Evangelism Tip #3: Coffee, Dinner, Gospel

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking a pause to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, as a result, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord on your own as well. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment or question, as long as it is offered in respect and humility.

Today's devotional is taken from Chan, S. How to Talk About Jesus (Without Being THAT Guy): Personal Evangelism In A Skeptical World, Zondervan Reflective, 2020. Evangelism Tip 3

What The Text Brought To Mind: Chan introduces the wonderful gift of hospitality as a tool to support a Christian’s efforts to evangelize. It may feel like a no-brainer to say, ‘to bring people to Jesus you will need to be hospitable’ but we often don’t take the time we should to consider how the “no-brainers” play out practically in our lives. As Chan mentioned in the previous tips, churches used to be the central hubs for many people, so there was a time when much of our hospitality would involve the church or the satellite community and groups of the church. Churches once gave a socially acceptable framework in which to engage in hospitality. However, now that church is no longer a dominant feature in many people’s lives (and some find church antithetical to themselves), the individual Christian will need to be more dynamic in supporting the hospitality needed to properly engage in evangelism. This does not mean your church cannot support events and programming to help facilitate hospitality, rather it means the bulk of the hospitality will come from intentional efforts done by the individual Christian.

Now to some of the more senior Christians out there, hospitality may be a skill set they are very comfortable with. The idea of hosting a party, inviting someone for dinner, taking a friend out for coffee, or sharing lunch with a co-worker will likely seem harmless. However, there are whole generations where texting, gaming, and rocky social skills are more prevalent than in previous generations. Having a cup of coffee with a friend might be a foreign concept (or worse), so we might have to find creative ways to bridge into making deeper connections.

Opening Prayer: Lord of Heaven, we remember how Jesus was hospitable in his ministry. How, within the very sacramental rite of communion, Jesus calls us to dwell in a supper, a shared space with brothers and sisters. Jesus did not do ministry in isolation, he was invited in, and he invited others to Him. Help us to adopt a spirit of hospitality into the skill we bring to sharing your Gospel with the world. Amen. 

Scripture: 1 Peter 4:9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.

Reflection: The more we look at all the things God, Jesus, the Disciples, and the Bible as a whole, call us to do, or challenge us to do, the more we come to realize that we as Christians are called to do our best at being our best selves. We are called to be our best selves for a few reasons: 1) we are trying to live to the will of God, 2) we are being respectful to the sacrifice Jesus made to save us from when we are not our best selves, 3) as Christians we become a representative of the gospel and what it means to be a Christian and follower of Jesus, and 4) we will need to be our best selves to appropriately love our neighbours and bring them to Christ. This is a long way of saying, even if we weren’t called to be evangelists (which we are) we would still be called to be hospitable, so might as well utilize these two together.

With that said, let us more fully consider what is being offered by Chan. Chan suggests that we begin with the coffee stage, as getting coffee is superficial in some respects, when you grab coffee with a friend or acquaintance, you talk about surface-level stuff: the weather, the plans for the weekend, the score of the latest game; it is not topics of controversy or much meaning. The conversations are “descriptive” in nature.  This is the conversation we often engage with people as we pass by in life. If you’re in the elevator, bumping into people you know on the street, or even as you’re waiting for worship to start. You naturally do “small talk” because it is non-combative, nothing you say is controversial, and thus ensures a smooth transition into the rest of your day. Often, we need to engage with people on this level a few times before we or they are comfortable enough to commit to getting together for a longer time. If during “coffee” or “small talk” people say something that is unsettling to us, then it gives us reason to avoid longer and more uncomfortable engagements later on. This means if we genuinely want to get to know someone better, and if we genuinely want to share the gospel with them, then we need to be mindful of how we interact with people. We should be mindful of what we share and say, not because we need to look and be perfect all the time (this is not about vanity or pride) but rather to be conscientious of being a good representative of God, and recognizing that you are serving the person you are speaking with by trying to bring them to faith.

Assuming you believe you are ready for stage two, which is “dinner”, you have a chance to engage in a longer conversation. Dinner is deemed the next step because dinner is a longer allotment of time, it is hard to spend 1-3 hours in just small talk and you begin to dive into more meaningful things. Your perception, preferences, and prescription of the world begin to come out. I tend to think about this as the friend ranking stage. If you are willing to spend at least an hour of dedicated time with someone, it implies that you are friendly with them and you then begin testing how friendly you can become with them; are they work friend material, or could they be inner-circle of friend material or maybe a bestie for life – who knows.  Their ranking may depend on a few things, but mostly it will depend on if you share a similar overlap in perceptions, preferences, and prescriptions. You don’t have to be exactly alike, and often people would prefer not to be exactly alike, otherwise, it would be boring, but we look for “red flags” of compatibility.  

It is at this stage the evangelist begins to exercise the important skill of listening. The better we know and understand the person we are trying to share the gospel with the better we help facilitate their building a relationship with Christ. For example, if they at dinner share that they are football fans and that spending Sunday at home with their family watching the game is the highlight of their week, we come to realize that a traditional church worship experience on Sunday morning might not be suitable, but maybe a church support/social group on Thursday night would be a way to bridge the gap between them and God. We are to always be learning and taking an invested interest in them as a person, but not just because we are ranking them to see if they could be our friends, more so because we want them to have a friend in Jesus. The more you jive with a person, the more they will begin to show signs that they are ready to dive into the next stage: gospel.

To go from coffee into dinner and then into gospel takes time, this should reinforce the fact that evangelization is genuine interest and care for other people. You don’t evangelize to pack the pews of the church, you do this because you genuinely care about people, and you want to share the Good News of Jesus with them because you fundamentally believe that they are better for knowing Jesus. You share because you care. (Yes, evangelism can result in your church population growing, but if you do it as God intended, it will grow because the church becomes the hub for the caring to be shared.)

When you get into the gospel you have entered into a stage of world views. This is the deeper meaning of life sorts of topics: What is morally right and wrong? Is there a God? What happens when you die? Etc. This is the time when we can begin to respectively introduce the gospel.

This may seem like a big leap. How do I go from wondering what the meaning of life is with someone, to making a case for it? This is why it is important to have a good basis of theological understanding of what the Gospel is. You don’t need to answer every burning theological question, but you should understand what the Gospel means to you, what it generally means to the wider Christian world, and be able to articulate that in a simple way. Now don’t worry, you don’t need to have a speech prepared. It is better to let those topics come up organically, just be a genuine person of faith in the conversation, and you should have no problem offering pieces of faith. In time, and after enough dinner and gospel moments, you might have added enough logs to the altar on which God will light the fire.                  

 Challenge for the Month: Think about the three stages that Chan proposes. Can you think of someone you know that is currently nestled into one of those stages? If they are your coffee person, try to raise them to a dinner person. If they are a dinner person endeavor to speak about more meaningful things with them. And, if you believe you have someone who is in the gospel stage, see if you can interweave your faith perspective into the conversation. Remember to be respectful and always listen before speaking.

Prayer for your Month:  Lord, we know you call us to share Your word. This takes us to a vulnerable place we don’t always like to be. So, help us to find confidence in You, and help us to find faith in Your calling for us to reach out to others and share with them the pathways to having a fulfilling relationship with You. With this journey ahead of us, we give thanks. Amen.

Final Thought and Picture:

I love anything with caffeine. But not everyone does. So, this might be overstating the obvious, but the coffee stage could be the pop stage. And dinner might be brunch. Now, you might have to balance what helps you to open up, with what helps the other person open up and feel relaxed. But, if you want to get to know me, bring the coffee!