Evangelism, Part 1
The Joy of Sharing the Good News
My prayer is that each of us would develop a lifestyle of evangelism and as a body, cultivate a culture of evangelism where we are encouraging each other in this regard; sharing stories of gospel conversations in small groups, learning from one another’s experiences, and praying specifically for people we’re engaging for the sake of their salvation and the glory of God.
This is a subject I taught in the past as far back as 2004 and developed over time. In addition to my own thoughts, I drew from a variety of sources but did not cite all of them in my notes, which would have been too tedious to mention in a Sunday School class. So, if you discover some of this material elsewhere, that’s the reason. Honestly, I cannot recall all the resources I used.
The purpose of this series is to offer you a biblical approach to evangelism, to help you develop a lifestyle of proclaiming Jesus over time, and to equip you to present the gospel with clarity and confidence. Personally, I find Christians tend to overthink and overcomplicate evangelism. My goal is to help you have real conversations with real people about a real Savior they genuinely need.
At our core, we are beings created in the image of God for the glory of God to fulfill the mission of God. While the Christian life involves much more than evangelism, it is certainly not less. We need to ask ourselves if we have lost personal ownership of the mission. In one Lifeway survey where Christians were asked to rank eight different attributes of a growing believer, evangelism was placed last. Why so low? Here are some reasons:
- Most believers do not consider themselves public speakers.
- Most of the folks who teach evangelism training tend to be aggressive A type personalities who proclaim Jesus passionately and genuinely and want (and perhaps expect) others to as well. But most people aren’t wired this way so it can be intimidating.
- Some say, “I met the Lord and started telling others how he changed my life. Then I took evangelism training and suddenly began to wonder if I was doing it all wrong."
The fact is, God used normal, everyday Christians in various elements of society to evangelize the Roman Empire. Michael Green notes: “In contrast to the present day, when Christianity is highly intellectualized and dispensed by professional clergy … in the early days the faith was spontaneously spread by informal evangelists and had its greatest appeal among the working class” (Evangelism in the Early Church).
God has wired each of us differently. The goal is not to morph into a person you were never meant to be but to be a living, loving witness in your context as God made you and continues to shape you in Christ. We are all on a spectrum in terms of our experience and comfort level. This will always be the case in a local church, so we need to rid ourselves of any sense of comparison or feelings of inferiority or superiority. On this spectrum, there is the confident witness who has led people to Christ and trained others. There is the believer who has shared the gospel more than a few times but has yet to develop a consistent lifestyle of evangelism. And then there is the novice or someone who either has never been encouraged or trained to evangelize or is generally too afraid to try.
Please don’t shy away because you have fears in this area. Almost all Christians have them to some degree. It’s more common than you think. Talking with the Lord regularly about your witness will help to overcome the fears that hinder you. For many of us, witnessing is uncomfortable. It's a “have to” not a “get to.” It would be fair to say, I’ve missed more opportunities than I’ve taken over the course of my life, but God still uses people just like you and me. So, I want to encourage you to begin praying a simple daily prayer. Here is a suggested prayer: “Lord, grant me an opportunity to speak with someone in my network of relationships about Jesus, the wisdom to see it, and the courage to take it.” Opportunities may or may not be frequent, but at least there’s a willingness on your part to be used by God to spread the good news.
Love for others can be expressed in many ways. One significant intersection of your love for Jesus and your love for other people is helping them to know him. A colleague or friend looks up to you and asks, “How did you make it?” You respond, “I didn’t, at least not alone. I’ve discovered there is more to this life than pursuing a career, taking on challenges, and overcoming obstacles. God made a remarkable world and made us uniquely to know him, but sin screwed up everything including each of our lives.” That’s just one example of how to begin a conversation.
God created you for his glory. One way to magnify the Lord and his love is to advance his gospel with the gifts, talents, and opportunities he gave to you. Someone asked this question, “What if you saw how the passion of your life, those things that bring you joy, that bring you great satisfaction were given to you by God to be used for something bigger, as avenues to spread his fame?” The Lord placed you where you are for a reason, including the areas you are passionate about. If you dare to ask God for a broken heart for the lost, and if God answers, then almost any evangelistic approach will do as long as it’s true to the gospel.