I've only read the first half of the book, so I should probably read the whole thing before judging it. So far the book is just stories after stories of the author's experiences with evangelism. I don't think he gave me any pointers or tips or anything advice on how to approach people yet.
After reading over a dozen stories on evangelism, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that evangelism is something you just gotta do. If you love your friends, you can't be afraid of rejection because ultimately if you love your friends, you gotta save them from hell. The worst thing that can happen is you lose a friend for 20~30 years. But the reward is so much greater: they get to spend eternity with God.
The author never starts off a conversation telling people they need Jesus or else they will burn in hell. He always starts off with questions such as "How certain are you that you will wake up tomorrow?" or "If you were to die tonight are you 100% sure you'll make it to heaven?" or "What do you think happens when we pass away?" The author never mentions this but it is more important to build a relationship with someone than to shove something in their face. He draws out the curiosity of people and engages in conversation with anyone he sees because he knows everybody needs Jesus.
I know we can all learn to step out of our comfort zones and reach out to pretty much everyone we run into. I wish I can say this is how my past experiences with evangelism have been but its far from it. I've never really had the passion for evangelism until after this one retreat. It was a week long retreat and we studied the bible for 8 hours a day. All we did was eat, sleep, and manuscript the bible. During that week I learned so much about Jesus and the bible. I was so glad I went and couldn't wait to share what I had discovered.
For the next two weeks I scheduled to meet up with a different person everyday. I wanted my friends to know about all the interesting things in the bible that I just figured out. I started off the conversations just catching up with my friends. It was easy to bring up the retreat since it was during spring break and I was pretty much the only one that stayed in socal for the retreat.
In the end the majority of my friends all said "that's cool and all but its not for me." One guy wanted to know about everything I learned during the retreat but once school started he didn't have time for Jesus.
This is not what any of you want to read but since then I've pretty much stopped evangelizing to my friends. These friends are the ones I've known for years and have invited them to church or bible study over a dozen times. The weeks following the retreat was when I was SUPER passionate about Jesus and the bible and if none of my friends wanted to have anything to do with it, why should I keep trying? Evangelism is not for me. Someone else can put up with it.
Earlier this post I wrote about how if I truly care about my friends, I can't give up on them. Even though my friends think they don't need Jesus, I really care about them so I have to be willing to face that rejection. I'll probably be rejected or laughed at but I can't give up on them. I guess evangelism is something I still gotta do.
rejection, especially from friends, is something that many people spend all their life trying to avoid. it's not a good feeling. when i'm at work making calls during dinner time to pitch sales, i KNOW and I'm anticipating rejection (even being yelled at). No matter how much I brace myself, I still hate hearing "no go away" or "do you guys get paid commission for ruining people's dinners?". But fact of the matter is, what's the worst that could happen? They will say no (or very extreme worst case scenario, like you mentioned, is you lose a friend for 30 years).
ReplyDeleteDon't get discouraged and keep on trucking. We'll do our best to support each other.