EvangelismCoach

spiritual journey

by Leave a Comment

Faith Story Number 2: Your Journey to Faith

Faith Story Number 2 is the story of your own journey to faith - How You became a Follower of Christ

The story of your journey to Jesus is one of the most crucial ways that people see how Jesus is relevant to your life.

You might have had a dramatic conversion like the Apostle Paul, or a gradual awakening like Timothy.

You might be able to point to a day and time like the Apostle Paul:

  • Walking forward to an altar call, or
  • Kneeling alone in your bedroom on night.
  • Praying a “I surrender” type prayer with a friend.

Or, if that wasn’t you, you might be able to describe a Timothy style awakening:

  • “It happened, but I’m not sure when.”
  • I’ve been to church all my life, but I know that I believe.
  • I grew up surrounded by believers and I’ve always known Jesus.

No matter how it happened, you need to know your story.

You need to know your journey story in depth so that you can share relevant portions at a moment’s notice.

Different ways to describe that Journey to Faith

Gary Rohrmayer’s book (Spiritual Conversations) maps out a spiritual journey to Christ in descriptive phrases

  1. Hostile
  2. Curious
  3. Actively Seeking
  4. Surrender

Everts and Schaupp (I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus) map out the spiritual journey in phases

  1. Distrust to trust – trusting a Christian
  2. Complacent to Curious – the shift of spiritual thirst.
  3. Closed to change to open to change – hardest threshold to cross (personal life)
  4. From Meandering to Seeking.
  5. The actual conversion to the Kingdom of God (surrender).

They also pick up the biblical image of planting from Mark 4:26-29

Kevin Harney uses this same metaphor as the basis of his book: Organic Outreach for Ordinary People: Sharing Good News Naturally.

Your Own Conversion Journey

I’m convinced that the Holy Spirit draws people to faith over time.

Even the Apostle Paul was prepared before that Damascus Road.The Journey to Faith of the Apostle Paul

In one of my seminar’s, I saw this in real life.  Read here on some of the faith stories I heard.

Each journey to faith story I listen to has more than one key turning point in the discovery of God.

That turning point might have been a

  • Sermon
  • Conversation
  • Life circumstances
  • A dream that God gave you.
  • Invitation to a church or event
  • Late night musings over deep issues.
  • A mystical and spiritual encounter with Jesus.

Think about your own conversion journey and the influences upon your life that shaped your faith.

  • Do you recall individual conversations with friends about God?
  • Do you recall different individuals who helped you while explored Christianity?
  • Do you remember important sermons where something “clicked” and it made sense?
  • Do you recall songs, art, poetry, or music that moved you to explore Christianity more?
  • Did you have some late nights pondering life issues such as is there life after death, how do you find meaning, how can you ?
  • How many times did you look at the beauty of nature and wonder about the nature of God?

Free Your Journey Story Download:

This 33 question discussion guide can help you think through elements of your story.

It’s a free download.

Get it here: https://www.evangelismcoach.org/free-download-personal-testimony/

Devotional questions to help you develop your Christian Testimony. Free Download from EvangelismCoach

 

by 3 Comments

A Sinner’s Prayer is not The Goal of Evangelism

His prayer 25 years ago failed.

My friend had obediently prayed with the well meaning evangelist.  My friend repeated the phrases the evangelist said, one after the next, confessing his sin, inviting Jesus into his heart.

But nothing happened.

There was no spiritual transaction,  no renewal in his heart, no conviction of sin, and no awareness of the power of God’s grace.

My friend’s life didn’t change.  Twenty five years later, he simply reflects:

[Read more…] about A Sinner’s Prayer is not The Goal of Evangelism

by 2 Comments

7 Observations from Fox News’ Kirsten Powers’ Testimony

Christianity Today recently released an article you may have seen, Fox News’ Highly Reluctant Jesus Follower.  It’s a worthy article to read Kirsten Powers’ first hand personal testimony of how she became a follower of Jesus.

Kristen Powers' Testimony

It is getting a lot of airplay at the moment (I must have seen it 30 times already in personal Facebook feed, and uncountable times in my Twitter feed).    If you haven’t read it yet, click on the link to read it.

Her testimony shows me 7 important principles of personal evangelism that we can all remember as we share our faith in Christ with people who mean a lot to us.

[Read more…] about 7 Observations from Fox News’ Kirsten Powers’ Testimony

by Leave a Comment

Do you need to refresh your devotional life?

Personal Evangelism will reignite your personal devotional times. Read how

Does your devotional life seem a little dull and routine?

Want to spark a fire for a new round of momentum to keep up your spiritual disciplines?

Then make sure you get involved in sharing your faith with people on a regular basis.

As you talk about your own relationship with Christ with spiritually thirsty people, you will re-discover an element of joy that may have been lost because your devotional life has gone stale.

conversations

When you answer sincere questions from a seeker who is talking about his or her faith journey, you’ll re-discover a refreshed desire to pray for those around you who don’t know Christ.

When your friend gets clarity on misconceptions about Jesus and you continued to see their renewed interest, you’ll recall the joy of your own discoveries of faith as you came to know the grace of Christ.

But sometimes your friends won’t listen.

When they shut down those conversational doors, you’ll get frustrated at their spiritual blindness (2 Corinthians 4:4).

Since you were once spiritually blind too, then start praying for their spiritual eyes.

When they argue with your presentation of Jesus, you might experience the grief of their current rejection of the savior.  Take that to prayer.

When they ask a question you can’t answer or explain, you might experience a desire to find out the answers and grow in your own understanding of your relationship with Christ.

Personal evangelism renews a devotional life.

Recently, I walked with my friend.  That is one way I practice evangelism in the course of my life.

One of the discussion items that came up was the current topic of my small group – how do we live out our faith in the “fear of the Lord?”  After all, Proverbs 1:7 says

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

That opened up nearly an hour long two way conversation that dwelt in themes like:

  • How to develop a relationship with God
  • What about the people who’ve never heard the gospel?
  • “All religions are true” and why that doesn’t make any sense.
  • How sin affects each person no matter how good they think they are.
  • How Jesus reconciled us to God so that we might have a relationship with Him.
  • How many good works does one have to do to secure the blessing of God and earn a spot in heaven.

His spiritual curiosity was fascinating.  I enjoyed the “a-ha” moments he found as we talked about the biblical truths and clarified some of his misconceptions.

As he started visiting my church after several personal invitations, I’m seeing forward progress in his journey to faith.

I found myself renewed in a desire to pray for his discovery of Jesus.

I wanted to refresh some reading of books on answering objections or evangelistic conversations, such as God Behaving Badly, or Tactics.

My devotional life has perked up once again.

Do Something

Today, have a conversation with a friend about your faith and put a fresh wave of joy in your devotional life.

Here are some evangelistic conversation starters if you need a little help.  Click on the image:

 

Collection of Questions to Use in Personal Evangelism

by Leave a Comment

Video: Evangelism Cannot Be Our Focus

Is it possible to be too focused on the outcomes of evangelism?

It can be when evangelism is taught as a sales technique to get a sinner’s prayer.   It can be when evangelism training is reduced to a set of step by step skills that are equivalent to sales techniques.

  • Ask leading questions.
  • Minimize parts of the gospel you find distasteful.
  • Don’t let people count the cost, but push for a decision today.
  • Show the benefits of following Jesus: eternal life, moral behavior, power of overcome problems.
  • Answer objections
  • Go for the close

I’ve read enough books on personal evangelism to know that sometimes we can get focused to much on the conversion moment, as if that is the ultimate goal.  Books like that make evangelism too pragmatic.

I’m guilty of sometimes reducing evangelism to pragmatic methods to get a conversion prayer.  Some of the people that I have “led to the Lord” are not part of a local church.   They even prayed with me to receive Christ, but alas, some of them are not disciples.

One could take comfort in “Some of the seeds fall in the rock soil,” but I wonder if sometimes that is used as an excuse for sloppy and truly incomplete evangelism.

Evangelism can’t be the focus

Evangelism in this manner cannot be the focus.  In the video below, Alan Hirsch maps out

  • pre-conversion discipleship
  • post conversion discipleship

If you recognize that evangelistic activity covers the whole journey of a person’s coming to faith, then this video makes sense.

If you are stickler for a tight definition of evangelism as the verbal sharing of the good news, than this video can help you realize that all the activity leading up to that verbal sharing of the gospel is part of that pre-conversion journey of discipleship.

You might plant a seed.

You might water a seed.

You might harvet the seed.

In the video clip above Alan Hirsch says,

“We must not stop sharing the good news, but here’s the deal, here’s the wonderful thing, it gets done along the way as you do discipleship. Great commission is just about going to disciple the nations and you know what happens…as you disciple them evangelism takes place, because it’s done in the context of discipleship.”

Do you want ongoing ideas delivered to your inbox?

Each week, I send out new articles to help you grow your church through personal evangelism, invitations, improving your greeter ministry, and refreshing your vision for church hospitality.

Sign up here.

by 1 Comment

How I do Personal Evangelism

What is your evangelism style?

Do you prefer to warn the stranger of their sin by open air evangelism?

Do you prefer to wait until some one asks you for the reason you believe?

Or maybe you prefer to invite people to your church where they can find a community of believers to help them grow in their discovery of Christ.

If you’re the preaching pastor, is your style to connect every sermon to the gospel?

There are many different styles of evangelism, but only ONE gospel.

There are different approaches to sharing that gospel, but only ONE gospel.

So my preferred style of sharing my faith doesn’t diminish other styles, as long as we get to sharing the gospel of Christ along the way. [Read more…] about How I do Personal Evangelism

Google
Send this to a friend