Probably the biggest concern I’ve heard about how to do evangelism is how artificial it feels: You start talking with a friend or a stranger, and then force the direction of the conversation towards Jesus and whether the person knows Him, knows where they’re going after they die, and all that. To most it feels manipulative, like a sales pitch instead of sharing faith.
Yeah, it does. Stop doing that.
The fact that you’re not comfortable with sharing Jesus doesn’t mean you lack faith, or that Jesus isn’t important enough to you, or that you haven’t integrated Him into your life enough. In fact, it usually means the exact opposite: Jesus is important. He’s so important, in fact, that sharing Him feels really intimate and personal… and that’s scary.
Most people do not like to share personal stuff about themselves. It’s a defense mechanism. They don’t want to open themselves that far up; there’s simply no telling whether that level of vulnerability is safe. So they don’t share about their feelings, their family, their relationships, certain aspects of their jobs, or anything that falls under the category of “private.” That stuff’s important. Too important to talk about with strangers. Sometimes too important to even share with friends.
So if Jesus doesn’t come up in conversation, often it’s not that you don’t care. It’s that you care too much. Jesus isn’t small talk.
That’s one of the main reasons why it feels wrong to manipulate a conversation into one about Jesus. Mainly, He’s a sensitive subject for you. If you share Him, and they reject Him, it means that to some degree they’re rejecting you—they’re rejecting someone you love, plus your most cherished beliefs. And of course there are the other reasons—the wrongness reducing something so important to a sales pitch, the wrongness of manipulating a conversation, the fear of rejection or even open ridicule. Psychologically, the risk is huge. So our self-defense mechanisms kick in, and we just don’t share Him at all.
Don’t feel bad about this. This is normal. Most Christians experience this. Those that don’t are those few people who don’t have any small talk—they’re willing to share anything with anyone, including strangers, at any time. There aren’t many such people, and they tend to freak other people out. (I know; I’m one of them.) That doesn’t necessarily make them natural evangelists, because that lack of non-disclosure regularly means they share far too much. I’ll discuss them another time. Back to you: Don’t be ashamed of your reticence. It means you care. That’s excellent. Now we just have to channel it properly.
The first step is that we have to open you up a little bit. Your small talk has to begin to include Jesus in it. This doesn’t mean we’re reducing Him to anecdotes; this only means that if you can casually drop in comments about work, spouses, pets, kids, hobbies, and so forth in your daily conversation, you should also be able to drop in comments about Jesus, bible, church, prayer, and so forth. You don’t have to share your feelings about these things yet; you just have to be able to share that they exist in your life.
“So what books have you been reading recently?”
“Well the bible, of course; but I’ve also been reading…”
“How’s your morning been?”
“Ugh, busy. First I got up and made coffee and prayed, then I made breakfast and got the kids dressed and off to school…”
“Got any plans for the weekend?”
“Nah, the usual. Going to the beach on Saturday, then after church Sunday we’re likely gonna…”
“Sorry I’m late. I got rear-ended on the way over here.”
“Jesus! Are you hurt?…”
…Okay, maybe not that last one.
But you see where I’m going: The fact that we’re devout Christians should not be a deep dark secret. Nor should we have to stretch our conversations in order to drop the hint that we’re Christians. (“While I was shopping for breakfast cereal I was appreciating the fact that we have tons of choices, unlike the ancient Hebrews in the desert who only had manna.”) This should be readily available information, same as any other readily available information, like how many kids you have or what your favorite baseball team is.
From that point forward, you don’t have to manipulate anything. In fact you’ll find, half the time, they’re Christians too. They’ll either have been in the very same boat you were—too nervous to talk about Him—or they’ll be really lousy Christians who were embarrassed to share the fact that they’re believers because they know their behavior ought to be better than it is.
The other half of the time, they’ll fall into the usual categories of pagans who don’t care, pagans who are spiritual but not religious, people in different religions, or atheists. In all of those cases, they may not follow up with questions about Jesus right away, but when they do have questions about Him, they’ll know that you’re their go-to person. (Even though you may not feel like a go-to person yet.) And you will be astounded how little you have to do before circumstances eventually bring them to you with questions about God.
But that’s the first step: Coming out of the closet. You are the light of the world. Stop hiding your light.