Fear of the e word
Many factors keep believers from sharing their faith.
by Chris Walker
For four friends of mine, what started as a simple subway trip on a vacation in New York became a frightening encounter.
Coming to the big city from small-town America and having seen way too many crime dramas set in New York, they were already afraid of being mugged before they ever stepped foot in the city.
Still, a Saturday morning seemed like a relatively safe time to travel. So that morning the four tourists got onto a subway car with only a handful of other people on board. Just before the doors closed, however, six intimidating-looking men jumped on board. The tourists tensed. One instinctively drew her purse quickly under her arm and snuggled in tighter to her male friend. All four felt a fight-or-flight adrenaline rush.
The doors swooshed closed. The train jerked forward. The tourists felt trapped. Then one of the men stood up in the enclosed subway car and bellowed, “Have you ever thought about what happens when you DIE?” That final word was drawn out in a long syllable for effect as he made eye contact with every captive passenger. The tourists were now convinced they wouldn’t live to their next destination. Frozen in fear, they continued to listen to the man now in charge of the crowd.
“If you were to die today and stand before the gates of heaven, and you were asked, ‘Why should I let you in?’ . . . are you prepared to answer? Are you prepared to step into eternity now?”
The tourists couldn’t have cared less; they just wanted out of the subway car. Eventually the speaker condemned his listeners to hell—and then passed the hat for an offering. Needless to say, the tourists didn’t give a dime, and they escaped at the next stop.
When it comes to personal evangelism, the street preacher is the negative go-to stereotype. The common reaction is “I don’t want to do that.” Though a few are indeed gifted to be effective street preachers (and I’ve done it myself in parks and city streets), the rest of us want a more natural way to share our faith.
Easier done than said
The problem for many people is that talking about faith is difficult.
In the final hours of my mother’s life, she whispered, “I’ve always believed in Jesus; I just didn’t talk about it.” Others have told me that they hope that their good behavior is enough of a sermon that they don’t need to say anything. Ernest L. Gardner III, interim pastor at Philadelphia Presbyterian Church in Mint Hill, North Carolina, says, “I have found that cradle Presbyterians are more accustomed to having their church doors open to visitors than [they are] to engaging others directly about what it means to be a follower of Christ.”
There are many reasons we choose not to talk about our faith. We don’t want to participate in high-pressure tactics or in the kinds of emotional manipulation seen on television. We don’t want our friends to think we’re foolish or simple-minded. Nor do we want to be perceived as combative or disrespectful of others’ deeply held religious beliefs. Laura Long, pastor of Clinchfield Presbyterian Church in Marion, North Carolina, says, “People don’t want to be perceived as nosy about another person’s beliefs.”
We may feel that we lack the skills or knowledge to effectively discuss being a follower of Jesus. I remember hearing an evangelist compare, point by point, the beliefs of Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. I began to panic because I knew I couldn’t give a presentation like that. When we’re challenged about the existence of God, or about why we believe that God is love and that God sent Jesus to die for our sins, we may feel as if we can’t give a reasonable defense of our belief.
In a way, we sometimes undermine ourselves. If we aren’t nurturing our relationship with Christ, we’ll miss out on God’s work in our life; we won’t recognize how God is transforming us, leading us, using us, or teaching us. And that can affect how we witness to others. According to pastor Geoff McLean of Christ Presbyterian Church in Fairfax, Virginia, “If we don’t appreciate the changes that God works in our life, we have little to say . . . about the relevance of following Jesus.”
Finally, we may feel uncomfortable about sharing our faith because we haven’t thought about how to explain the gospel in a simple way. A friend once asked me, “Chris, what is the gospel?” My obtuse, 10-minute, directionless explanation taught me that, even though I had two seminary degrees, I couldn’t explain the gospel in simple terms. I was not prepared.
A logical path: relationships
One way we can prepare for sharing our faith is by focusing on our relationships. Relationships provide one of the primary pathways for the good news to spread. Andrew brought his brother Peter to Jesus, and Philip brought his friend Nathanael (John 1:40–51). The Samaritan woman told her neighbors about the remarkable prophet she had encountered at a well (John 4:28–30), and Matthew invited his friends to a dinner party where they could meet Jesus (Matt. 9:9–13).
“I am more than convinced that authentic evangelism is relational,” says Ray Jones, coordinator for evangelism in the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s Office of Evangelism and Church Growth. “You have to be in relationship with people, where you care about them, where you invest in their lives, where you talk about your faith.” To help Presbyterians to do just that, Jones’s office has created Engage, an evangelism curriculum available in both print and video. “Engage helps church members become aware of the people in their lives whom they already have relationships with,” Jones says, “and to be more intentional in developing those relationships where faith stories can be shared.”
Edwin Gonzalez Gertz, pastor of Light of Hope Presbyterian Church in Marietta, Georgia, hosts dinners for international students where honest and unpressured discussions about the Christian faith are the norm. “I’ve learned to hang out in the community and talk about my faith without passing judgment,” he says.
The congregation has grown by developing relationships built on the gospel. He offers this example: “A pregnant teenager visited our church. Feeling the love of Christ and the welcome of the church, she brought her whole family the following week. As they’ve grown in understanding the grace of Christ, we’ll be baptizing family members later this year.”
Chris Brown, copastor of the Upper Room in Pittsburgh, says he and copastor Mike Gehrling made relationships a key focus of their ministry when they founded the Upper Room in 2008. “We chose to become bivocational pastors,” he says in his blog (christopherbrown.wordpress.com). “Like the apostle Paul, who had a trade of making tents which at times supported his ministry, we chose to take second jobs that would both ease the financial burden of starting a new church and give us additional ways to build relationships for our ministries.”
For Brown, that originally meant working part-time at a cafe, which, he says, “gave me more opportunities to develop meaningful relationships than I could have ever imagined.” Now he divides his work between the Upper Room and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where he coordinates its church-planting emphasis.
At the Upper Room he regularly reminds members about the congregation’s core values of being sent out to be in relationships and to bear witness. Once a month, as part of the worship service, a member talks about vocation and how he or she sees God at work in his or her relationships.
Making conversations meaningful
Shannon Kiser, parish associate at Riverside Presbyterian Church in Sterling, Virginia, and regional catalyst for 1001 New Worshiping Communities, says, “We must rethink how we talk about our faith, about how Jesus became alive for us, and how that might connect with someone who needs to hear it.”
These basic steps can help:
1. Talk about your own experiences with Jesus, not just your church. Talking about your church is easy, but talking about your own experiences is more meaningful. You might describe how the wisdom of Scripture is helping you in some difficult season in your life. You might talk about how you see the Lord answering particular prayers. Or you might describe how the Lord has used you in some ministry.
2. Talk about how you became a follower of Jesus, not just a member of your church. I’ve found that many Presbyterians have difficulty answering the question “When did Jesus become real to you?” It’s not that they don’t have faith but that they lack words to express that faith. Think back to some season in your life when it was clear that you had an encounter with Jesus. Try to describe that experience without using overly religious words.
Take the next step
As you ponder how you and your congregation might grow as evangelists, know that you are not alone in this sometimes difficult journey.
The Presbyterian Mission Agency’s Evangelism and Church Growth ministry area is here to support you.
» To watch the Engage video series, download related resources, and order the three-part printed curriculum: pcusa.org/engage
» To partner with New Beginnings as you envision a new future for your congregation and come up with a strategy to make it happen: whatisourfuturestory.com
» To connect with staff, find more resources, and get information on the next Evangelism and Church Growth Conference: pcusa.org/ecg
3. Talk about the gospel of Christ, not just your church’s weekend message.You may find it easy to talk about Sunday’s sermon or even why you were moved by the anthem the choir sang. While those are good to talk about, we need to know the core content of the gospel of Jesus Christ and be able to explain it in a meaningful way to people who may have never read the Bible.
In my workshops, I don’t ask people to memorize an elaborate systematic theology. The only thing I ask people to memorize is the outline to a simple gospel explanation.
There are plenty of gospel summaries available online. Find one that resonates with you and with how you awakened to grace. Pastor Gary Cecil of Grace Presbyterian Church in Panama City, Florida, sums up this approach: “Make sure you don’t get stuck in a canned presentation that doesn’t fit you.”
You can do this
Personal evangelism doesn’t have to be hard. You can do this without becoming the obnoxious street evangelist, the bumbling incompetent who doesn’t know what to say, or the disrespectful person demanding others to convert. Evangelism can be part of the normal conversational ebb and flow of daily life. Evangelism can happen more frequently when you’re intentional in forming genuine relationships with people who don’t attend church. When you grow more comfortable talking about your own faith, you can experience the addictive joy of helping others awaken to faith.
Chris Walker is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He conducts evangelism training seminars throughout North and South America and offers evangelism advice through his website, evangelismcoach.org.
