There is no silver bullet. Those of us who want to see the Christian faith grow, who long to see our friends and neighbours understand the love of God as we do, often wish that there was. Yet the truth is that evangelism isn't easy, and there aren't any quick-fix ways of fulfilling Jesus' command to "go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19)."
In my last article, I wrote about a few approaches and ideas which in my experience seem to create a good context for faith-sharing. I'm not suggesting then that evangelism isn't vitally important, or that there aren't good ways of attempting it. However, a mix of our natural embarrassment around the practice, and our culture's predisposition to quick, easy and painless solutions can mean that we often put aside any commitment to traditional evangelism, and try something else... something easier. And these things, generally speaking, don't work. Here's a few examples of what I mean:
It's the ultimate echo-chamber, as the results of recent elections around the world have proved; on the whole Twitter users tend to develop lists of followers and follow-ees who simply confirm their own views and biases. Of course it's a free and largely-open medium, meaning we're free to read opinions that are different from our own, but generally speaking people don't use the platform for open-minded debate. Instead, the combination of its inherent brevity and the emboldening effect of being able to hide behind a digital avatar means that when conversation happens between people with opposing views on Twitter, it's heavy-handed, often unkind and generally unpersuasive. However, since it creates an illusion of broadcasting our views to the receptive masses, we can be fooled into thinking that we're evangelising them. We're not.
(I want to be wrong about this by the way, if only because I could have written several novels by now with all the words I've expelled on the medium. They'd have been badly-written, incoherent and bizarre novels, but hey, that never stopped the Left Behind series.)
Christian Merch
I realise this is a staggering and controversial statement. But I don't believe that anyone chooses to make the life-shattering decision to surrender to Christ because they read a bumper sticker which said: "Carpenter from Nazareth seeks joiners." Or a "cool" t-shirt which cleverly replaces the slogan of your favourite soft drink with the words: "Jesus Christ, He's the Real Thing." These things aren't (always) bad in themselves, and they can be helpful as a personal statement to God that we're not ashamed of following him, but they're not evangelism. The original disciples were so controversial and committed to their evangelism that almost all of them were bloodily martyred; no-one would have touched them if their faith-sharing strategy had constituted walking around the ancient world in a "100 per cent Jesus" beanie hat.
Arguments
Philip Yancey once said: "No-one ever converted to Christianity because they lost the argument." He wasn't claiming that people shouldn't robustly defend their faith, or that healthy debate isn't important in many people's journey of faith; those who've experienced a 'rational conversion' wouldn't have got there without it. What doesn't tend to help anyone is when enthusiasm tips into aggression, when being right becomes more important than being kind. We don't live in a culture of backing down; if anything social media has enabled us to become more entrenched in our views. So while we might feel awfully righteous when we're putting that atheist right about the flaws in evolutionary theory or the problem with their view of where morality comes from, we should also be aware that we're probably actually pushing them further away from open-mindedly exploring the claims of Jesus. Again, that's not to say that lively discussion isn't important, but the key is to make sure that you're defending your God, not your own ego.
SMS message
There have been a few initiatives over the years which have encouraged people – particularly teenagers – to share their faith via phone text message. It's intended to give people a way to "dip a toe" in the waters of evangelism; you simply fire off a quick "I'd love to tell you about my Christian faith" message, and eagerly wait for your friend to reply with a series of traditional apologetic questions which you'll be able to answer with one hand while watching Netflix. Yet while it's pitched as a painless way to reach your friends, I wonder what it feels like to be on the receiving end. Apart from the fact that it's jolly awkward (and weirdly passive) to get a breezy message about deep matters of the soul from your friend (who presumably never mentioned this before), this approach also communicates that they place very little importance on the subject, or indeed on this conversation. Texts are among our culture's lowest forms of communication; the domain of flakey date-cancellations and I'm-too-busy-to-talk-right-now auto-responses. You're considered a bit of a loser if you break up with someone by text; I think the same is probably true of trying to evangelise through them.
One huge caveat to end with: in his infinite sovereign power and grace, God absolutely could use any of the above methods to draw someone to himself; I'm just not sure that any of them should form part of our individual or corporate evangelism strategies. The Evangelical Alliance in the UK have created a free website specifically designed to help Christians to share their faith; it's packed with plenty of better ideas than those listed above. Check it out: www.greatcommission.co.uk
Martin Saunders is a Contributing Editor for Christian Today and the Deputy CEO of Youthscape. Follow him on Twitter @martinsaunders.
