Easter Evangelism

Glen Scrivener, the director of Speak Life, writes about where he's got it wrong in evangelism. Hopefully it will encourage us to scatter the good seed of the gospel this Easter...

This is a dangerous topic. It’s not dangerous because my confessions of failure will spoil my otherwise flawless projection of Evangelistic Success. No, in the words of Austin Powers, that train has already sailed. 

I’m the evangelist who once met a man who only spoke Aramaic so I tried out on him the only Aramaic I knew. Perhaps you know it too. Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani. (I know! What was I thinking? The words of Christ on the cross!). His eyes widened at the man with a Bible who seemed desperate to communicate just how godforsaken he was. He simply patted my hand and moved on. I like to think he silently prayed for me in that moment, thus redeeming the whole encounter.

Or the time I was reading Luke 12 on the tube and just had to share verse 32 with my neighbour. He leapt from his seat and exited the train just as the doors were closing. I’m pretty sure it was not his intended stop.

Or the talk I gave, very recently, where I put—onto the lips of Jesus no less!—a swear word which, after 20 years in the UK I hadn’t grasped was a swear word. As my hearers gasped I thought they were falling under unusual conviction of sin. My friend put me into my misery at the end of the meeting.

And it’s not just amusing faux pas. There’s the time I invited a dozen friends to the Carols Service with the promise of mulled wine and mince pies when actually they felt ambushed by a talk speaking frankly about hell. God used it all but my invitation should have been prosecuted under the Trades Descriptions Act. Or the Christmas talks I’ve given when there’s been the palpable sense, bubbling away under the surface: “Sure, you’re enjoying your once-a-year sing-song now, but where have you sinners been the OTHER 51 weeks of the year!”

Lots of mistakes to share. But, really, the greatest mistakes in my evangelism have been the faux pas I didn’t make. The awkward silences I didn’t provoke. The sneers I never got because I never raised the name of Jesus in the first place. My greatest failures have been the conversations I never got around to having with my friends and family.

You see the danger of writing an article like this is that we can all identify ways evangelism goes wrong. But it’s worth remembering how D.L. Moody responded to criticisms of his evangelistic failures. “I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.” This is not a free pass for every theologically questionable and relationally tone-deaf approach. But it’s worth thinking about.

Jesus’ strategy in evangelism was far less focused on success and far more focused on supply — supplying gospel words and letting the results be what the results are going to be. Think of Matthew chapter 13 — less of a strategy, more of a scattergy.  

Some will be hardened (v. 19), some will be shallow (vv. 20–21), some will be choked by worries and consumerism (v. 22), but some will welcome the word enduringly and fruitfully (v. 23). Our concern is with the supply of the word, not the success. If this soil won’t hear, we sow on another. And another. And another. If this hearer is hard, we don’t get out the crowbar. We don’t beat them into submission. We don’t cry foul because they’ve sneered at us. Sneerers gonna sneer (as Taylor Swift almost said). We sow into the next heart, and the next, and the next.

There is good soil. We have good seed. So don’t try to avoid evangelistic failure. Don’t focus on evangelistic success. Focus on the supply. Scatter. The fields are still white for harvest.

This post was first published on the The Good Book Company blog in 2019.

How awesome Jesus is

The elders are currently reading a book called The Soul Winning Church: Six Keys to Fostering a Genuine Evangelistic Culture. We'd love you to read it too - we've just reached chapter 4, about Personal Evangelism.

The authors - J. A. Medders and Doug Logan - say the essence of evangelism is simply telling people how awesome Jesus is. They write:

'People are often nervous about evangelism because they don't want to wade into the culture's hot topics, or they don't feel equipped to engage in apologetic arguments. The apostle Peter helps us reframe the content of our evangelism in 1 Peter 2:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2:9-10, ESV).

Most of this passage is about who we are, as believers. After framing our identity, Peter sets the activity that flows from that identity - "that you may proclaim." Peter sees Christians as proclaimers, heralds, "make-knowners" of the gospel and the excellencies of Jesus. He says we are to proclaim "the excellencies of him."

In other words, the task and privilege of every Christian is to simply tell others how awesome Jesus is.

We can tell them how wonderful he is. We can tell them how incredible he is. We don't have to get embroiled in an argument. Proclamation isn't argumentation. We don't have to have every answer. We can say, "I don't know - let me think about that and get back to you. But for the moment, can I tell you why I believe Jesus is the key to life and eternity?" We can think about the ways in which Jesus is amazing - his perfections, sinlessness, deity, kindness, mercy, power, miracles, teaching - and make them known. And most of all, we can talk about how incredible it is that Jesus would die on a Roman cross for sinners like us. We can share how amazing it is that Jesus would die in our place and that he would rise again from the dead and is reigning in heaven, offering real joy-producing, life-altering forgiveness for anyone who believes in him. We can talk about amazing grace, non-expiring mercy, eternal life, and the love of God.

What amazes you about Jesus? What do you love about Jesus? Talk about that with people.'

They go on to say that people really are ready to hear. Apparently, according to a 2021 study, 66% of people are open or very open to a conversation about the Christian faith. In the UK, according to the 2022 Talking Jesus Survey, 75% of non-christians who had a conversation with a Christian friend about Jesus felt comfortable doing so, and 33% of them left the conversation wanting to know more about Jesus. That's one in three! Could it be that more people are willing to talk about Christianity than we tend to think?

Reaching Families

The new academic year is well underway and so here's a lightly edited article by Ed Drew, the Director of Faith in Kids, about how to involve our children in evangelism:

I was in the first month of working for a church. I was young. I had no children. I was sat in the home of a couple from church (who I had only just met). That week their five year old had told them a story from school. She had got together with her best friend from church and had cornered a boy from their class. With their prey unable to leave, she told him, “You’re going to hell if you don’t become a Christian.”

There was a silence. My heart was in my mouth. My eyes bulged. I thought they were going to say, “That is the problem with our church. We’re raising closed-minded, bigoted children.”

Instead, they said, “She wants to be an evangelist! We told her a few other ways she could do it, but isn’t it great that she wants to tell others?”

I was stunned. This was the beginning of seeing how parents can do outreach with their children. Evangelism always takes courage. The awkwardness can be real. The goal is worth it: whole families turning to Christ. Those families are best reached by Christian families.

With a pre-schooler, you make friends

A new baby often shows us that we have no idea how to be a parent! We need help, support and advice. Ideally, that care would be local because it’s hard to travel with young children. This is why you talk to strangers as you push a swing or as you walk the streets with a screaming baby. Let your friends benefit from your amazingly supportive church family. Show them that having a baby does not need to be lonely, they can have a community. They need help!

With a 5-11 year old, you partner

At school, your children are making friends on their own. Partner with them as they learn how to show Jesus Christ to those friends. Get to know the parents of their friends. These are the families that your family can then pray for and hang out with.

Talk to your children about who to invite to church services, events or clubs. Talk to them about what this could mean for friends and their families. Pray with them. And when their friends can’t come, don’t want to come, or say they’ll come but don’t turn up, acknowledge your child’s disappointment, share their sadness and then pray some more.

With a teen, you support

Your children have grown up. You are less likely to know their school friends. You are much less likely to know their friends’ parents. The responsibility for their evangelism is now theirs and not yours.

Your children are now deciding if they want their friends to hear the gospel, and how they might make that happen. Support them. Don’t tell them what to do. Ask them good questions. Help them with their questions. You can make it a normal topic of conversation, and you can pray for them, and with them.

As with all parenting, practice what you preach. Get every kind of person around your table for meals. Exclude none. Love freely. Talk honestly. Listen well. Let’s reach out to other families with the gospel, together with the whole of our own family.