THE MAGIC KEY TO EVANGELISM<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
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I teach and write plays. People tell me I'm very good at it. And although I graduated missionary school, I'm not an evangelist, I'm very bad at it. In my years working as a professional missionary, I converted one person per five years. My job was assisting other missionaries when they ran across cultists, modernists and other trouble cases. For what I am really good at is cults, evolution and other logic problems. Once I helped the other missionaries clear away all the problems, they took over and did the conversions.
Yet when I teach Sunday schools, my students who know that I used to be a missionary, but not my record, ask me for the "magic formula of evangelism". The surefire technique that has to work. Now that question I can answer. There isn't one. And now I'll tell you what it is.
There's only one way to Heaven, but a million ways to witness. There is no one script with a guarantee of success. As a professional script writer, I can tell you that no one likes being spoken to via canned lines. Worse, since they haven't read your script, they don't know their lines, and tend to ad-lib all the wrong responses.
Read up on the great evangelists. Few follow a set pattern.
Nearsighted Jonathan Edwards buried his nose in his sermon notes, and only looked up now and then to ask, "I say, would you mind holding that weeping and wailing down a bit? I'm trying to read you my sermon."
Charles Finney sometimes just said "How goes it with your soul today?" instead of hello, and left a trail of people on their knees, weeping and praying when they realized their soul wasn't in such hot shape.
St. Ambrose evangelized St. Augustine by not reading. St. Ambrose was one of the few people in the Roman Empire who could read without reading the words out loud. It is harder than it sounds since there were no spaces between words, no punctuation and every book written before printing was invented was a single run on sentence. Pre-Saint Augustine went to see this alleged wise Christian and found him sitting in the garden staring at a book on his lap without reading it. (No sound). He leaned over the Bishop’s shoulder and saw it was a New Testament. St. Ambrose “ignored” Augustine and kept flipping from verse to verse, as Augustine mumbled the verses over his shoulder. When all his questions and doubts had been answered, Augustine slipped out. St. Ambrose's "Silent Sermon" led Augustine to convert a few days later.
St. Boniface walked into an outdoor German pagan temple, chopped down the sacred oak, stood up on the stump, turned to the shocked audience and said, "And now I'll tell you about the real God." And converted the lot, making Germany a Christian country.
An early Salvation Army Man never spoke as he laid down on a sidewalk in downtown Philadelphia every day for a month one winter at a busy intersection for the lunch hour. Crowds started gathering, wondering what he was up to. At the end of the month he leaped up and launched into his sermon, converting many.
St. Simon Stylites sat on a flagpole for years, teaching and answering the questions of the tourists who dropped by to see the "Saint on a Stick".
A trick the Agape Force used now and then was to dress up like crying mimes and carry a coffin, crying out "Wah! Sob! Boo-hoo! He is dead! He has died! Look upon the poor dead one!" And when curious people looked in the coffin, a mirror showed then their own faces. That got some interesting conversations going!
But you don't have to go to such lengths. There are many other less flashy methods you can use. But every good evangelist follows 3 simple rules.
1) Pray. St. Paul hit it right on the button in Colossians 4:2-6 "Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act towards outsiders, make the most of every opportunity. May your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone."
2) Follow the Holy Spirit's leading. Jesus gave advice to the Apostles, on what to do at their trials. It is also good advice for when witnessing. Mark 13:9-11 "Be on your guard! You will be taken to courts and beaten with whips in their meeting places. And because of me you will stand before rulers and kings to tell about your faith. But before the end comes, the Good News must be preached to all nations. When you are arrested, don't worry about what you will say. You will be given the right words when the time comes. But you will not really be the ones speaking. Your words will come from the Holy Spirit." See also Matthew 10:17-20, where he gives nearly identical advice when sending the 12 out on a missionary trip.
3) Get Personal. Each person you approach is a separate and distinct individual. Listen to them. Answer their questions. Pay attention to them as people.
(Though when answering, politely, insist that you finish answering one question before they throw 5 or 6 others at you. Explain that you'll happily answer all questions, but that you must be allowed to finish the first answer before starting the next one. Some cultists throw up a smoke screen of questions, and by skipping from subject to subject, avoid any answers. They then smugly conclude 1) you don't know anything, 2) you couldn't meet a single objection, and 3) therefore they are right and you are wrong.)
One of the stupidest questions in modern times is everyone's favorite opening gambit "Are you a Christian?" 90% of the lost people in America will look you right in the eye and say ‘yes‘. This usually leads to a whole set of useless questions. Are you saved? Yes. Are you sanctified? Yes. Are you born again? Yes. Are you Spirit Filled? Yes. Are you redeemed? Yes. By now both of you are annoyed and the questioner hasn't learned a thing.
There are hundreds of cults that can answer yes to all those questions, and the cultist sincerely believes he is telling you the truth. If you are going to approach strangers with the Gospel, at least open up with a question that will elicit useful information. What do you think about Jesus Christ? What kind of church background do you have? What do you think about the Bible?
Remember, you're dealing with human beings. No two humans are alike, not even identical twins. Why approach everyone identically? The people in the Bible didn't.
Look at St. Peter in Acts 2. His basic approach is "You saw it with your own eyes. So don't be stubborn jerks, come to Christ."
St. Paul in Athens in Acts 17. "I noticed this altar you have to the unknown god. Let me tell you about him." In the same chapter in Berea he goes to the synagogue and discusses the Tenach and Torah with the Jews, which is certainly the right place to do that. In Acts 13 St. Barnabas and St. Paul are invited by the governor to tell about it. In the Pisidian Antioch Synagogue the leader asks if the visitors have anything encouraging to say. So St. Paul went through a short history of Israel, leading up to the salvation message.
In John 9 a blind man Jesus cured witnesses by skipping the theology and going to the hub of what happened. "One thing I do know. I was blind, but now I see."
Luke 5:29. St. Matthew throws a party and invites his friends to meet his new buddy Jesus.
St. Phillip, St. Andrew and the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4's basic approach was the same. "I met this guy and I think He's the Messiah. See for yourself and tell me what you think."
The other St. Philip, the deacon, sees the Ethiopian Eunuch reading Isaiah, and asks if he has any questions about it.
Dorcas in Acts 9 had a basic method of just doing good deeds.
Jesus had several approaches. Sometimes He passed miracles, sometimes gave speeches or told parables. Most of the time He's answering other people's questions.
Their approaches have 2 things in common.
1) They followed their own personality. St. Paul was intellectual, St. Peter impulsive, St. Andrew friendly, St. Matthew liked parties, St. Dorcas was helpful and giving.
2) They approached the people where they were. St. Philip the deacon, "Need any help with that book you're reading?" Jesus to the lady at the well, "You know, you have messed up your life." St. Paul at Antioch, "Now that you mention it, I do have something encouraging to say." St. Dorcas, "Hmm. That shawl's rather raggedy, isn't it? Let me give you a new one I knitted."
So vary your approach to fit both you and the person you witness to. Don't drone on about things they are uninterested in. Find the common ground and go from there.
fficeffice" />I teach and write plays. People tell me I'm very good at it. And although I graduated missionary school, I'm not an evangelist, I'm very bad at it. In my years working as a professional missionary, I converted one person per five years. My job was assisting other missionaries when they ran across cultists, modernists and other trouble cases. For what I am really good at is cults, evolution and other logic problems. Once I helped the other missionaries clear away all the problems, they took over and did the conversions.
Yet when I teach Sunday schools, my students who know that I used to be a missionary, but not my record, ask me for the "magic formula of evangelism". The surefire technique that has to work. Now that question I can answer. There isn't one. And now I'll tell you what it is.
There's only one way to Heaven, but a million ways to witness. There is no one script with a guarantee of success. As a professional script writer, I can tell you that no one likes being spoken to via canned lines. Worse, since they haven't read your script, they don't know their lines, and tend to ad-lib all the wrong responses.
Read up on the great evangelists. Few follow a set pattern.
Nearsighted Jonathan Edwards buried his nose in his sermon notes, and only looked up now and then to ask, "I say, would you mind holding that weeping and wailing down a bit? I'm trying to read you my sermon."
Charles Finney sometimes just said "How goes it with your soul today?" instead of hello, and left a trail of people on their knees, weeping and praying when they realized their soul wasn't in such hot shape.
St. Ambrose evangelized St. Augustine by not reading. St. Ambrose was one of the few people in the Roman Empire who could read without reading the words out loud. It is harder than it sounds since there were no spaces between words, no punctuation and every book written before printing was invented was a single run on sentence. Pre-Saint Augustine went to see this alleged wise Christian and found him sitting in the garden staring at a book on his lap without reading it. (No sound). He leaned over the Bishop’s shoulder and saw it was a New Testament. St. Ambrose “ignored” Augustine and kept flipping from verse to verse, as Augustine mumbled the verses over his shoulder. When all his questions and doubts had been answered, Augustine slipped out. St. Ambrose's "Silent Sermon" led Augustine to convert a few days later.
St. Boniface walked into an outdoor German pagan temple, chopped down the sacred oak, stood up on the stump, turned to the shocked audience and said, "And now I'll tell you about the real God." And converted the lot, making Germany a Christian country.
An early Salvation Army Man never spoke as he laid down on a sidewalk in downtown Philadelphia every day for a month one winter at a busy intersection for the lunch hour. Crowds started gathering, wondering what he was up to. At the end of the month he leaped up and launched into his sermon, converting many.
St. Simon Stylites sat on a flagpole for years, teaching and answering the questions of the tourists who dropped by to see the "Saint on a Stick".
A trick the Agape Force used now and then was to dress up like crying mimes and carry a coffin, crying out "Wah! Sob! Boo-hoo! He is dead! He has died! Look upon the poor dead one!" And when curious people looked in the coffin, a mirror showed then their own faces. That got some interesting conversations going!
But you don't have to go to such lengths. There are many other less flashy methods you can use. But every good evangelist follows 3 simple rules.
1) Pray. St. Paul hit it right on the button in Colossians 4:2-6 "Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act towards outsiders, make the most of every opportunity. May your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone."
2) Follow the Holy Spirit's leading. Jesus gave advice to the Apostles, on what to do at their trials. It is also good advice for when witnessing. Mark 13:9-11 "Be on your guard! You will be taken to courts and beaten with whips in their meeting places. And because of me you will stand before rulers and kings to tell about your faith. But before the end comes, the Good News must be preached to all nations. When you are arrested, don't worry about what you will say. You will be given the right words when the time comes. But you will not really be the ones speaking. Your words will come from the Holy Spirit." See also Matthew 10:17-20, where he gives nearly identical advice when sending the 12 out on a missionary trip.
3) Get Personal. Each person you approach is a separate and distinct individual. Listen to them. Answer their questions. Pay attention to them as people.
(Though when answering, politely, insist that you finish answering one question before they throw 5 or 6 others at you. Explain that you'll happily answer all questions, but that you must be allowed to finish the first answer before starting the next one. Some cultists throw up a smoke screen of questions, and by skipping from subject to subject, avoid any answers. They then smugly conclude 1) you don't know anything, 2) you couldn't meet a single objection, and 3) therefore they are right and you are wrong.)
One of the stupidest questions in modern times is everyone's favorite opening gambit "Are you a Christian?" 90% of the lost people in America will look you right in the eye and say ‘yes‘. This usually leads to a whole set of useless questions. Are you saved? Yes. Are you sanctified? Yes. Are you born again? Yes. Are you Spirit Filled? Yes. Are you redeemed? Yes. By now both of you are annoyed and the questioner hasn't learned a thing.
There are hundreds of cults that can answer yes to all those questions, and the cultist sincerely believes he is telling you the truth. If you are going to approach strangers with the Gospel, at least open up with a question that will elicit useful information. What do you think about Jesus Christ? What kind of church background do you have? What do you think about the Bible?
Remember, you're dealing with human beings. No two humans are alike, not even identical twins. Why approach everyone identically? The people in the Bible didn't.
Look at St. Peter in Acts 2. His basic approach is "You saw it with your own eyes. So don't be stubborn jerks, come to Christ."
St. Paul in Athens in Acts 17. "I noticed this altar you have to the unknown god. Let me tell you about him." In the same chapter in Berea he goes to the synagogue and discusses the Tenach and Torah with the Jews, which is certainly the right place to do that. In Acts 13 St. Barnabas and St. Paul are invited by the governor to tell about it. In the Pisidian Antioch Synagogue the leader asks if the visitors have anything encouraging to say. So St. Paul went through a short history of Israel, leading up to the salvation message.
In John 9 a blind man Jesus cured witnesses by skipping the theology and going to the hub of what happened. "One thing I do know. I was blind, but now I see."
Luke 5:29. St. Matthew throws a party and invites his friends to meet his new buddy Jesus.
St. Phillip, St. Andrew and the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4's basic approach was the same. "I met this guy and I think He's the Messiah. See for yourself and tell me what you think."
The other St. Philip, the deacon, sees the Ethiopian Eunuch reading Isaiah, and asks if he has any questions about it.
Dorcas in Acts 9 had a basic method of just doing good deeds.
Jesus had several approaches. Sometimes He passed miracles, sometimes gave speeches or told parables. Most of the time He's answering other people's questions.
Their approaches have 2 things in common.
1) They followed their own personality. St. Paul was intellectual, St. Peter impulsive, St. Andrew friendly, St. Matthew liked parties, St. Dorcas was helpful and giving.
2) They approached the people where they were. St. Philip the deacon, "Need any help with that book you're reading?" Jesus to the lady at the well, "You know, you have messed up your life." St. Paul at Antioch, "Now that you mention it, I do have something encouraging to say." St. Dorcas, "Hmm. That shawl's rather raggedy, isn't it? Let me give you a new one I knitted."
So vary your approach to fit both you and the person you witness to. Don't drone on about things they are uninterested in. Find the common ground and go from there.
