I was recently dialoging with someone who claimed, very sincerely, that evangelism isn’t about convincing someone to be saved, but rather that it was to make a declaration of what Jesus had done in her life. “When I show the change He has made in me,” she said, “then they can’t say it isn’t true – they can’t argue with that. My goal is to reflect Him so others will want to follow Him also.”
While I may agree that evangelism is not entirely about convincing, I would say a good deal of convincing might need to be done to most people that we converse with. I find that the Gospel is very simple, but it’s by no means easy. In my experience, it’s not quite enough to declare to an unbeliever that the Bible is true, and it says to do such and such, and if that sounds good to you, well then, by golly, you’re born again! This method may work for Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort, but I don’t know anyone who will just accept the idea that liars = sinners = hell-bound without a better explanation of a lot of particulars. Can you explain the Gospel in 3-5 minutes? Sure. Can you do that with the real hope that someone is truly going to be convinced by it? I cannot. I can barely decide which ice cream I want in 3-5 minutes, let alone deciding if God (who created the world, wrote the law, was declared by the prophets, who sent his son to die to atone for the lives of many, who was then raised from the dead (I can’t even begin to explain the Trinity in 3-5 minutes)) is worth following. There’s a bit of a life change involved there, one that probably can’t be made on the spot without more evidence, more discussion, more explanation. People take weeks deciding whether or not to spend $20,000 on a mode of transportation – how can I expect a faster response based on the limited information given in a confrontation?
I would argue then that convincing could very well be the primary aspect of conversion – it has been for many people I know. It has been for me. But I’ve sort of soured toward the idea of methods of Gospel sharing. I very much believe that different aspects and angles will appeal differently to different people. For every one that comes to saving faith through the beauty of God, there is one who is convinced by God’s use of reason in revealing himself. I can’t argue that there is a standard way to go about evangelizing.
That said, I do believe there is way to not evangelize.
I take issue with the idea my life will be the reason people will want to follow Christ. I’m not sure where this idea comes from. I don’t see it anywhere in the Bible. I know that there are many hymns which speak to the philosophy of one Peter Scholtes, who originally penned the song “They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love.” It seems that that has become the basis for Christian evangelism and not the words of Christ, his disciples or the apostles. Scholtes was Catholic, and like most catholics, his tune was a call for unity amongst religious dogmatism and contentious differing viewpoints within the various denominations. Christianity, for him and for those who subscribe to his doctrine, is primarily concerned with something we do, namely, how we act. In this view, we are Christian’s by virtue of something of our own doing – not by something that Christ did and not by obeying Christ and believing in him, the propitiation for our sins, “and you will be saved” (Acts 16:30).
We need to understand who does the saving work in salvation. It isn’t us. We (thankfully) have not been given that duty, nor have we been given the power to save anyone. Of even greater importance is the fact that the truth of the Gospel does not rely on my own personal belief in it, as the woman I spoke of earlier seemed to indicate. People will believe in God, she claims, because she is an example of a changed life. People will believe that the Gospel is real because she has experienced real change.
It’s vitally important that you believe the Gospel for your own salvation, but the Gospel isn’t true because you believe it. It’s true external to and regardless of your experience. It’s true because Jesus really lived, really died, and really rose again. It’s true because he was who he claimed he was. It’s true because he was who the prophets said he would be and who Paul and Peter and the early church fathers said he was. It is not true because of an internal feeling or a changed life. Almost all religions call for a change of lifestyle to varying degrees. Christianity is no more convincing than any other religion if its validity is based on the concept of a changed life.
This is not to say that the Gospel does not change our lives. It most certainly can and does. Perhaps not for many who are raised in Christian homes and are presented with the Gospel at a young age – there probably aren’t drastic changes to be seen in the behavior of 7 year old who claims Christ as Savior and Lord. But for some people, the Gospel does cause them to live differently. The concern I have for this living is the idea that we must feel compelled to do so because we “are the only Bible some people will ever see.” If that’s the case, we ought to be ashamed for never giving people a real Bible and showing them who Christ really was and is. Shouldn’t we be giving people the perfected version of Christianity instead of the flawed one?
I owe a lot of my perspective on this to my late professor and pastor, Colin J. Smith. He always considered the Bible to be the shotgun of evangelism. It doesn’t matter who holds the shotgun, the shotgun is what does the work. It doesn’t so much matter whether it’s a man who’s fired a shotgun dozens of times before or if it’s a woman who never has. The shotgun’s scattered trajectory is what does the damage. Likewise, it’s the Bible that’s going to do the work of salvation. It’s not left up to the passionate preacher or the nervous everyman. It’s the Word itself.
When we say we are concerned about living lives “Worthy of the Gospel” (Phil 1:27), we are doing that “for the sake of Christ” as it says in verse 29. Notice the slight variation in definitions? We’re doing it for Christ – not because we are models for unbelievers of what Christianity is. As hard as I try, I’m going to be a bad model. I’m going to make mistakes at times. I’m not always going to say the right things. I’m not going to act Christlike in every situation. I will strive to do it, but it’s inevitable that I’m going to mess something up. My personal life cannot be the model for Christianity. Christ’s life is the model for Christianity. My life is lived to honor his and to share his message with others. If we want to teach Christianity to others we better give them the Bible, not try to do it with our lives.
“Christian evangelism does not consist merely in a man going about the world saying, ‘Look at me, what a wonderful experience I have, how happy I am, what wonderful Christian virtues I exhibit; you can all be as good and as happy as I am if you will just make a complete surrender of your wills in obedience to what I say.’ . . . Men are not saved by the exhibition of our glorious Christian virtues; they are not saved by the contagion of our experiences. . . . Nay, we must preach to them the Lord Jesus Christ; for it is only through the gospel which sets him forth that they can be saved. If you want health for your souls, and if you want to be the instruments of bringing health to others, do not turn your gaze forever within, as though you could find Christ there. Nay, turn your gaze away from your own miserable experiences, away from your own sin, to the Lord Jesus Christ as he is offered to us in the gospel.”
J. Gresham Machen, Education, Christianity, and the State.
Brent Sears
Micah Lovell
Adam Miller
Worthy of the Gospel 
Hi Micah! Thank you so much for sharing Colin J. Smith’s “shotgun” analogy. Never heard that before and it fits much better than the more mystical explanations offered about why Scripture seems to be so powerful on people. And I also want to thank you for discussing the distinction between the truth of the Gospel versus our perception of it. This has been an ongoing fight since the enlightenment and needs to be taught to every generation. I did have a few criticisms though (not that I’m much better!) to share with you and prick your thoughts.
The first is the world’s question of how does one experience the Gospel. We live in an age of free trials and dishonest salesmen. For those not antagonistic to the Gospel, the question boils down to “What is so trustworthy about the Gospel? Everyone else is trying to sell me something and I’ve been burned one too many times to take anyone at their word anymore.” This is where engaging in each others lives is so important. It gives a glimpse that goes beyond mere words and allows everyone to lower their defenses. How can we trust something when we don’t even trust our own perceptions? So while I agree your friend’s stated goal is a bit naive, what she is aiming to accomplish with her actions, wholly apart from her intentions, will do great work for the Kingdom.
Secondly, goals. It is very much so for Christ’s sake. But what is Christ’s “stake” in the Gospel? Is the Gospel just for people? This blew my mind a few years back at a house gathering to study as much of Genesis before I found a job. God had a purpose for bringing life to a void without form. It wasn’t because He was bored (granted, just an educated guess.) There is a story larger than what we’re explicitly told and a reason for the cultural mandate. Our salvation allows us to continue to pursue that mandate. Part of the purpose we fail to convince people of the Gospel due to fallibility is because the Gospel is not about convincing people. It is about enabling us to build His Kingdom in the midst of darkness as God’s servants. To think that the reality of that Kingdom is contained solely in people is a very humanist assumption (granted, cosmic humanism.)
I’m not a save-the-earth hippie. But I do believe it a conceit to think that as long as we’re reaching people we’re doing what we’re supposed to. Obeying God’s law is not just for God to see, it’s not just for people to see, but it is also for “the unseen” to see. It is toward this consideration we know very little and must be most careful to follow God’s law when “no one” is looking. (This is as much a preaching to myself.)
Thanks for writing on this topic. This is a brilliant post and something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
I think that lot of “fundy” Christians fail to cultivate real relationships with unbelievers, allowing for necessary continuing conversations. The popular mindset toward unbelievers seems to be a quick-fix 5-minute confrontational conversation in which the gospel is haphazardly communicated with no knowledge of what the unbeliever understands about God and the Scriptures. It’s been admittedly hard for me to break out of this mindset myself, not only because I went through open-air evangelism training (which I’m not altogether convinced is wholly ineffective), but because I believe that the Gospel is THE power of God unto salvation. I want to believe that a person can be immediately convicted and converted based solely on the content of that Gospel. But perhaps this just isn’t how it works…Do we have any examples of such instantaneous conversions in the Scriptures?
I was talking with a friend the other day who told me she was upset when her sister brought her unsaved boyfriend home and her father took him aside to share the Gospel with him. This immediate confrontation put a great initial strain on the boyfriend’s relationship to her dad which took almost a year to reconcile. My friend said, “I just think you should live the Gospel, let other people see how you’re different so that they’ll want what you have.” I was a little put off by her comment precisely because I believe that, as I said, the Gospel (not a changed life) is the power of God unto salvation. Was the father wrong to do this? Should he have waited until he had a real relationship with his daughter’s boyfriend, allowing him to witness the power of God in a person’s life, before presenting him with the Gospel? I think that the Gospel should offend….though it seems a fine line between the offense of the Gospel and the offense of our method in presenting that Gospel to unbelievers.
Perhaps I also feel this pressure because the only real contact I have with unbelievers is one-time conversations in a local coffee shop I frequent daily. These conversations are sporadic and I often do not see those I talk to ever again. This puts a bit of pressure on me to communicate the gospel clearly in that one conversation, which does not always happen, and I walk away feeling like an evangelistic failure. This is something I need to work on because most of these conversations center on philosophy in some shape or form (people typically approach me because they are interested in what I’m reading), which is an excellent segway into a discussion about the Christian worldview. This is precisely why I study the things that I do. Because I want more of those opportunities, and the more I study various worldviews with an eye to the Scriptures, the more doors I will have into the minds of other people, and the more confidence I will have in the truth of Christianity and its ability to address and answer the questions raised against it.
Anyway, I digress….
One more thing before I sign off….Perhaps the best argument against “lifestyle-evangelism” is the relativity of it all. Lewis makes a brilliant point on this very thing in Mere Christianity which is unfortunately not at my side at the moment (what was I thinking leaving home without it!?). He basically argues that you cannot determine whether or not Christianity is true based on the personal lives of those professing to be Christians in comparison with unbelievers. Not only because the world is not cleanly divided into Christian and non-Christian (many who profess Christianity are not truly believers and those who still hold onto their agnosticism are much nearer Christianity than they would perhaps even be conscious of), but because God is working on different “raw material” in every Christian. He describes two people in the chapter entitled Nice People or New Men?: one is a Christian woman who is short tempered, the other a gregarious and warm hearted unbeliever. The thing to note about these two people is not the comparisons of their temperaments, but their raw material. The real question ought to be not “Why is the unbeliever nicer than the Christian if God really is a changer of lives” (this is a common argument against Christianity based on the method we think truly works) but rather, “What would the Christian have been like if she were not a Christian and how would the unbeliever be better if he were a Christian?” It’s really a matter of internals (impossibly perceived) vs. externals.
Come on….you know I had to throw a Lewis reference in there 😉
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