Evangelism Coach

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Do you know your Neighbor?

Something I experienced when I lived in the suburbs of Richmond VA was the lack of a sense of community in our neighborhood. 

Sure we all bought nice houses, but with the exception of one family, we didn’t know any of the neighbors. 

What a contrast to our former subdivision where we knew everyone on the cul-de-sac, and had regular time with them all.  Over the course of 5 years there, we prayed with many of them, and several eventually came to faith in Christ and got connected with a church.

Jesus says that we are the light of the world, yet how many of us commute more than 10 miles to go to church, bypassing 40 homes in our same subdivision? 

How can we live out the notion of “every house a lighthouse” or “every house a church?” 

How can we break through the bubble of not knowing our neighbors?

If God has appointed the time and season of where you live, how can you be a tool in God’s use to impact your neighborhood with the Gospel?

TEN ideas for building neighborhood relationships.

1. Host a neighborhood block party on your street.
2. Host marriage enrichment seminars in your home for neighbors.
3. Start a playgroup with other stay at home parents.   Don’t forget the stay at home dads.   I was a stay at home dad so I know how important this is.
4. Distribute homemade gifts to your neighbors at Christmastime.  Include a tactful card that points to Christ.
5. Invite those without nearby family over for a holiday meal (for example: singles, internationals, divorced or widowed).
6. Conduct a Backyard Bible Club during the summer for neighborhood kids.
7. Host a baby shower for a neighbor who is expecting. Make sure you include their friends not just yours(!)
8. Offer to host a weekly discussion group or Bible Study. Invite Christian and non-Christian friends to participate.
9. Coordinate a Bring your Own Main Course night. You supply the grill, and everyone brings their own meat or veggie dish.   Have some families bring side dishes while others bring drinks or dessert.
10. Invite the neighbors over to watch a ball game or the mother of all sporting events-the Super Bowl. 

For that last one, no matter where in the world we personally live, we are American that Super Bowl Sunday and will invite the neighbors over.  Other times, we’ll join them for the World Cup soccer games, even  though I still don’t know the rules.  

Build genuine relationship that allows room for spiritual conversation.  Once a good relationship is built, look for opportunity to share your faith in Christ in a manner that is appropriate and real.

Let me ask you this:

What do you do to build relationship with your neighbors?  When was the last time you actually spent time with your neighbor?

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Below is an article I wrote for a men’s publication, coming out later in May. 

Mac and Susan (*) were new neighbors that moved into our cul-de-sac. A few days after the trucks left and friends stopped dropping by, my wife and I prepared some welcome cookies (fresh baked oatmeal raisin, still warm from the oven) then went over and introduced ourselves, to give a warm welcome to our community.

We made lots of small talk about the community, about life, and shared a little of our personal backgrounds. Eventually, Mac asked me: “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a pastor.”

Often, that kills the conversation.

But this time, Mac wanted to know more.

He asked me all sorts of questions, and began to reveal much about his spiritual journey. In college, he had been involved with a campus ministry, was busying talking to others about his faith in Christ.

Yet he was always troubled by the problem of evil.

If God is love, then why did Hitler even exist?

Since he couldn’t come to a satisfactory answer, he set his faith aside and decided it was better not to be certain of anything. He stopped going to church, changed his social networks over time, and became a pleasant agnostic. He was quite happy with his choice, and his life was fine without an active faith.

My current neighbor, an Australian wine maker, is simply “on his journey.”

Many of us likely know men who are in the same place: a place where faith is not important, and men whose life is fine without an active faith. Men, like my former neighbor, who might label themselves ex-Christian; men who might take on the label agnostic, or atheist.

Many of us know first hand that it is not easy to reach men with the gospel. Giving up is not an option, and just one man turning to Christ can revolutionize an entire church or community.

The power of a shared life
Effective evangelism to men begins with genuine male friendships, sharing common experiences, and doing life together. In that relational context, men develop the security to share what’s really on their minds.

It is this type of relationship that leads to success with men in evangelism. In all the reading I have done, all the ministry I’ve been a part of, many men’s leaders unanimously agree that building long-term relationships is the best way to lead a man to Christ.

Swinging a hammer together on Habitat for Humanity, crewing on a sailboat, disaster relief, feeding programs, and even golf tournaments some of the ways that I’ve been involved in doing shared life ministry. In the context of doing life together, many men find the liberty to talk deeply.

Talking about grace in a quiet space

Jorge (*) was an architect. He stopped going to church nearly 30 years prior simply because it didn’t make sense. One afternoon, I served as the crew on his racing sailboat, joining him for the best of three in the afternoon. It wasn’t a very windy day, so the skill was catching the mild breeze correctly to move forward. With lulls in the breeze, we had nothing to do except talk.

Jorge shared his life with me, shared with me his struggles of faith, and I shared some of the answers that I have found in Christ. We talked about the definition of grace, and how I discovered an amazing grace. The conversation was genuine, not preachy. The tone was polite and respectful. The breeze picked up and we raced on.

Months later, during another race, we experienced another lull in the wind, Jorge picked up the conversation from before. My comments had intrigued him and we continued to talk deep.

Reaching Men
If you want to reach men, consider how you can help the men of your congregation do life together. Help your men see the value of inviting others to something besides a church service.

• Service projects for housing or disaster relief efforts
• Golf tournaments, Fishing events, or other sports events
• Cookouts, BBQs, Block parties and other such social events
• Retreats around practical life, such as how to love your family, or not to marry a jerk.

As church leaders, our goal is to help provide the space for men to connect and do life together. We can encourage them to notice the moments when talking about faith is appropriate. We can model how to do that with our own lives.

Let me ask you this?

What does your church do for men’s outreach?

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1. When was the last time you had a conversation about faith with someone who wasn’t a Christian?
2. What was the last book on evangelism that you read?
3. When was the last time you preached (or heard) a series on evangelism?
4. When was the last time you took the initiative to greet a first time visitor, and took the time to converse with them, beyond the handshake?
5. How would you answer the question from a non-Christian: “Why do you believe in Jesus?”
6. When was the last time you prayed for your neighbor to know Christ like you know him?
7. How many friends do you “do life with” that do not know Jesus?
8. How many Bible studies or church events do you go to that keep you too busy to be with non-churched people?
9. What gospel scripts have you learned and are ready to use at a moment’s notice?
10. Who are the new believers in your church that you can help coach in evangelism?

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While I’m away in Nicaragua, I’ve asked my good friend and sister in Christ, Susan Finck-Lockhart to write up an article for EvangelismCoach.  Susan and I have the privilege of teaching on Evangelism regularly at various workshops for www.prmi.org around the States.  I’ve known Susan for over 10 years and am grateful that she has given us this article.

A Paradigm Shift

After I came to faith in Jesus during my high school years, I absorbed the message that it was my responsibility to ‘witness’ to everyone who happened to be next to me — on a subway, in a checkout line, or in English class.

It was my responsibility to figure out how to witness to as many people as possible.

If I didn’t, “they might get-in-a-car-wreck-and-die-and-go-to-hell-and-it-would-be-my-fault-because-I-had-been-too-chicken.”

I lived with a residual guilt after every conversation; every encounter with quasi-strangers at the grocery store or or hair salon, where I just couldn’t figure out how to bring Jesus into the conversation.

I remember feeling like a failure; like I just couldn’t “do” evangelism.

Something changed . . . . .

Something changed when I did my student teaching in the early 80s at the University of Texas at Austin.

My supervising teacher, Helen (not her real name), and I really connected.

She was a counter-culture, earth-loving, free-thinking, warm and winsome woman about 10 years my senior. She owned a home with a guy she wasn’t married to. We both loved the kids we taught, and found ourselves intensely immersed in their lives.

I found myself not wanting to try to “save” her or “witness to” her. I found myself intrigued with her and wanting to be her friend.

I didn’t hide my church or para-church involvement, but she didn’t ask any questions and I didn’t push it. We ate lunch together in her classroom. She taught me about teaching writing; about how to call forth words from the heads of high schoolers, how to urge them toward journalistic and linguistic excellence.

She invited me to her home for dinner. We talked about music, movies and men. She showed me her freezer full of marijuana, neatly packaged in baggies. I was fascinated. She couldn’t believe I’d never seen packaged, frozen marijuana.

Present in the midst of pain.

The phone rang late one night, and it was Helen, sobbing. The man she lived with, her boyfriend of nine years, had moved out. Came with a U-Haul. Took furniture. All his clothes. She could barely talk. She hadn’t seen it coming.

“Helen — Just hang on. I’m on my way, “ I said.

As I sped towards South Austin, I was overcome with Helen’s situation. It hit me that she had no anchor, no foundation. Her boyfriend had been her world.

I realized how much I loved Jesus. He was my anchor, my foundation, my Lord, my Best Friend. However, I believe God let me feel what Helen must have been feeling. During that dark drive, I realized how badly I wanted Helen to meet Christ.

She was in the yard waiting for me. We embraced, and she shook, taken over by the grief.

Intuitively I knew that all this had to do with God’s drawing Helen unto Jesus.

I don’t remember much of the conversation. I remember hurting for her. I remember being shaken by the depth of her despair. I also remember saying, “Helen, I need to tell you something. I need to tell you that people are always going to let us down. They will bring their Uhauls and move out; they will get cancer and die: they will get tired of us and move on.

But Helen, there is One Person who will never leave us….”

And then I told her about Christ.

Right there in the yard in front of the house they owned together with the marijuana in the freezer.

She listened.

I got my first taste of what it’s like to be obedient to God’s loving initiative in the life of a not-yet-believer. To love someone like Jesus might love them.

Helen didn’t “pray the prayer” that night, or during the course of our friendship.

But I trust that God in his sovereignty will bring her to Himself (He may have already.)

It’s been 27 years since that night.

But I’m grateful to Helen– and eternally grateful to Jesus —for showing me what it’s like to participate with Him in loving lost people and to let Him be in charge of creating the moment for speaking of faith.

About Susan:

Susan currently serves as full-time mom to four amazing teens, and part time pastor at El Calvario Presbtyerian Church in Waco, Texas.  In addition she leads retreats & conferences for Presbyterian-Reformed Ministries, International (www.prmi.org), usually on Evangelism and Cooperating with the Holy Spirit.  In her free time, she likes to run, read & get together with friends.  Susan, her husband Bill and the kids are active at Central Presbyterian Church, Waco.

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I was reading a thread on one of the Bible Forums I belong to, and came across a great post answering the question "How do you start witnessing to somebody?" 

That’s a great question.

I’ve been a Christian for nearly 20 years and witnessing simply seems natural to me.  It is the overflow of my heart — I have a vibrant relationship with Christ and that spills out of me.  But how does one start when you are a young Christian?

Here is a partial list from one of the responses:

1. Make known that you are a Christian. (2 Corinthians 3.2)
2. Be blameless as you are an ambassador for Christ (2 Peter 3.14)
3. Pray for opportunities (1 Thess 5.17 and 1 Peter 3.15)

To that list, I would add the following.

1. Notice when the Holy Spirit "underlines" the moment for a conversation.

Noticing when God prompts you for a conversation is a skill that is learned as you grow in your relationship with Christ.  There is no script for that.

Let me ask you this?

Have you developed the art of noticing whom God is underlining for you?

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