Many Christians don’t have the gift of evangelism, but all Christians are called to evangelize. That means all churches are called to train all their people in the art of evangelism—not just those who are naturally outgoing or confident.
“Evangelism is life and death,” said Becky Pippert, who writes and speaks extensively on the topic. “It determines where [people] spend eternity. It determines how we live our lives well and with meaning. It makes all the difference in the world that we know how to communicate our faith and to ask God to use us to bring people to Jesus Christ.”
As you equip your congregation for effective evangelism, keep these points in mind.
1. The Gospel of John is an excellent “manual” for evangelism.
John is the one book of the Bible whose express purpose is to show unsaved people how to have eternal life. In fact, its very purpose statement says, “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). That means it’s important to look at how the saving message is presented in John.
“Evangelism is life and death.”
The Gospel of John is filled with accounts of Jesus talking to unbelievers. Observe carefully what he said to Nicodemus (John 3), to the woman at the well (John 4), to the crowd he had fed with five loaves and two fish (John 6), and to Martha at Lazarus’ tomb (John 11). His message was beautifully simple: He proclaimed who he was—the giver of eternal life—and told them they could obtain that life by believing in him.
2. Evangelism is a skill and a process.
Outreach events are great, but personal evangelism—where spiritual conversations happen over time in everyday settings—is usually more effective. This is especially true in our postmodern world, where people largely reject absolute truth and traditional evangelistic methods like tracts and formal gospel presentations.
Randy Newman says evangelism requires three skills: declaring the gospel clearly and concisely, defending the gospel with apologetics, and dialoguing the gospel—weaving it into conversations to move people gradually toward readiness to hear the message. He says the key to this third skill is knowing how to ask questions—and how to answer their questions with more questions, which was Jesus’ modus operandi.
Churches should be training their members in the art of having skillful evangelistic conversations with their family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors in the course of everyday life. Make this a focus in your church’s teaching curriculum, and offer resources for your church members to use at home, such as Newman’s talk on The Gospel Coalition website and his book Questioning Evangelism, Norman and David Geisler’s Conversational Evangelism, and Tim Keller’s The Reason for God.
3. The urgent need for salvation does not always necessitate a high-pressure approach.
Modern Christianity has made evangelism all about visible, external outcomes: come forward, raise your hand, pray the “sinner’s prayer.” Many churches lean toward these approaches because they appeal to our obsession with numbers and results. But are they biblical?
“Make evangelism a conversation whose goal is
to bring your listener one step closer to faith in Christ.”
to bring your listener one step closer to faith in Christ.”
At its core, evangelism is really about persuasion, as we see when we observe Paul’s approach in Acts: he “reasoned with them from the Scriptures” (Acts 17:2), “debated” (Acts 18:19), was “persuading” (Acts 19:8), “conducted discussions” (Acts 19:9), and “tried to persuade them about Jesus” (Acts 28:23).
Rather than dumping a gospel presentation on someone and pressing them for an immediate response like a prayer or verbal commitment, make evangelism a conversation whose goal is to bring your listener one step closer to faith in Christ.
4. Evangelism requires patience and prayer.
In our earnest desire to see people come to faith in Christ, we are easily discouraged when it doesn’t happen right away. But we must let the Spirit of God work. Rather than pressuring people, we simply need to present to them the truth of who Jesus is—the Savior who offers them eternal life as a gift—and allow the Spirit to persuade them of that truth in time.
“We are not called to bring all persons to Christ
but simply to bring Christ to all persons.”
but simply to bring Christ to all persons.”
“[W]e may have to plant many spiritual seeds for a period of time before someone will seriously consider the person of Christ,” the Geislers wrote in Conversational Evangelism. “We may have to till the ground before we have the opportunity to plant a seed. We are not called to bring all persons to Christ but simply to bring Christ to all persons.”
Warren Wiersbe said that when we talk to God about people, we can talk to people about God. When we ask him, he prepares people’s hearts, directs conversations toward Christ, and gives us the words to say when the opportunities arise. It will likely take many conversations over many weeks, months, or even years. Or, sadly, they may never believe at all. But we aren’t responsible for the results—we must simply be faithful to sow the seed.