Many books on personal evangelism tell stories of personal fear of evangelism.
Evangelism is scary for many, for a variety of reasons?
Why does one have to be brave?
Here is a list that I have compiled over the years of teaching workshops and seminars and the most common responses that I get to the question
“Why are you afraid of evangelism?”
“But I am so afraid to start a conversation,” confessed a pastor.
“I have non-Christian friends, and spend time with them, but I’m so afraid of ruining my friendship.”
Does that describe you, even if you are not a pastor?
To address this fear, let me throw out my list of 7 Habits for Highly Effective Personal Evangelism. As I live these out, I find evangelism natural and non-destructive.
[Read more…] about 7 Habits for Highly Effective Personal EvangelismThis week, I spent time with Operation Mobilization Panamá, teaching in their school of missions.
Eight missionaries in training from 3 different countries gathered in a small town in the Western highlands of Panamá.
One of their biggest fears about doing missions is contact evangelism:
Rather than diagnose the different fears, I showed ways that people can overcome their evangelism fears by focusing on
Mastering these cover a lot of ground quickly in helping to minimize fear.
After some class time, the team took their dramas to the street.
We visited a AIDS treatment clinic, where the team visited with patients receiving treatment and then shared the good news of the gospel via drama and conversation.
A few first time visitors to this outreach dropped by to see what all the noise and commotion was about.
Each drama raised a question related to spiritual thirst.
At the end, a short message about that spiritual thirst led to an invitation to further conversation.
Our next stop was more drama at the town square.
Using dramas to gather a crowd, the team told the redemption story through a drama called “Light and Darkness.”
Afterwards, one of the team members raised the question of spiritual thirst and then invited conversations.
The spiritual conversations that followed are the key to effective open air evangelism in the way we practice it.
It gives us a chance to listen to the spiritual needs of people who are willing to engage us in conversation.
We are not manipulating the conversation, but looking for the advance work of God in preparing hearts for such a conversation.
Those who are not ready for conversations leave, but those who are at a place to talk seek us out.
The exciting outcome is that some people were ready at the harvest point in the process of evangelism. They were ready to make a prayer of faith and decide to start following Jesus.
Others were not yet there, but left with some gospel information and seeds that the Lord could use to further help people along in their process to faith.
When it was all over, I rejoice that there were total strangers who willingly placed their faith in Christ that day.
On top of that, the students had the following feedback to give me:
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As I mentioned in my previous post on contact evangelism as a evangelism method, I share my thoughts on how to train people and evangelists who are scared of this methodology.
How do I help such people improve their personal evangelism skills?
By far, when I ask people about their evangelism fears at personal evangelism training seminars or while giving coaching by phone, contact evangelism is one of the first or second fears that come right out.
I find mental images of “Contact Evangelism Gone Wild.”
The associations and fears with these images present a evangelism training challenge.
Some evangelists thrive on this manner of contact evangelism, regardless of how they come across to people.
Just yesterday, I met a gentleman who loves this style of evangelism. He admitted that he can sometimes get aggressive.
He feels the urgency of the gospel message and wants people to hear it. He believes that sin is so offensive to God that one just has to be bold and confront people on their sin.
Even as he told me how he evangelizes, he got very passionate, slamming his left fist into right hand for emphasis, and I could see how people would perceive him as aggressive.
A few months ago, I met another pastor who told me about his approach to evangelism in his neighborhood, “These people need you to get in their face, or else they won’t hear you at all. If you are not in their face, you’ll be ignored. That’s the problem with relational evangelists – you take too long.”
My wife was at the bus station for some travel.
The bus was delayed.
The delay stretched into 3-4 hours.
With each delay, the frustration level of the passengers increased.
People were getting tired, hungry, and angry. They hadn’t planned a delay, didn’t have money for food, and their plans for the evening they had at their destination were seriously messed up.
The contact evangelist team showed up and started telling these already tired and frustrated people they were sinners.
It didn’t go over well.
Sharing Jesus in this way with tired, angry, and hungry people nearly caused a riot. It resulted in loud voices, tense moments, shouting, and trading of hostile words.
The evangelists went away rejoicing, considering themselves worthy of suffering for the Lord.
The bus passengers were still mad at life circumstances, and very little was visibly accomplished for the kingdom.
Instead, it appeared to turn lots of people off to obnoxious Christians.
The stereotype is so embedded into our consciousness that it is funny.
You could probably say it with me.
“Standing on the street corner with a bullhorn.”
Other similar images rattle off:
Many of us have probably seen
My point is not to poke fun or diminish their work, but to say that this image of contact evangelism is sense of personal embarrassment to many people with whom I speak.
“That’s not for me, please don’t make me do that.”
In my next post, I will look at the place of contact evangelism as a methodology that has it’s place in evangelistic work.
The first time I ever knowingly did evangelism is when I answered telephones for the Billy Graham Crusade.
When Billy Graham came on TV, there was an 800-number that was on the bottom of the screen.
I was one who answered the phones that night.
I remember being nervous and anxious.
I did not want my phone to ring, even though I knew it was going to ring.
I was scared out of my mind.
It wasn’t even 8:00 when booth number 1, which was opposite me, was already on the telephone 3 minutes before 8.
I’m remember panicking. “How could that happen? Billy Graham is not even on TV.”
I listened in on the conversation.
The counselor was comparing Jesus with Buddha and Mohammed.
The panic rises up my back.
I’m thinking, “Oh, God. I cannot do this. I’m only 18 years old.”
I was afraid because I didn’t have all the answers to all the possible questions I suddenly imagined coming my way faster than hail falling during a thuderstorm.
I hadn’t memorized the 3-day seminar on apologetics between major religions.
I had only been a Christian for a few years.
I already felt clumsy with the material Billy Graham’s organization had already given me.
I was a disaster waiting to happen.
Since that day, I’ve learned a lot about how to communicate my faith without feeling awful, scared, or even obnoxious.
Faith sharing conversations have come naturally now once I learned a few principles of evangelism.
Evangelism can be as normal as breathing.
I’ve condensed these into a course on personal evangelism. Read more by clicking on the banner.
A young man came to me one evening during the camp meal and he asks,
“Do the non-elect go to hell?”
I was startled. This question was out of context, out of the blue, seeming to come from left field. I was in this guy’s life for just a couple of days while we were on a work team together at a service camp hours away from our homes. We were painting trailers, cleaning yards, and doing community service type work. Most of the conversations during this week of co-laboring with teenagers focused on mundane trivial stuff like sports teams and Hollywood gossip, and even who had started liking whom.
“Pastor, do the non-elect go to hell?”
This was a question out of the blue, asked by an 18 year old doing more than making conversation.
I’ve learned that questions like this are more likely a reflection of something deeper underneath. Eighteen year old boys don’t regularly ask me that question. Most don’t even think upon such things. Here is where I sensed the Holy Spirit underlining this moment, drawing my attention to this boy’s spiritual thirst.
Source: Flickr
I could sense this was not an academic question of curiosity, but something underneath was causing this man to think along these things. Instead of answering I ask: “Well, why do you ask?” And he says,
“Well, because I’m afraid that I’m not elect and that I’m going to hell.”
There it is. The real motive behind his question was a fear that he was separated from God.
A lot of practical evangelism training starts with us trying to manipulate the conversation to our required starting point. If our gospel starting point is man’s sinfulness, we have to steer the conversation to that point, attempting to convince people of their sinfulness. If our gospel starting point is God’s kingdom and our role in it, we have to steer the conversation there. So many scripts require us to attempt control of a conversation. Manipulating conversation is part of the root of the our conversational fear — we feel like we have to control the conversation. Intuitively, controlling the conversation doesn’t feel good. So how to we have a spiritual conversation that moves a person towards Christ without manipulation?
“Well, because I’m afraid that I’m not elect and that I’m going to hell.” There is the spiritual thirst. A fear that he was separated from God. His spirit was not bearing witness with God’s Spirit that he could cry, ‘Abba Father’. Our conversation naturally centers around Romans 8:16, “Our spirit bares witness with God’s Spirit that we can cry, ‘Abba Father.’” He is experientially aware that he is separated from God. This makes it very easy to talk about sin as the cause of that separation.
“On the last and greatest day of the Feast [of Tabernacles], Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.” (John 7.37) Scholars tell us that during that feast, the High Priest would go to the Pool of Siloam, take a golden pitcher, dip it into that pool, and carry it back to the temple. There he would pour that water out on the altar of sacrifice. At that moment the Levites would blow the trumpets, and the great crowd would cry out,
“With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” (Isaiah 12:3).
There would be leaping, and dancing, and shouting, and singing, and great hallelujah’s would fill the air. Jesus said something entirely different on that last day. He rewrote the litany:
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.” (v.37b)
“If anyone thirsts.” Jesus plainly taught that if anyone wants a relationship with God, it can be obtained. But notice that this claim to a relationship here is specifically addressed only to those who are spiritually thirsty. That thirst is the starting point of a person’s quest to seek God. That thirst is the restlessness of the human heart that drives one to Jesus.
“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God”(Psalm 42:1-2a).
“God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1).
“I spread out my hands to You; my soul longs for You like a thirsty land” (Psalm 143:6).
Does this describe the longing of our soul? A thirst for knowing God that is almost a desperation?
A recent survey of my readership showed that nearly one out of three do not know how or where to start a spiritual conversation with their friends about Jesus. Spiritual thirst is the starting point. Spiritual thirst is the initial contact point. Spiritual thirst is the need that causes people to seek the water to satiate it. Spiritual thirst is the experiential evidence that helps a person see their separation from God. Spiritual thirst is the launch point that makes conversation natural. Spiritual thirst is the conversational context to begin the conversation. Spiritual thirst is the open door to the heart when it comes time to starting a conversation about following Jesus.
I want to give you examples of how spiritual thirst can play out in real life.
In your journey to faith in Christ, what was the underlying need that drove you to start seeking for God? What helped you realize that you were separate from God? For more information on my thoughts on spiritual thirst, click some of the related links below. Talk #2 in the Fear Free Evangelism Study Course is all about spiritual thirst and the role it plays in drawing people to start following Jesus.
Well Water Image Source: Flickr, Department for International Development
