conversational skills

February 14, 2013 by EvangelismCoach Leave a Comment

The Power of Questions in Conversational Evangelism

Have you ever been asked a question that has altered the direction of your life?

I remember a few in my personal life.

These questions radically shaped the course of my life and ministry.

Asked by my pastor: What are you doing about it?
Asked by my friend: Have you thought about becoming a preacher?
Asked by a really close friend: Do you ever feel like you are living in the wrong place?

In each case, the direction of my life was altered by the use of a well timed question.

Are there great questions to use in evangelism? I give a list below.

The power of questions in conversational evangelism.

I teach on conversational skills in evangelism.

While I believe it’s appropriate and a good practice to know a gospel presentation by heart, I think that asking good questions unlocks further avenues of conversations that leads to life change.

There is a time for questions.

There is a time for giving answers and the reason for the hope within us.

There is a time for questions to ask when evangelizing.

When questions are raised in the right time, the search for answers can move a person forward in their journey to faith in giant leaps.

Questions help people come up with their own solutions for their own unique circumstances. If you learn to use questions, you can help people discover their spiritual thirst and grow towards Christ.

Powerful questions for an evangelist help others to:

Take time to think about their sin, their need for God, the abscence of God in their life
Gain information about Jesus, who Jesus is, what Jesus has done
Promote personal discovery of Jesus
Generate options about how to respond to God’s work in Jesus
Uncover obstacles or questions that remain unanswered
Determine next steps in the journey to faith towards Jesus.

Many of us who do personal evangelism have found useful questions or statements to help continue or start a conversation that potentially leads to a conversation about the gospel.

For example, sometimes I have asked long distance truckers:

“What to you do to take care of your soul as you travel around the country?”

The quality and level of their response can encourage further conversation or quickly reveal that there is no interest in talking along those lines.

Collection of Evangelistic Conversation Starters

I’ve prepared a collection of questions for evangelism over various times on this website.

These spiritual questions you can use to get a conversation started. Ask some of them today.

Do you need help in Personal Evangelism?

Start here with this MP3 Download on Evangelism Training from the store ($10) to help you see where you need to grow.

It’s a 80 minute audio file that takes just a few minutes to download, but it may help you answer the question:

What can you do in the next 90 days to grow in your evangelism skills?

June 11, 2011 by EvangelismCoach Leave a Comment

Book Review: Coffee Shop Conversations

In my personal evangelism training, I focus on evangelistic conversation based on

Noticing the prompting of the Holy Spirit
Listening for Spiritual Thirst
Using great questions to help a person discover their thirst and need for Christ.

So I’m always on the lookout for great conversational tools and training to help Christians grow more comfortable with sharing their faith.

I’ve personally shifted from seeing evangelism as only a one way proclamation event to a multifaceted process of a series of events that add up to a person’s decision to surrender to Christ.

Many conversations are a key element in a person’s journey to Christ.

New ideas change us slowly, like water on a rock, imperceptibly reshaping grooves and contours. We rarely change our minds in the heat of discussion and usually need several opportunities to hear new ideas before we adapt a new position. (p. 48)

Have more fruitful spiritual conversations

In Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk, authors Dale and Jonalyn Fincher intend to help Christians gain the right to be heard through genuine care and concern for those God places in our lives as we go about our daily activities.

How does a Christian have normal conversations about Jesus without accidentally sounding offensive, bigoted or intolerant?

Part 1: Making Spiritual Small Talk

The first section of Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk focuses mostly on principles of spiritual conversation.

Principal #7 was a great one: Allow people to remain unconvinced.

Learn to ask more questions and not be afraid to learn from the person you are talking to since questions open up the possibility of meaningful conversation and honest engagement.

The authors also point out conversation stoppers that have killed their own conversations (chapter 3).

When feeling cornered by someone’s question, offer a spiritual cliché, for example, “Just take it by faith.”
Don’t fallback on that’s-the-way-I-was-raised answers.
When feeling fearful or threatened, lash out hatefully.
Show your disgust for the other person or his views or situation in life.
Sniff out their sin, and then club them with shame and blame.

Part 2: Restocking Your Tools

The second section includes chapters on discussing our faith in particular in contrast with spiritual themes in our culture.

This will date Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk as they tackle four popular books from the last few years, like The Secret.

But the principles they lift out will remain valid for having conversations. They provide more examples of ways to engage others in dialogue about faith.

Part 3: Helping Friends Home

This final part of Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk deals with common questions and topics that might arise in spiritual conversations. For example, the problem of pain and suffering is one that different religions handle with vastly different ideas on the solution. They raise the question of evolution and other red herrings that distract people from focus on Jesus.

Some of these are attributed to a particular “brand of Christianity” rather than basic foundation truths about following Jesus. Some theological streams will take issue over what issues the authors molehills and mountains.

My take on Coffee Shop Conversations

Overall, the book was a decent read.

At times I felt like Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk drifted, allowing quick skimming of certain sections.

As a strength, it focuses on conversational principles and points the reader on skills to grow your spiritual conversations.

This is not a book on how to memorize and present a gospel formula – its goal is not to teach you a script or presentation.

Rather, their stated goal is to help you have more conversations that can open the doors to that gospel sharing down the road.

For those that believe in proclamation via monologue presentation before relationship – Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk won’t work.

For those that want to grow in their conversation skills, Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk gives several suggested ways to grow more comfortable in your conversations.

Order your copy of Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk from Amazon (affiliate link).

September 24, 2010 by EvangelismCoach Leave a Comment

Resource: 52 Questions for Bible Teachers

If you are

pioneering a new bible evangelistic bible study, or maybe
leading an existing one,
running s Sunday School Class

you may be trying to figure out how to ask effective questions to have deeper conversations.

November 25, 2009 by EvangelismCoach 1 Comment

4 Tips to Share Your Faith During Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving weekend in the United States America typically involves

large family gatherings,
more food than one could eat,
and for some families, hours of discussions about football and the weather (that may seem meaningless),
and rehashing old family stories.

For others, thanksgiving weekend might be a time to

visit friends
serve as a volunteer in a community dinner
go shopping on Black Friday
Prepare the house or apartment with Christmas decorations.

No matter what your participation is, look for ways to talk about how thankful you are for what Christ as done for you. Use moments that are appropriate to share what God has done in your life. Here are 4 tips to being intentional in personal evangelism this thanksgiving.

4 Tips to Share Your Faith During Thanksgiving

Here are some things to consider ahead of time about sharing your faith during this Thanksgiving Holiday.

1. Pray ahead of time.

Ask God to make you sensitive to His leading about when and what to share during Thanksgiving.

Approach thanksgiving with the idea that you’ll have opportunity to share with family and friends what you are truly thankful for: the outrageous grace offered to you in Christ Jesus.

When you pray, you’ll be ready to notice when God underlines a moment for you.

Read: Pray First then Watch

2. Brainstorm some possible discussion questions.

It may seem that discussions of Christmas shopping plans, the weather, football, are meaningless and dull.

Retelling old family stories can be an embarrassing rehashing of events that would better left to the dustbin of history, or they could be a good part of family identity and bonding.

But as a commenter on my prior post pointed out, these things may be valuable to your family and friends. They are points of connection and it is important to value what your friends and family value.

However, during the course of discussions, you might find a natural time to talk about your faith, or raise questions that could move a conversation in that direction.

Brainstorm some possible door opening questions ahead of time. For example,

If you could ‘do Thanksgiving’ in a fresh, new, totally different way, what would that look like for you? Would it include a God-focus? Why or why not?
What’s the one thing you are most thankful for this year? Why?
Is Thanksgiving more of a time for being thankful to God or being thankful to others? How?
Is it tough to be thankful this year? Why or Why not?

3. Look and Listen for the Spiritual Thirst

As conversations unfold, a person might share a spiritual need, which is an expression of spiritual thirst.

You might not even need to ask questions to find it.

Or, questions like the ones above could open conversation paths into spiritual needs.

These can naturally go on to deeper things about your relationship with Christ and the gospel.

You might hear of a person’s spiritual thirst and can appropriately point them to the water of life.

The key is to look and listen.

You’ve been praying. Watch for how God will answer that.

Read: What is Spiritual Thirst?

4. Take the time to share.

If you are noticing people, spiritual thirst can lead to moments of conversation in divine appointments. (Read: Divine Appointments).

Take the time to share your experience of God’s working in your life.

Feel free to tell appropriate stories of God’s current activity in your life, particularly where you are thankful.

Look for those moments to talk about your thankfulness for what God has done for you in bringing you salvation.

Look for those “natural” conversational opportunities.

Some evangelism practitioners will not only look for conversational openings, but will create them or cause them to happen. Go for it.

You might still be learning how to confidently talk about their faith and need other people to start the conversation.

Either way, look for those opportunities to share and go for it.

Have fun this Thanksgiving.

My own Personal Evangelism Teaching on DVD

I have a DVD (or digital download) set that focuses on a conversational style evangelism that would be effective this Thanksgiving:

casual conversation between friends
causal conversation between strangers

It is a recording of a live seminar I gave in 2012.

February 1, 2008 by EvangelismCoach 2 Comments

Evangelism as Storytelling

One church, Solana Beach Presbyterian in Solana Beach California, has an effective small group ministry.

One thing they are doing a little different this year (2008) is using their small groups to help people grow comfortable in doing evangelism — a place to practice telling their stories —

“stories that testify to why they have put their trust in Jesus Christ.”

To help implement this idea, the senior pastor gave a 10 week sermon series devoted to evangelism as storytelling, which modeled story telling as a way to communicate your faith.

Some of the sermons used principles found Just Walk Across the Room, by Bill Hybels (get your copy from Amazon), which I have found to be a great current resource for Evangelism.

The small groups become the place where people can grow comfortable talking about their own faith, and then sharing their own stories with friends.

Presumably (but not shared in the PGF article), people report their story telling encounters in their small group.

Two Videos

Living in 3d

See the original article here:

PGF Outbox: ONE CHURCH MAKES MISSIONAL STRIDES THROUGH SMALL GROUPS

[1] These products can be ordered directly from Amazon

Just Walk Across the Room, Bill Hybels
Just Walk Across the Room Video Cirriculum, Bill Hybels
Simplemente acercate a ellos: Pasos Sencillos Para Guiar a Las Personas Hacia La Fe, Bill Hybels

Let me ask you this?

What steps do take to practice telling your faith story?

January 28, 2008 by EvangelismCoach Leave a Comment

Evangelism Book review: Evangelism Made Slightly Less Difficult

As mentioned in Saturday’s post I just finished reading Nick Pollard’s Evangelism Made Slightly Less Difficult: How to Interest People who Aren’t Already Interested (order your copy direct from Amazon).

The goal of his book is to

help you get uninterested people interested in Jesus, to reach people “who are simply not interested in hearing about Jesus because they are quite happy with their own views” (p. 31).

The subtitle makes it clear: How to Interest People who aren’t Already Interested.

In other words, this book is offering to help you reach a specific category of people:

those who doing fine in life without Jesus, and therefore don’t see the need.

To reach them, “we must help them become uncomfortable with their current worldview and then perhaps they will be” (p. 42).

This is done in a conversational dialogue about worldview (which all of Ch 2 is about).

Side Note: The best book on world view that I have read is Discipling the Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures, by Darrow Miller. Follow the link to get your copy from Amazon.

Conversational Evangelism

Pollard’s approach to conversational evangelism with people who are not spiritually thirsty is what he calls “Positive deconstruction.”

In all of chapter 3, he explains that through the use of critical questions, you can help a person analyze their world view, take it apart, and examine it.

The goal of such conversations is to expose the internal contradictions in the worldview.

This form of debate may seems negative, but the goal is to search for truth.

The destination of the conversation is meant to wind up at the place where a person says

“I’m not so sure that what I believe is right after all. I want to find out more about Jesus” (p.44)
“We’ve got a major job to do if we are to help people want to find out about Jesus.”

Preparing for Conversational Evangelism

The starting point is to find out what a person believes.

Conversationally, this can be done through the use of questions and sincere inquiries that are genuine.

Then, after finding out what a person believes, make efforts at understanding their worldview (such as read books about it).

With these two things, you are then prepared to know what kinds of questions to raise — to help the other person examine their worldview.

Chapter 4 looks at principles involved in researching worldviews, preparing your self for worldview conversations, and then creating questions to examine a world view. See a chapter excerpt at “Where do I start?”

Identify the world view.
Analyze the world view — Is it true? a. Does it cohere? b. Does it correspond to reality? c. Does it work?
Affirm the truth in that worldview
Discover the error.

Pollard gives a worksheet to help you analyze a world view (p.57)

	Affirm the Truth	Discover the Error
1. Cohere?
2. Correspond?
3. Does it work?

You can see an except of Chapter 5, where he walks through a case study of the principles. “It’s Not for Me” from bethinking.org

Is this evangelism less difficult?

The rest of Evangelism Made Slightly Less Difficult goes on to examine worldviews, and help you think about potential conversations.

There is no formal gospel presentation offered, but a general analysis of conversational points. To engage in this style of evangelism conversation, you

have to be able to think philosophically,
have to be able to examine all sorts of worldviews, and
have to be able to reasonably dialogue about them.

I took entire courses in seminary on worldviews, read several books on worldviews. (A good example of an evangelist who understands world view is Ravi Zacharias of www.rzim.org.).

Does worldview research and philosophical analysis come easy to you? Or, does it overwhelm and confuse you? This is where one needs to find a evangelism style to fit your personality.