Here are some reflections that Greg Stier made at the end of an article that he wrote titled, “Does Street Evangelism Work?”:
Street evangelism can be effective in making converts but is rarely effective in making disciples.
I believe that thousands of people have trusted in Christ over the years through our door-to-door outreaches at Dare 2 Share. But very few of these people have been integrated into local churches. This has not been due to a lack of trying, but a lack of relationship with them.
Evangelism should start with our immediate circle of influence, our friends, family, co-workers and neighbors.
I am guilty of sometimes using cold-turkey evangelism as a cheap substitute for the “meat and potatoes” of relational evangelism with my own neighbors. Don’t get me wrong. I have witnessed to many of my neighbors. But if I applied the same relentlessness I have with my street evangelism to my neighborhood, then I believe many more of those who live around me would not only know Christ by now, but be plugged into healthy, growing churches.
That changes today.
I choose to make my primary base of evangelistic operations my neighborhood and the Starbuck’s that I frequent. These are the lost people that I know. No longer will I use my spontaneous conversations with strangers as a salve for my hit-and-miss evangelism with my neighbors and barista buddies.
As God allows, we should share the gospel with the strangers we encounter and do our best to disciple them if they accept Christ.
Jesus was constantly sharing the good news with strangers, but He did this in the context of meeting their needs and engaging them at the deepest level. He never hesitated to turn a conversation from water to “The Living Water,” from bread to “The Bread of Life,” from the earthly to the heavenly. He was immensely relational and undeniably relentless.
With this in mind, I will still share Jesus on the plane, in the streets, anywhere and everywhere as God opens the door. But I will do my best to make sure others genuinely understand the message of Christianity. My goal is not for them to say “yes” with their mouths so I can feel good about my witnessing opportunity, but to genuinely say “yes” in their hearts. After all, Romans 10:9-10 reminds us, “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”
Our evangelistic efforts should be done relationally and relentlessly.
Whether we are sharing Christ with our friends, family, neighbors or strangers, we must depend on the Holy Spirit to give us balance. Some situations require more relentlessness and some a more relational approach.
Stier’s main point in this article seems to be that yes, street evangelism still “works.” But, it is more geared towards making converts rather than disciples. And hence, the logical flow of numbers 1, 2, and 3 above. Here are some questions to consider:
a. Who are those in my immediate “inner circle” that I could be sharing my faith with?
b. Am I asking the Holy Spirit everyday to lead me towards strangers whom he would have me share my faith with?
1. Stand on the corner and scream “REPENT!” at others. If it didn’t work for Jeremiah the prophet, it won’t work for you.
2. Break into a public high school and shove gospel tracts into the lockers. Trust me on this. I’ve done it…seriously.
3. Wear a “Ready to die…ask me why” T-Shirt. I’ve done this too. It’s not effective, but it did scare people.
4. Go into a bookstore and secretly slip gospel tracts into all of the New Age/Witchcraft books. Have I done this? Maybe…okay, yes.
5. Put gospel tracts in the hands of the manequins at J.C. Pennys. While it looks like the fashion dummy is offering the gospel tract it’s the real dummy that gets thrown out of the mall. Suffice it to say that I’ve met many security guards this way and they are nothing like the guy in “Mall Cop.”
6. Use fake $100 dollar bills with “the gospel” on them to get people excited that they found a $100 dollar bill and then get them ticked off when they realize that they didn’t.
7. Go on Christian television and offer the gospel as a way to get rich on earth. Does anybody have a barf bag?
8. Sky dive from 3,000 feet into an outdoor Atheist’s convention with “John 3:16″ painted on your parachute.
9. Yell out “I love Jesus how ’bout you?” in the middle of class.
10. Any kind of Christian bumper sticker (especially if you’re a bad driver!)
Read the rest of the article here to see, then, how we are to share our faith. I hope you all are encouraged by this as I was.
I was recently thumbing through an old, out-of-print edition of Letters of C. S. Lewis (Edited, with a Memoir, by W. H. Lewis) that I found tucked away at an old antique furniture store (for Linda). And, in it, I came across this little gem – a letter that Lewis wrote to a girl in America who wrote asking him to give her advice about writing. Here it is:
1. Turn off the radio (substitute in computer, iPod, T.V., etc.).
2. Read all the good books you can, and avoid nearly all magazines (I wonder if he’d include blogs in that, as well. Hmm…)
3. Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again.
4. Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about…
5. Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn’t, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story it is terribly easy just to forget that you have not told the reader something that he wants to know – the whole picture is so clear in your own mind that you forget that it isn’t the same in his.
6. When you give up a bit of work don’t (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.
7. Don’t use a typewriter. The noise will destroy your sense of rhythm, which still needs years of training.
8. Be sure you know the meaning (or meanings) of every word you use.
Perhaps one of the most important truths that Christians must cling to is a thorough understanding of what true, biblical faith and repentance means. Greg Gilbert, in his extremely practical and simple book titled What Is the Gospel? explains just that. For the next few entries, I will be sharing some excerpts from the book. Here’s the first:
Faith Is Reliance
Faith is one of those words that’s been misused for so long that most people have no idea what it really means. Ask someone on the street to describe faith, and while you might get some respectful-sounding words, the heart of the matter will most likely be that faith is belief in the ridiculous against all evidence.
…
It’s a charade, a fun and comforting game that people are free to engage in if they wish, but with no real connection to the actual world. Children believe in Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. Mystics believe in the power of stones and crystals. Crazy people believe in fairies. And Christians, well, they believe in Jesus.
Read the Bible, though, and you’ll find that faith is nothing like that caricature. Faith is not believing in something you can’t prove, as so many people define it. It is, biblically speaking, RELIANCE. A rock-solid, truth-grounded, promise-founded trust in the risen Jesus to save you from sin.
Paul tells us about the nature of faith in Romans 4, in his discussion about Abraham. here’s how he describes Abraham’s faith:
18In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” 19He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which wasas good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. 20No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21fully convinced thatGod was able to do what he had promised. (Romans 4:18-21)
Despite all that was working against God’s promise – Abraham’s age, his wife’s age and barrenness – Abraham believed what God had said. He trusted in God without wavering and relied on him to accomplish his promises. Abraham’s was not a perfect faith, of course; Ishmael’s birth to Hagar proves that Abrahamat first tried to RELY on his own schemes to fulfill God’s promises. But having repented of that sin, Abraham in the end put his faith in God. He RELIED on him, as Paul says, “fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”
The gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to do the very same thing – to put our faith in Jesus, RELY on him, and trust him to do what he has promised to do.
So this is what faith is biblically. Tomorrow, we’ll go into further detail about exactly what we are to be RELYING on Jesus for. But for the meantime, some questions to think through for yourself:
What was your understanding of faith prior to reading this? Was your “faith” in Jesus, as Gilbert puts it, like believing in the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, etc? If not, then what was it?
How does Gilbert’s explanation of faith as RELIANCE on something differ from this notion of faith as casually believing in Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, etc.?
What or who are you practically RELYING on in your life currently? That is to say, what or who, if it was not in your life right now, would you feel as if something important was missing? (i.e. friends, money, reputation, intellect, God? Bible? Affection for Christ?)
