Evangelism Coach

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I’ve been recently reading “One To One: How To Share Your Faith with your Friend” by Michael Green (unavailable from Amazon). 

This book focuses on personal evangelism skills, and in the opening chapters, Green reminds of various reasons to do personal evangelism (p. 8-11)

1.  God is the supreme evangelist.  He loves us and pursues us.  I wrote a post on this at “God, The Evangelist“

2.  Jesus displayed constant and profound care for those he called lost: lost in loneliness, separation from God, defeat, lack of purpose in life.

3.  The Holy Spirit was given to us to fulfill his plan to reach the lost.  It is the Holy Spirit who goes before us to prepare the way, and empower us to full his plan.

4.  We’ve been entrusted with the Gospel — therefore we are his ambassadors.

5.  People’s need.

6.  The greatest joy on earth — to see one come to faith in Christ.

A deathbed confession

This morning, my taxi driver shared with me that, he was at the bedside of a lady dying with cancer.  As a family friend, he was called in to be with the family. 

The lady was slipping in and out of consciousness, and clearly was in her final moments.

With great passion and urgency, he shared the gospel with her, in a gentle and non-obnoxious way, not knowing if she was receiving the information, or what God might be doing. 

It’s hard to know what is possible in a situation like this.  Could she comprehend, could she respond if she didn’t have the ability to speak any more?

He asked, “have you received Christ in your heart?  Can you tell us?” 

The lady opened her eyes, squeezed his hand and said 4x, yes, yes, yes, yes.  Then her final breath, and she passed into eternity.

It was a brief story my taxi driver told me.  But he did share with me the greatest joy on earth — seeing this woman come to Christ and hear her declaration of faith in Him, just before she died.  He’s excited to share his faith, and is propelled with great joy to continue to do so.

He routinely shares his faith with those on the streets, who have no home, and he notices people that God underlines for him.

Let me ask you this?

Who can you share your faith with today?

I’ll join the bandwagon of many of the blogs I read and reveal to you the Ten most popular posts based on pageviews during 2007.

1. Conversion Stories in the NT: Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch  (Part of the Conversion in the NT Series)
2. Evangelism Oozing from our Pores (on motivations)
3. Define Evangelism Series
4. Take the Risk, Offer to pray (most commented)
5. Hospitality Series
6. How to welcome Visitors during Christmas
7. I’d rather invite someone to a manure shoveling party.
8. 10 Reasons to Use a Local Coffeeshop
9. Beginning to share your faith.
10. Evangelism Bookshelf: Unbinding the Gospel

From looking at my counters, it seems the two most popular search terms to find Evangelism Coach was “motivation for evangelism” and “define evangelism.”  But this data may be skewered since I didn’t know how to start search term counts in until much later.  Search terms do offer wonderful clues to what people are looking for at this site and provide suggestions for articles to write.

Free Evangelism Coach Resources:

1. Evangelism Encounter Discussion Group — a coaching group on individual encounters
2. Article: Avoid First Time Visitor Nightmares — a downloadable article printed in Net Results, with study questions.
3. *** NEW ***  Monthly Newsletter.  It will be a monthly review of popular posts and include information on Evangelism Coach seminars and where our  ministry will take us.  Sign up for your copy and receive the First Time Visitor article.  If you have already gotten the article, you are on that list.
4. *** NEW ***   Down Load Evangelism Coach Brochure.  You are free to print and distribute this 4 color brochure as you see fit.

Next year, I plan on adding more free resources, a bookshop, and information on hosting an Evangelism Coach training session for your church or denominational governing body.

• Cup of Joe offers up some helpful Evangelism resource recommendations, with a reminder that God is the evangelist.
• Dan Kimball is doing a series on hell, including this one: “If you think I’m going to hell, you should care that I’m going to hell.” (To quote Seinfield’s Elaine).
• Pastor’s Study on Philip And the Eunuch. Here is our stuff on Philip and Eunuch, from the conversion series that we did here some time ago..
• Here is a chapter by chapter review (this link is for Chapter 2) of unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters. See also (see this review, Scot McKnight’s review).
• Trying to Build an Effective Website for your church? Consider these things.

I’ve been reading Walking with the Poor, by Bryant L. Myers.  The book looks at principles and practices of transformational development.

The book explores poverty, causes of poverty, and calls the church to action in engaging broken systems that cause poverty.  He lays forth a strong case that poverty is a “deficit, entanglement, lack of access to social power, powerlessness, and the lack of freedom to grow” (Myers 81). 

Poverty is a complicated issue that involves all areas of life — physical, personal, social, cultural, and spiritual.

I live and work in a country where poverty is more visible than the suburban America where I lived before. 

• I walk home from church and a single mother with children are asking me for money or food. 
• I walk to church, I see a unkempt homeless man with a distorted and twisted foot sleeping on cardboard next to the barbershop. 
• Walking home from class, I see people picking through the trash to recycle what can be salvaged.
• The building maintenance man lives on an annual salary of $6K a year, working 48 hours a week.

The gospel is relevant to people such as these.  But what difference does evangelism make in their life?  Can it lift them out of their poverty? 

This is the question that Myers seeks to get at in this book. 

For example, he presents a simple chart about solutions to the cause of poverty (p.81).

View of Cause	Proposed response
Poor are sinners	Evangelism
Poor are sinned against	Social Action, justice
Poor lack knowledge	Education
Poor lack things	Relief / social welfare
Culture of the poor is flawed	Become like us / ours is better
Social system makes them poor	Change the system

Certainly poverty has many causes and many possible cures.  

I’m simply wondering about the role of evangelism in transforming a culture, transforming a system.  Certainly the gospel can transform an individual, but can that transformation seek to change the systems of poverty?

Order your copy of Walking with the Poor, by Bryant L. Myers.

Other books we are currently reading:

• Questioning Evangelism, Randy Newman
• They like Jesus, but not the Church by Dan Kimball
• Confessions of a Reformissional Rev by Mark Driscoll
• Reimagining Evangelism: Inviting Friends on a Spiritual Journey, Rick Richardson
• Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism (Real Life Evangelism Series) by Martha Reese
• Discipling the Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures
• unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters

Let me ask you this?

What role can evangelism play in reducing poverty?  That’s a big question, but perhaps one we can discuss here.

In some of our weekend Evangelism Training Seminars, we often can build in a practical exercise in personal evangelism, a “lab time,” where people can leave the retreat setting and venture out to do evangelism in the style that we teach.  It is modeled after Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch. 

The basic premise is that we ask God to show us in whom he is working to draw unto Himself and then ask God how to participate in that work.  Phillip was sensitive to the Lord’s leading to “Go stand next to that Chariot.”  Likewise, we listen for those promptings.

The conversation that follows develops out of the context and the direction that the Lord gives.

“On the way to Gaza”

So we spend time in prayer and then give about 5 hours for people to find their “desert road on the way to Gaza” to see who they will encounter.

“Go stand next to that chariot”

When the people go out with a simple task of asking God to point out where he is working, I’m always personally amazed at the ease of conversation.  Sometimes we plant, we water, or we harvest. 

We always find people who are easily talkative about spiritual things, about their life, and in some cases, have pretty open questions.  Conversations that follow are not forced, but natural.

Lab time

Its a great exercise and over the years, the stories that have come back have been encouraging to see God at work.

So how can one provide effective practice sessions in a local evangelism training session?

1. Provide time for practical evangelism experience.
2. Build in time for feedback after each evangelism activity.
3. Include positive and constructive feedback for each encounter.
4. Help groups monitor their time (some feedback discussions chase theological rabbit trails)
5. Do it again.

When the people return from their outing, we have a debriefing time.  We allow people to share their stories and we ask questions to help evaluate each encounter. 

Some questions I like to ask are:

1. “How did God point out that person to you?”
2. “Where did you notice God was already at work?”
3. “What was their spiritual thirst?”
4. “What would you do differently?”
5. “What did you share about Christ?”

Let me ask you this?

Think about your last encounter where you engaged a person in a spiritual conversation.  Answer the questions above.  If you would like help discussing your encounters, we provide 1-1Evangelism Coaching

If you’d like to have Evangelism Training workshops or seminars locally, see our various options at our Live Evangelism Training page.  

Thanks to Evangelism Action, I read a sermon by John Piper about the story of Philip and the Eunuch. You can click on

The Leading of the Lord in Personal Evangelism :: Desiring God

to read the manuscript, or download the audio feed.

My own comments on that same passage is here.

For more in our series:
The Apostle Paul
Simon the Sorcerer
Ethiopian Eunuch
Psidian Antioch
Sergius Paulus
Cornelius

Blessings,

Chris.

Sin must exist for grace to mean something. Eli Dorman at Invite One raises a question about sin and grace in our cultural context.

One atheist encourages Christians to listen at the eBay Atheist.

Preachers Magazine gives a sermon about Peter and Cornelius, looking at all the conversion that occurs.

Glenn Hager has a good discussion happening about the church, doing vs. being. In fact, he’s written a series of articles called “Be the church.” Follow the related posts links.

Otto Ekk, in his first post on his new blog raises a question about the transforming work of the gospel. It’s just the beginning of a conversation, but he raises some good questions nonetheless.

Over at The Word on the Streets, the author is writing a series about Sin, God’s Love and the Gospel. Check out this entry on God’s love.

Have a great weekend!