Evangelism

Evangelism is something that we as Christians know we are supposed to do. Many of us came to Christ because someone was courageous enough to share their faith. Many of us have heard the Great Commission again and again. We know the importance of it, and yet many are probably like me and do not engage in much active evangelism.

But what should evangelism look like? Tracts? Preaching/bringing people to church? by example? through friendship? In undergrad I was frustrated with stories of Christians shoving tracts under the public bathroom stalls, or who said they evangelized by the way they lived. C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity that on the outside there is no difference between a moral man and a Christian man. We need to share why we live the way we do. But God pointed out to me that while I was judging the methods of other Christians I was not sharing Christ with people. At least they were trying.

In one book I read, evangelism was related to the unsaved being in a burning car. Wouldn't you want to do whatever you could to get them out of that car? Or the Christian punk band, Calibretto 13, showed a common difficulty of evangelism, which is knowing that our friends would love to hear the Gospel, but we would rather share it tomorrow.

We are guilted into evangelism again and again. How many of us who call ourselves Christians share the saving grace of Christ that we could not live without? I think we all know the importance of reaching the lost (a common Campus Crusade for Christ saying). And yet we don't do it, I don't do it. And I can't seem to motivate myself to do it. For me, I don't want to be vulnerable. I don't want to look like the fool who believes in Christ. I will gladly live as a believer of Christ, but to talk about that with unbelievers? That is hard, that is scary. It will change them, it will change my relationship with them. But that is what makes it so important. Now I am guilting you into it.

I will admit that to a certain degree I am hard on myself. I talk about Christ pretty often with other people, especially my friends who are not believers, but there are so many opportunities that I see and skip over. For example, I lived with a roommate all of freshman year of undergrad without ever talking to him about Christ. I do think that one good way to do evangelism is to live life the way Christ wants us to. This leads to so many conversations because every action we take is affected by our relationship with God. People will ask or we can just share with them why we do what we do. It becomes a natural part of our conversation and our lives.

This post on theresurgence.com provided an interesting take on evangelism for me.