How Do We Tell People About Jesus?

How Do We Tell People About Jesus?
By: Dr. Danny Purvis

As I read the Scripture, it seems to me the way God has expressed it…a Believer communicating the Gospel to someone should be as natural to us as breathing. And yet. Some years ago a study came out from the Southern Baptist Convention about evangelism. The results were less than optimal. In a study of SBC congregants it revealed that only 5% of folks have ever shared the Gospel with another person. This is a very sobering, if not somewhat confusing, conclusion considering that the SBC (along with many other denominations) consider themselves to be “evangelicals”. Maybe it’s just that we don’t understand what that word actually means. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s a lot of things else.

Truth is, there is no one reason why there seems to be reticence on the part of Christians to openly, verbally proclaim the Gospel when given opportunities to do so. The big question is, however, why that is the case. When three of the four Gospels ends with the command to “go and tell” it seems weird that too many of us do not heed that command. It would take about 1,000 pages to truly examine all of the intricacies of why this phenomenon exists and to be honest I don’t have that kind of energy. However, there is one aspect of this that I would like to address because it has been so prevalent in contributing to the lack of personal evangelism in the evangelical community.

I was not saved until I was 20 years old, so when I talk about “growing up in the church” I wanted to make sure you had a reference point. But I grew up in the church in the mid 80s. I grew up (spiritually, anyway) in a Southern Baptist church. It was a pretty solid church with pretty solid theology. But when talking to my pastor once as a young 20-something Christian I would hear him bemoan the fact that virtually everyone he baptized in the church were people he had “led to the Lord” (however that is defined). As a new Christian who understood that the propagation of the Gospel was our primary reason to exist, I was confused about that. Looking back with the benefit of 40 years of being a Christian, I can now see at least one reason why this conundrum existed.

So much of it was prefaced upon a myopic and somewhat unrealistic view of what evangelism is in the first place. These descriptions that follow may be very familiar to many of you reading this. And please note that these are not as much criticisms as they are observations that are related to my growth in my faith and my better understanding of Scripture. So, every year at my home church we had what we called “revival” services. This would happen twice a year. Once in the Fall. Once in the Spring. The format was always the same.

We would bring in an “evangelist” to preach a series of messages…usually Wednesday through Sunday. The focus, of course, was to lean heavily on the Gospel and to try and get people to “make a decision” and walk the aisle during the invitation. I do truly understand the motivation for these services. I really do. But there is this great, uncompromising law of the universe known as “the law of unintended consequences”. This law is as real and ever-present as the law of gravity. It is always at play and we rarely anticipate its effects.

So, the hired evangelist would come in (not sure why the regular pastor couldn’t have done this) and not only preach a Gospel-centric message (which is great and what we should be doing) but he would also present a method of evangelism. With few exceptions, this method almost always followed the same paradigm. Find a stranger. Engage them with the Gospel (usually using some sort of prepared script), ask a couple of diagnostic questions. And push for a response. To show you that this was as wide spread as I proclaim, when I was in seminary I was told to do the same thing. I was uncomfortable with that then. I am more uncomfortable with it now. Because I don’t see that as evangelism. I see it as a sales pitch.

There is a reason I never went into sales when I entered the workforce. Because I stink at it. Most people do. Powerful, effective salespeople are a rare breed. And the stories these visiting evangelists would tell were amazing. I remember one guy talking about being in the men’s room and handing out tracts and having people “come to the Lord”. But here’s the thing. The vast majority sitting there listening to those stories knew that they could never do that. But since that was THE structure of evangelism, that would lead them to say: Well, I can’t do it that way so I won’t do it at all. The vast majority of Christians when told the sales-pitch style of evangelism is the only way to do it simply bowed out. I’m not saying people can’t be saved that way. I’m sure it happens. But that approach misses one important element of evangelism. Evangelism is work.

It takes time. It takes effort. It takes persistence. It takes patience. And there is no one size fits all approach to evangelism. Our “strategies” need to be as diverse as the people we are engaging. Jesus and salvation are not a commodity to be sold. There is no magic prayer that if spoken will grant people salvation. People have to truly understand why they need Christ. If you ask people: Do you want to go to heaven? Most people will, of course, say yes. Then when you tell them: All you have to do is say this prayer and “really mean it”, you’re in. That is cheapening the Gospel. How do they even know what it is they are saying? I said the magic prayer once when I was about 15 years old. I walked out of that service just as lost as when I walked in. I didn’t know what I was saying. I didn’t understand the depths of my lostness. Evangelism will vary as the people we talk to will very. There is no one size fits all. There is no magic prayer. That will simply lead people to the false assumption they are saved when they are not.

Look at 2 very important chapters in John’s Gospel. Compare John chapter 3 with John chapter 4. The only thing they have in common is that they are both portrayals of Jesus, the Master Evangelist, explaining the Gospel to do very different people. In John 3, it was Nicodemus. A learned, important, religious man. In John 4, it was an unnamed woman at a well. An uneducated, pitiable, lost, wayward, irreligious woman. Watch how Jesus interacts with them both. He starts out with Nicodemus by telling him, “you must be born again”. With the woman, He simply asks, “will you give me a drink of water”. His approach could not have been more different. No canned, rote script. He took the opportunity…listened to them…and applied the Gospel in a way they could both understand…but in entirely differing ways. It took time. It took patience. It took explanation. It took listening. That is how we spread the Gospel. That is how it becomes as natural to us as breathing. That is how we tell the story.  
-Dr. Danny Purvis