Have you ever been with a group of people and felt like you just needed to talk to that person over there?

A sense that God was pointing out that particular person?

Phillip (in the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch) was prompted to “Go Stand next to THAT chariot.”

Of all the chariots on the road that day, he was prompted to go next to one.

A moment with Friends

Maybe been with a friend, visiting in the coffee shop, and you have this unmistakable sense that they want to talk with you about their faith or yours?

Or maybe a friend has surprised you and started opening up about their faith struggle and search for God?

What are these moments?

These moments have the potential to become kairos moments, moments where we as Christians are aware of the gentle prompting of the Holy Spirit to pay attention and likely talk about faith.

The are moments that are full of possibilities for a persons spiritual journey towards Christ, where the person who are talking with may make more steps closer in their relationship with Jesus.

Some might call these divine appointments.

I call them kairos moments.

Here are some examples:

• God’s presence is with us. – My tutor hears the gospel
• Seminar Testimony – a wrong phone number
• Is he a PC USA Pastor? – Divine moment in Cracker Barrel
• What is an Evangelist? – Student wants a definition
• Reflections from Enfield CT – Wal-Mart Stories
• Evangelism Motives: Why bother? – taxi driver shares Jesus

Each conversation moment has been prepared and thanks to the working of the Holy Spirit another person makes another step forward towards discovering their relationship with Christ.

Some people search for God

Luke 19:1-10, the familiar story of Zacchaeus shows that noticing people and these divine appointments turns out to be more art than science.

Verse one says; “Jesus entered and walked through Jericho.”

Luke transitions from story to story with phrases letting you know that Christ was on the move.

On this particular day he came across a shunned tax collector named Zacchaeus whom we would place in the category of lost.

Nevertheless, verse 3 says that Zacchaeus “wanted desperately to see Jesus” (The Message).

The Greek rendering of the word “desperately” is zateo.

Zateo carries with it a meaning of a frantic pursuit. This is a very dramatic and passionate verb that Luke uses.

If you lost your child in a crowded public space, “zateo” describes the desperate search.

If your passport is missing the night before your international flight, zateo is the word to express the intensity of searching.

Do we believe that some people zateo Jesus?

They have been prepared and are so full of spiritual thirst they will do anything to find the water of life?

Jesus looks for them, rewarding their search.

Here’s what’s remarkable about Jesus. As he’s traveling along, he comes upon an ordinary tree and then does something extraordinary; he stops and notices! Jesus is busy, the religious crowd wants his attention and yet he stops and stares up at a tree. Go figure!

With all the travel language in the book of Luke, when Jesus stops it’s a big deal. What really happened at that tree could not be seen, the beauty is in the unseen.

When Jesus stopped at the tree of Zacchaeus, he ascribed worth to him and said that Zacchaeus mattered.

This was Jesus’ paradigm for letting people know that he cared about them—he stopped and noticed them. It wasn’t what Jesus said that was so compelling but what he did. In the economy of Jesus, Zaccheus had high value.

Others may grumble because you don’t do it right.

Verse 7 says, “Everyone who saw the incident was indignant and grumped, ‘What business does he have getting cozy with this crook?’ ”

Jesus was not playing the part correctly.

He was supposed to let Zacchaeus know how much he didn’t approve of his sin and share “the gospel” with him, which starts with an explanation of his failures.

Instead, Jesus stopped, noticed, called him by name and had a conversation with him on his turf.

The story ends with Jesus making this statement, “For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost.”

The Greek verb that is translated ‘find and restore’ is none other than zateo.

The art of Noticing People

Apparently, Jesus is passionately pursuing the people formerly known as lost. Pursuing Jesus was his business, his passion, his reason for existence.

Jesus profoundly impacted Zacchaeus not by sharing good news with him, but by being good news to him on that day. He stopped and noticed.

If we want to be on mission with Jesus, we’ll need to relearn the lost art of noticing.

Some of those conversations will go deep.

Some of those conversations that happen will go deep.  Others will remain shallow.

I have experienced lots of moments where after noticing people as in the Zaccheus text, the opportunity to offer a piece of the gospel happens.

Sometimes I get to harvest what others have sown, other times I get to water what was already there.  Sometimes I get to plant a seed for the first time.

It all starts with noticing those promptings of the Holy Spirit.

Evangelism Coaching corner

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If you want more personalized coaching for you or your team over a 3-4 month period, see our

• Personal Evangelism Coaching services page.
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1. In the name of Jesus Christ invite the Holy Spirit to lead the prayer group.

We are Christian believers who pray in Jesus name.  We need to remind ourselves of this regularly.  Asking the Holy Spirit to lead the prayer group helps us from keeping our agenda from taking control

2. Offer a time of praise and worship of Jesus Christ.

Worship is where we connect with the Father’s heart.

Praising God for his works, thanking God for making a relationship with Him possible, and declaring one to another the marvelous works of the Lord strengthens our faith and reminds us to always be watching for God’s activity in our life.

3. Lead in a time of confession and prayer ministry with one another.

This may be a time to deal with any issues in the group.

Confession of sins or burdens clears the way to receiving guidance from the Holy Spirit.

Conclude with prayers for one another, absolution and passing the peace.

4. Report on what God is doing.

Here the members of the team will briefly share any evangelism conversations they may have experienced or opportunities they may have missed.

Reflect upon and give thanks for these.

It may be that the Spirit will lead the team to pray for each one of your group and those to whom they have been given the opportunity to share the gospel.

5. Move into Intercession

The following may be helpful:

Pray according to Jesus’ commands: Pray thy Kingdom come. In addition, pray that God the Father will send laborers. Ask God to show you specifically where His Kingdom is to come. Ask God specifically who the laborers are whom He is raising up. Be ready to be one of them!

Go through Paul’s list of ways of praying for evangelism. Linger on any of these that seem especially important for your situation.

One by one, with the whole group agreeing in prayer, lift up the names of those who have been given to the individuals in the group to be prayed into salvation. (A list should be kept by the leader of who these people are – this could be done by the whole group or in small groups.)

6. Discern open doors for the gospel.

Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the open doors in the community, the church, the world and in individuals for the gospel.

7. Ask God to reveal any blocks to the gospel message in these situations or people.

8. Ask the Lord what you or the team are being called to do.

9. Discern together what God is saying

God speaks to us through Scripture.  For those of us who believe in the ongoing work of Spiritual gifts and the guidance given by the holy Spirit, we may need to talk about impressions, leadings, visions, prophetic words, or by consensus of the group as part of that discernment. Keep a record of this guidance.

10. Pray for this guidance

Ask God for steps in implementation. Write these down as they are revealed for further discernment, prayer and implementation. These may later be taken to the church leadership for approval and implementation.

11. Conclude the meeting with praise and giving glory to Jesus Christ.

Note: The eleven steps above were first presented in a manual on personal evangelism through PRMI’s Phillip Endeavor. That has been further refined and developed in the Evangelism Dunamis.

Off and on over a period of two years, I met a friend for coffee at the local Starbucks.  During that season of life where our lives intersected, he and I had a long ongoing discussion about faith.

When I first met him, he was very angry about all things Christian, the church, God, Jesus, and the Bible etc.  He didn’t want to have anything to do with any of it.

Yet, he showed up at one of my bible study small groups, invited by a friend.

His presence was an attempt to stop the invitations rather than a sincere desire to seek the truth.

He actively described himself as an ex-Christian.

What is the question behind the question?

During that Bible Study, I quietly began to pray while leading the group.

I felt the Holy Spirit “nudge me” to pay attention.  I felt the Holy Spirit “underline” him that night in the Bible study (as Phillip was nudged: Go stand next to THAT chariot, Acts 8).

I began to quietly pray to receive some guidance from the Lord, and I received some.

I asked the group “What would you ask God if He would answer one question to your satisfaction?”

The group wrote down their anonymous answers on pieces of paper and turned them in.  I knew my group pretty well, so this visitor’s answer stood out.  His question:

Why do your people behave the way they do?

Our visitor’s objections to faith were not logical at all.

They are an outgrowth of bad personal experiences with the church. At the root of his hostility was emotional hurt.

By asking a question of the whole group that I felt the Lord give me, I was able to discover my friend’s real question behind his hostile questions about Christianity.  His objections are not questions of truth.

Apologetics have their place

Apologetics have their place.

One needs a reasonable faith, and by all means, seek to have a rational foundation for that faith.  As a good student of evangelism, it’s a good practice to study worldview, to study the reasonable foundation of the Christian faith and be aware of what other worldviews teach and practice.

Yet a logical defense of the faith (apologetics) was not the real information being asked by my friend.

The questions of my friend had nothing to do with reason or apologetics.

Rather, they were a smoke screen for his real question — why had professed Christians treated him so bad?

If I had started answering his initial questions with answers from my apologetics class, I would have missed the point and engaged in a conversation that likely would have been heated (because of his hurt) and perhaps embarrassing for the rest of the Bible Study members.

Moving to the Coffee Shop

This question opened the door to more conversations in the coffee shop.

My friend had the venue to vent his anger at Christians to me, and by God’s grace, I was able to simply listen.  When the venting was over, I asked him two questions.

• “Do you think you can come to the place of forgiving those who have hurt you?” and
• “Do you think God can help you forgive those people?”

His answer, now that his hostility had been poured out and he was empty: “Perhaps.”  He was willing to give God a try.

The next time we met, a few months later, he informed me of how he had come to the place of forgiving the church.  The details are too personal to share here, but the fruit is that we can now have intelligent discussions about faith.  He continues to explore Christianity and the claims of Christ on his life.

By getting at the question behind the question, I received some discernment from the Lord about how and what to share of Christ with this friend.  Continue to pray his journey towards faith towards Christ.

Evangelism Coaching

One service that I offer in the US and Canada is evangelism coaching.  A coach can help you think through some of these issues of practical evangelism training and can help you improve your conversation skills. See Do you Need Evangelism coaching?

I would attend a seminar and learn the newest script for evangelism.  The idea is that I would learn a series of conversational steps that would help people

• See their need for Jesus
• Make a decision to follow Christ
• Repeat a prayer after me.
• Sign here for follow up.
• All in less than 30 minutes.

The script was “the powerful new tool,” and it was meant to help you “share your faith” and confidently prepare you to “lead people to Christ.”

If we were truly honest with ourselves, in the practice of your life did it ever work?

Not in my life.

I never really latched onto that sales pitch.  Most of the readers of this blog never latched on to that model as it felt forced, maybe dishonest and turned Jesus in a product marketing.

Life doesn’t fit the script.

In the last few days I’ve had to deal with customer service people in various businesses.

In each case, my need was not “in their script.”

• Company A sent me to at least 4 departments today on the telephone, because no one could answer my question.  That was after going to 3 different departments yesterday.  I wasn’t permitted to speak to a supervisor because they didn’t have the  power to get out of their script.
• Company B simply said “I don’t cover that situation — you can’t be our customer anymore.”  I’ve been their customer for 11 years and now they don’t want me anymore.

I did not fit their script.  They didn’t have an answer for my questions.  They didn’t have a solution for my need.  Their scripts didn’t have a place for me.

This is the problem with scripts when they are positioned as the “one true way” of doing evangelism.

Human beings and life conversations can’t all fit into a one size fits all  scripted evangelism presentation.  Humans have so many different needs, so many different starting points, so many different questions.

I don’t teach complicated scripts in any of my evangelism seminars.

Rather, I help people learn how to listen to the Holy Spirit for the right place, right time, right words.   I don’t have a script I follow because each person and each conversation is unique.

What then are the role of Gospel Scripts?

I’ve written on gospel scripts before and will do so in the future (grab my feed to get these future posts).   They are handy little tools and I’m not throwing them out.

The gospel scripts that I like are all simple presentations of the gospel that are useful at an appropriate point in a relationship.  They address different needs but ultimately get at the Need to Follow Jesus.

In my life, I haven’t found that any of my conversation partners are at the same starting point the gospel script is at.

The scripts assume

• that a person recognizes the consequences of sin.
• that the person is ready to deal with a spiritual need.
• that a person is seeking for a relationship with God.

Phillip and the Eunuch

Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch had a ‘chance’ conversational encounter.  Yet in that encounter, the text says that

“Beginning from that point [where the Eunuch was reading],
Phillip went on to explain the good news about Jesus.”

Notice that Phillip began where the eunuch was.

The eunuch was dealing with

• grammar issues with pronouns,
• frustrations with reading a foreign language, and
• perhaps his own disappointment in not finding what he was searching for in Jerusalem.

Phillip spent time talking with the eunuch at that point.  A point unique to the eunuch’s spiritual journey.

So many scripts want to “begin from their own point.”

Yet not every conversation is at that starting point.

• It often takes a series of conversations to get there.
• It takes listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit
• It takes good questions that open new conversational lines.
• It takes some skill in noticing life themes and linking them to spiritual needs.

Evangelism Scripts such as the Four Spiritual Laws, Bridge, or others are handy once a person has gotten to the starting point of the scripts.

Being familiar with an evangelism script can help you comfortably explain the gospel when the moment presents itself in a natural manner.

Getting to that point?  There is no script for that.

From Golf to God

This week, I was listening to the late Michael Spencer’s Coffee Cup Apologetics at Podcast 46.  In these 15 minutes (listen on line at Podcast 46) Spencer discusses issues with scripted evangelism.

He refers to a great article called Gospel Connections in Suburbia.

It deals with how to bridge a conversation from the subject at hand to the subject of the gospel.

Can  you go from golf to God?

There is a list of 8 topics that are great conversational topics and an example of a conversational bridge is given for each (I encourage you to read the whole entry).

1. Corruption, evil and sin.
2. Community.
3. Politics.
4. Environment.
5. War.
6. Family.
7. Church.
8. Art/pop-culture

Spencer’s podcast picks this up and points out that to make such transitions, one requires three skills

1. Relational Conversations — Casual life conversations with friends
2. Ability to see connections between the mundane and the spiritual
3. Make the transition from the mundane to spiritual in a natural way.

Part of doing this is developing the skills of

1. Making use of good questions
2. Making use of good observations.

Start to Notice

In your own conversations, start to ponder how the mundane can be bridged towards the spiritual.  I’m not talking about ketchup on fries representing the blood of Jesus.  Rather, listen to the heart cry in the culture.

• What is being looked for?
• Why are people passionate about politics and what does that say about order in the world?
• Why are people willing to sacrifice their marriage for a moment of personal pleasure?
• Can you hear the spiritual need behind the conversation?
• What is the question behind the question?

Let me ask you this?

Taking a cue from the original blog post:

Do you have some useful conversational bridges? 

I invite you to elaborate in the comments.

But, I also want to point out how the Holy Spirit prepares the way for evangelism to occur naturally.

Phillip and the Ethiopian

Consider Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch.

Clearly the Spirit of God was at work in the life of the Eunuch.

• He had gone to Jerusalem to worship.
• He was reading Scripture.
• He wanted someone to explain Scripture to him.

The eunuch had a spiritual thirst, created by the Holy Spirit, and he was busy searching to slake that thirst. He was like the merchant looking for the fine pearl.

Easy Conversation

This was an easy conversation to for Phillip to participate in.

He didn’t have to

• argue with a loud voice
• apologetically stand up for his faith
• use the 10 commandments as a hammer.
• verbally convince the eunuch of his sinfulness.
• spend 10,000 words arguing God’s existence.
• rationally defend against opposite worldviews.

The Holy Spirit had prepared the way.

The Holy Spirit had gone ahead of Phillip.

Both Sides of the Equation

There are two individuals involved in this story. One seeking faith, and the other obediently positioning himself to share his faith. Two sides of an equation.

The conversation would not have happened that day if both parties were not in the same GPS location at the same time, an encounter brought about in the sovereignty of God.

Both Sides of the Equation

The Holy Spirit was working in Phillip and the Eunuch. To borrow a phrase from my old algebra teacher, God was working “Both sides of the equation.”

As you do personal evangelism, notice how God is already at work in preparing the harvest field for you. He has gone ahead of you!

Let me ask you this?

In your personal evangelism efforts, are you aware of God going ahead of you?

Are you noticing that when you are attentive to the Holy Spirit that you find those people where He is already at work?

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This conversion was as simple as picking a ripe mango ready to fall from a tree.

It’s not so much about the Eunuch as it is about Phillip being God’s tool to help the man come to faith.

The fruit is ready

The Fruit is Ready

These are the kinds of evangelistic conversations I love because a person has been prepared by the Lord to this point, and I get to be the one God uses to bring that person into the kingdom.

It reminds me that God is the Evangelist, that the Holy Spirit goes before us to prepare the way, and that when we are obedient to His promptings, the Lord can use us.

The passage: Acts 8:26-40.

Phillip had been directed by the Lord to go on a scavenger hunt. “Go to the south road, the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”

Phillip was then prompted to go and stand near a chariot that was on the road.

Phillip hears a man reading a particular passage from the book of Isaiah.

Phillip asks if he understands.

The man’s response: “How can I unless someone explains it to me? Please tell me who the prophet is talking about.”

Phillip began there and told him the good news about Jesus.  The eunuch believed, he took baptism, and went on his way rejoicing, never to see Phillip again.

Reflections:

A seeker:
We know from the text what Phillip didn’t know at first. This man had been coming from Jerusalem, where he had been to worship God. Phillip didn’t know him, but found a man reading out loud from the Old Testament.

This man shows all the signs of one who is spiritually thirsty.

• He had reworked his schedule to go to Jerusalem on his own.
• He was reading from the Scripture.
• He wanted somebody to explain what he was reading.
• He was willing to search for the truth.
• He was willing to understand.

This man was hungry for the things of God. He was spiritually thirsty.  Prepared by God.

All he needed was a person to help explain.

An evangelist.
The Lord used an obedient Phillip to help this man into the kingdom.

Both sides always balance

God worked both sides of the equation, so to speak, putting Phillip and the spiritually thirsty eunuch in the same place at the same time.  This positioning is the Role of the Holy Spirit in Evangelism.

All Phillip had to do in this encounter with a stranger was to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

In other words, Phillip got to work with God.

Phillip didn’t

• need to pry open a hard heart like a can of beans.
• have to waste hours of conversation about the existence of God.
• need to get the Eunuch to the starting point of a Gospel Script

All the talk in the world could not replace the work of God that prepared the eunuch ahead of time.

Luke on summarizes the conversation as “the good news about Jesus”.  This was not a Scripted Evangelism Conversation.

So what?
For one brief afternoon, the stories of these two strangers intersected. Phillip was doing his ordinary routine when the Lord prompted him to go to specific place. The eunuch was simply going home after a pilgrimage.

But at one moment, their paths crossed and one man’s destiny was changed.

It is my desire that you spend time asking “God where are you at work?” It’s much easier to cooperate with God’s activity, rather than wasting hours of argument prying open a locked heart.

The key is that Phillip noticed “THAT” Chariot.  God underlined the chariot and Phillip positioned himself.

More than just conversions

This is a learnable model of personal evangelism that can be done as a practical exercise.

See Effective Evangelism Training Lab Time.  It forms the basis for Fear Free Evangelism, an Evangelism Training Workshop that I do around the US and as a webinar.

Listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit for those Kairos moments can bring good news to lots of people in many situations.

I want to give you examples of how this can play out in real life.

• God’s presence is with us. – My tutor hears the gospel
• Seminar Testimony – a wrong phone number
• Is he a PC USA Pastor? – Divine moment in Cracker Barrell
• What is an Evangelist? – Student wants a definition
• Reflections from Enfield CT – Walmart Stories
• Evangelism Motives: Why bother? – taxi driver shares Jesus

Let me ask you this?

Will you take the time today to ask God to show you where He is at work?

More in the Conversion in the NT

The Apostle Paul
Simon the Sorcerer
Ethiopian Eunuch
Psidian Antioch
Sergius Paulus
Cornelius

Talk #3 in the Fear Free evangelism Study Course is all about Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch and the the role the Holy Spirit plays in drawing people to start following Jesus.

• An Intercessor’s Burden — Getting worked up
• Cultural Connections — From Athens to Machu Picchu

This started as part of a conversation over at Evangelism Action, but will take much more than just a comment to tease out.

Spiritual Thirst propels a search

Spiritual thirst is a way of describing a person’s own search for God.

What motivates a person to seek after God?

In the parable of the merchant searching for the fine pearl — he is propelled to find it because he knows it’s out there. He looks, and looks, and looks.

There is a “thirst” to propel him to find it. When he doesn’t find it, he keeps looking. When he finds it, he has that “Eurkea” moment.

If you are noticing people, spiritual thirst can lead to moments of conversation in divine appointments.

Spiritual Thirst in Athens

While wandering around Athens (Acts 17), Paul gets a sense of the spiritual thirst of the Athenians. He even appreciates their thirst, in complementing them on the quest for God. He says “I see that you are very religious . . . I found an altar to an unknown God.”

He has picked up on their spiritual thirst – the desire to know God.

When Paul was in Athens, he must have said something that brought them to the point of asking “May we hear you more about this matter?” (v.19)

They were thirsty for more information, self-propelled to learn more. Paul saw they were thirsty (manifested in the all the statues, including an altar to an unknown God).

He started where they were.

The Spiritual Thirst of the Eunuch

The Ethiopian Eunch was spiritually thirsty.

He had gone to Jersualem for a worship event to connect with God, yet it wasn’t satisfying enough.

On the way home was reading Isaiah.

He’s spiritually thirsty, knowing that he hadn’t found it yet. By God’s sovereign grace (working both sides of the equation), Phillip was there to explain. The Ethiopian found it — wanted to be baptized. Phillips explanation slaked that spiritual thirst.

(Listen to an audio sermon download on Phillip and the Ethiopian)

Spiritual Thirst yearns for the Water of Life.

Spiritual thirst is the underlying motive that people have to seek after God, to start and continue their search for God.

It could be guilt over sin, it could be a longing for honest community, it could be guidance and direction, among some ideas.

It could be a stark realization that the person has made a giant mess of their life.

The gospel can speak to each one of these.

Let me ask you this?
What “spiritual thirst” have you encountered in the people that you talk with?