Evangelism Tip #6 - Tell Them Stories About Jesus

 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 6

What The Text Brought To Mind: This 6^th Evangelism tip, in my opinion, is focusing on that intimidating threshold of shifting from the social element, (which is needed within evangelism), to actually offering some of the good news of Jesus to others. Trying to gain comfort with talking about Jesus with people is sort of like the first time, as a child, you ever slept over at a friend's house. You have been welcomed into their space; their home, and it is a little intimidating. Their home looks different, smells different, and even the feeling it gives you may feel alien. To help you, with this deviation into the unknown, you have brought a backpack with familiar things from home, maybe a blanket, a toy, or a book, to keep you feeling secure.

Evangelism has the same kind of anxiety as this childhood experience, evangelism feels like you’re on the precipice of the unknown. The good news is, you can help yourself to alleviate the feelings of the unknown as much as possible. Let's return to the sleepover scenario, if say, the friend you are going to stay the night with, you have known from school for a long time, and you share similar interests, you have met his family in passing a few times, entering into your friend's house on the sleepover night will be less anxiety-inducing.

However, no matter how much you prepare, and how much comfort you have leading up to the sleepover, you eventually have to get out there and walk through that door. Eventually, you have to go from building the friendship to sharing your faith with your friend, which will always feel a little anxiety-inducing, but that is okay. Anxiety is natural, it lets us know that something important or worth noticing is happening. That trick, if you will, is to not let that anxiety stop you, rest in Jesus and continue forward.

And if that first sleepover is a little awkward, that's okay, often by the time you are through, the positives of the experience will make way for the next sleepover, and maybe next time they will come to your place.

Opening Prayer: Lord God, our Father in Heaven, we come to You as children seeking understanding and guidance as we navigate our lives and discipleship through Jesus. We seek comfort in Your arms, as we face the challenges of living out our discipleships into the world, to welcome those who yet know the wonderful liberation and clarity that is only found in Jesus. Help us to find courage and confidence in the resurrection and mission and ministry of the Body of Christ. Amen.

Scripture: 1 John 4:18 – There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

Reflection: A lot of people misunderstand Christianity as “be Christian or God will punish you by sending you to hell”, which could not be more inaccurate to what Christianity is all about. A better explanation is that humanity is on a sinking ship that is sinking into the abyss, and God has sent a life raft; Jesus, as a way off the sinking ship, the raft is one hundred percent a lifeline, the raft does not force people to go down with the ship. If people refuse to get on the raft, that is another story altogether.

Jesus is the story of God’s love for us, a love that extends a lifeline so that we can escape the trajectory that we are already on because of sin. It is not a story of punishment for not being good enough, rather it is God helping us out of a situation we could not otherwise escape.

When people come to terms with the reality of the Gospel, it reshapes their perspective of what Christianity is. It makes sense how the Bible can both warn us of the fires of hell but also hold passages like John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

In this understanding, faith has nothing to do with fear and has everything to do with celebrating the lifeline of God’s love which has set you free.

For those who are looking to find a way to ease the transition from building a connection with someone to sharing the Gospel, remembering that the Gospel message is a message of good news that God’s love has made itself known to us through Jesus, makes sharing that message a whole lot easier.

Sure the concept of the sinking ship may come up, and a person could ask you, “so what do Christians believe about hell”, that question will be a lot easier to navigate if they understand first that God’s whole priority is to make sure people don’t go there.

When you can find easement in the message of the Gospel that you are trying to offer, I believe it helps the evangelist avoid some of the tendencies which Chan highlights in this section. The tendency I want to focus on for this post is when Chan describes overfunctioning or underfunctioning. Chan uses a wonderful example of parenthood to describe what these two terms would look like practically, the helicopter parents that suffocate their child is over-functioning in their role. The absentee parent who often ignores their child or is absent from their lives is under-functioning as a parent. Parents need to find a sweet spot that supports their child with rules and boundaries without removing a child's ability to explore and grow.

Evangelists also need to find this sweet spot. Which is easier to do if you have confidence in what you are offering. If you understand the Gospel as good news, a story that needs sharing because it demonstrates the ultimate expression of love then you will feel more confident in offering that out. You won’t feel like you have to demand or control the flow of the conversation and over-function, nor will you want to shy away from the conversation either.

A second point that Chan offers is to be ready to share a story of Jesus, and to support this Chan suggests offering the Gospel of John to people as John has a bit of a summary of the theological framework of Christianity, which also voices the idea of God’s love very thoroughly.

I like this concept a lot, both because I believe the Gospel of John is a great way to first welcome someone to engage with scripture, but I also enjoy what Chan offers here because he makes a suggestion to The Word One to One (www.theword121.com), which offers small and modernized looking versions of the Gospel of John which is very visually and linguistically approachable to a person who is an unbeliever. 

(Now, I should note that I have never used The Word One to One myself, so I'm not endorsing it specifically, but rather referring to Chan's point, however, if any readers have used this resource that Chan mentions, let us know what you think in the comments below.)

One thing I really like about this concept is that it has a physical and interactive element to it. Having some tools which are outside just a conversation can work really well if the person you're trying to talk to about Jesus isn’t great at formulating cohesive thoughts from a conversation. For example, a friend of mine, who I have been working on bringing to Christ for almost ten years, struggles with gaining insight from a conversation because the back in fourth nature of conversation is too much for him to process, plus he is a very visual learner, so for him, I might be more inclined to ask him to watch a video on YouTube which speaks to the Gospel. A great resource, in my opinion, for something like this is The Bible Project. With the Bible Project videos, there is no reading required, there is a voice-over that walks you through both simple, and more in-depth concepts from the Biblical tradition, all drawn out for you in a simple cartoon style. 

So, this is a long way to saying, I believe it is always good to have a few resources in your back pocket which you can lean into to help you tell the story of Jesus, and share that message of love and salvation. Chan has his resources he leans on, and I have mine. I plan on looking into Chan's because if I feel I could utilize it for Christ's mission for me, I'll lean into it.   

The challenge for the Month: Think about resources or materials which might help you in your evangelism efforts. If someone was going to gently introduce the Gospel to you, what might help you. Think about how you best learn, feel curious, and welcome to engage.

Prayer for your Month: Jesus, equipped us with everything we need, so we can share your love and ministry with the world. Amen.  

Final Thought and Picture: Batman is great, partly because of two reasons: 1) He has an unshakable trust in his mission to protect Gotham from evil. And 2) He has a utility belt packed with dependable resources to help him through every situation. When we evangelize, we are kind of like Batman, we are trying to save people, and to do that we need to have some connections to who Jesus is in our back pocket or our utility belts.