Simply put, this means that if I push a person too hard too fast, he may come along with me only because of the excitement or emotion of the moment. However, after he has had time to think things through, he may not be so excited about what I said and then regress to his former position. He may not only regress, but may become hardened against our cause in the process.

• The sleeper effect. This can be seen in what happens if I attract people too much to me personally rather than to my cause; that is, if I try to get people to like me too much, I run the risk of them not taking much notice of my message or quickly forgetting it if they do hear it. A classic example of this was seen in one-minute television spots produced by the Christian Television Association in Australia. The spots featured Evie Tornquist Karlsson singing parts from her popular songs. Research showed that there was an incredibly high recall of the spots: 90 percent of the people watching televison at the time Evie was on remembered them. The problem was that it was Evie the people loved and remembered. They didn’t have any idea 24 hours later what her messages were saying. That’s no offense to Evie. She was singing to a secular audience. I can recall at least two of the spots several years later.

• The focusing effect. In some photographs, the foreground is in sharp focus but the background is hazy and out of focus. If, in presenting the Christian message I only show one side of the picture, later on the listener is going to wonder about the other side. As he brings it into focus and looks at it through his own lenses, he may in the process get out of focus the picture I have presented. The best way to overcome this problem is to present a well-balanced view of the Christian faith, including the negative aspects as well as the positive. We should squarely face all of the other person’s arguments and doubts—even bring some up in advance. To paint too rosy a picture of the Christian life is to disillusion people further down the line.

The implications are clear in our presentation of the message of Christ. To verify our message we need credibility. Credibility comes from within. It is who we are much more than what we do or say. If people don’t like me, if they feel I am not entirely straight or honest, if they feel I am too pushy, if I don’t paint a whole picture, or if I try to draw too much attention to myself, in the long run I will do more to drive them from Christ than draw them to him.

Identifying With Your Audience

Over the years, I have found that the greatest way I can influence others is not through eloquent sermons or clever presentations of the Christian message but by identifying with my listener and allowing him or her to see me as I really am—that I am a fellow sinner with human weaknesses, and that I, too, am in the struggle to become the person God wants me to be. Knowledge alone does not change lives. Growth does. And people only grow as we are open and honest and grow together.

Simply put, to communicate God’s message effectively, I need to be God’s person and not merely talk about God’s message.

Tim Stafford is a free-lance writer living in Santa Rosa, California. He is a distinguished contributor to several magazines. His latest book is Do You Sometimes Feel Like a Nobody? (Zondervan, 1980).

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.