My husband came up with these Seven Ways to Lean into Evangelism as a part of his evangelism series this year. If you are convinced that sharing Christ is a good idea, but just aren’t sure how to begin, read these following suggestions.
- Pray often and pray specifically. Regardless of whether you understand how prayer works. Make it your regular practice to pray specifically for opportunities to share the gospel.
- Cultivate camaraderie. The power of doing things in community cannot be overstated. We need to cheer one another on in this area. Have you ever considered setting up at time to get together regularly and pray with a few others who share your commitment to sharing the spreading the gospel? What if you made it a point to come to church early on Sunday and pray with a couple of other people and share encouragement? What about staying afterward and doing so? There is power in the support of shared vision.
- Pick low-hanging fruit. There are people who attend the church regularly that do not have a relationship with Christ. They are more likely to be open to sitting down and walking through a study of the gospel than anyone else. Ask your Pastors regularly if they know of someone that needs follow up and then be intentional to work hard to follow up with the person and study the gospel.
- Develop relationships with non-Christians. In our neighborhoods, our kids’ schools, their activities…there are more opportunities than we are aware of. Remember, there are no accidental relationships when you are a Christian.
Many times Christians simply don’t open themselves up to letting God use them in the activities they are already involved in. Many times we meet people and do not take simple first steps to developing an ongoing friendship or conversation. Here is my tip: If you have a good conversation, get contact information and write down the person’s name. In your neighborhood, make a chart of the names of people that live near you, just so you can be a good neighbor instead of avoid them.
- Partner with the Church. Our church regularly does events where the goal is to serve the community in some way that endears them to us and provide opportunities for individual connections to be made. For example, when we do an outdoor movie, we are not just looking for a few volunteers so that we can survive. We are creating a context where you could make a connection with someone sitting around you for the evening. For some of you, the first steps on this journey may just be inviting someone to church and then chatting with them about what their experience was like.
- Partner with your Life Group. Do some activities that you think some other people in your life might be interested in doing and plan a Life Group event. Encourage the people in your group to all invite someone else that they don’t believe goes to church. For example, a few years ago the ladies in our Life Group invited a chef to do a cooking class and hosted it at one of the member’s house. Then they each invited a few people to join them.
- Make a plan and make the ask. Give God a chance to surprise you. I use to have a picture on my wall in my bedroom growing up that said. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” We have to care enough about people that we don’t mind occasionally looking foolish by rejection. For some of us, we need rejection training. We need to be rejected a bunch of times to just simply get over people saying no. It’s not that big of a deal. What is a big deal is when God uses us because we were willing to take a step of faith.
