Journalism or Evangelism?

Posted on March 5, 2023 by coachmc

Both sides can have a bad rep but in today’s ‘Encouragement Efforts‘ post, we’ll look instead at the relationship between the two title topics, via a bit of history in Lee Strobel‘s life. In addition to writing “Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry & Mary”, a book focused on helping Christians reach (evangelize) friends and family who avoid God and the Church (and also a member of our EFS Leader’s Board) , he also taught “a course on First Amendment law to journalism students at a university in Chicago.”

Having been a journalist himself, Lee realized that his students could be fuzzy about what they could or couldn’t legally report on, and if that occured, they could avoid pursuing legitimate stories for fear of running afoul of libel laws. He writes about a similar issue that can haunt Christians in their evangelism efforts.

“When a Christian is uninformed about how much evidence supports Christianity, he often backs off from opportunities to share his faith. He squelches his evangelistic activities because he’s afraid of being asked a tough question he can’t answer.”

In a brief follow-up to that quote in “Inside the Mind…”, he gives us a direct and doable goal to pursue that can help us in our efforts to share our faith. “When we equip ourselves with the facts, we become bolder and more willing to try to rescue spiritually imperiled people.”

Have all the facts about God and people and never miss a beat when it comes to sharing your faith? I’ll assume that’s a ‘No’ if you’re still reading this so how do we get better equipped to communicate the gospel message to those in need? Here’s some suggestions…

  1. Get On Your Knees – Asking God for help, through prayer, is probably the most important thing you can do. Just be prepared for an answer that might not be what you expected. For instance, He might direct you to someone you know but had never thought of to ask for assistance.
  2. Review Your Story – Take some time to sit down and write out how you came to know Christ. Include how God impacted your life and drew you toward belief in Him. Then focus on what was done and said when you became a believer, with the goal being able to explain it in such a way that a person you shared it with would know how to become a Christian.
  3. Share the Tale – Let someone you trust (a pastor, friend, family member) hear what you’ve written and ask them to point out anything that might not clearly communicate what becoming a Christian looks like. And if you trust me, I’d love to hear from you…here’s how you can contact me.
  4. Seek Out Help – The topic of sharing your faith can be tremendously helpful and there is tons of info out there. Because the ‘message’ can be contradictory, here’s a few organizations I trust that could be valuable resources.

What’s Next? Did this article solve every evangelism related issue in your life? Probably NOT, but there’s a lot more to learn from this site, like these suggestions…

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Don’t Waste Your ‘Water’

Posted on February 26, 2023 by coachmc

It’s a hot summer day and you’ve decided to give away some cold bottles of water to people in your town. You don’t stop and offer the couple sitting in their air conditioned Mercedes a bottle and you bypass the many people dining at restaurants along the street. Are you being uncaring and insensitive? Nope! You’re saving the ‘gift’ you have to offer for someone who needs it…someone thirsty. The same principle is helpful when sharing your faith and is the topic of today’s ‘Readables‘ entry.

Chris Walker, who heads up Evangelism Coach and has been featured here before, wrote an article titled “What Does Spiritual Thirst Look Like” and it sure seems like a Readable to me. He starts by sharing how a pastor he had been coaching viewed sharing the gospel. “His image of personal evangelism was all about making a monologue presentation, rather than a conversation centered around a person’s spiritual thirst.”

Chris then explains what spiritual thirst can look like and how we can utilize our awareness of it to more effectively communicate the message of salvation. If I haven’t made you want to read his article by now, that’s OK, because you’re probably not ‘thirsty’ for this type of evangelism assistance. Maybe you might be better off checking out some of these other categories on this site.

  1. Encouragement Efforts
  2. Character Challenge
  3. Comments on Quotes
  4. Take a Chance (Though on Share the Savior, this is not a site category like the others, but if you’ve ever ridden a bus, you might like it)
Posted in ~Readables, EvangelismCoach, Good News Clues, How to Be Clear for Christ | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Motive for the Christ Like Life

Posted on April 4, 2021 by coachmc

In today’s Comments on Quotes article, I won’t be doing much reflection because the quote, from Joe Aldrich’s Lifestyle Evangelism, says so much itself. Here’s what he wrote…

“Positionally, the believer stands blameless before God because of Christ’s substitutionary death. Practically, blamelessness is a verdict reached by those who observe a life and compare it to a standard. Such a person or group has credibility, the first essential for effective evangelism. We must be good news before we share it.

When an individual, a family, or a body of believers are moving together toward wholeness (holiness), a credible life style emerges (blamelessness), and their potential for effective witness (beauty) increases dramatically. Because this is true, evangelism is a way of living beautifully and opening one’s web of relationships to include the nonbeliever.“

My simple takeaway of his quote is this…if living a more Christ like life is our goal, out of a deepening love for God and the people around us, we will become more likely to have an impact with the Gospel, among those He brings into our lives.

What’s Next?

This is just one short article of many on this site, along with a number of pages, so here are a few other thing you might want to check out.

  1. Comments on Quotes is a section of this website with 21 articles from 11 different books.
  2. Loving Your Neighbor might be a great place to go in light of today’s post.
  3. Training Tips do just that…give you help becoming a better communicator of your faith.
  4. One of my favorites – Top 10 Reasons to Prefer Evangelism over Riding a Bus
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And Then There Were ‘Oncers’

Posted on March 28, 2021 by coachmc

Chapter 15, of the Book of Luke, tells us parables of three ‘lost’ things; a sheep, a coin, and a son. It’s part of God’s message to us that we have never looked upon another human being who isn’t valuable to God. But that probably doesn’t fit the ‘oncers.’

In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, ‘oncers’ are people who go to church once (or maybe twice) a year; usually at Easter or Christmas. According to Bill Hybels & Mark Mittelberg, in ‘Becoming a Contagious Christian’, we run the risk of considering these folks; and others; as not having any value to God. And because of that, we don’t reach out to them to see where they stand with the gospel message.

After making lists of who is and who isn’t important to God, they say (and I agree), that when “we’ve bought into this line of reasoning, we’ve imperceptibly but effectively removed any hope of getting motivated to spread God’s message of grace.” They conclude that “if these people don’t matter that much to God, why should we get all worked up about trying to reach them?”

If you can see the danger in this, then I encourage you to review the people in your life and see if you’ve placed any of them, for any reason, on God’s, ‘I’m not interested in them’ list. Getting them off the list could be the first step God might use in moving you toward reaching out to them with His very Good News!

Did you find yourself having a list that identifies certain behaviors as ‘proof’ that God wouldn’t be interested in those people? If so, I’d love to hear about it. Feel free to leave a comment or email me directly, and here’s why…your admission might be just the thing God uses to move someone else toward looking closer at the lists they’ve created.

What’s Next?

Want some more encouragement? You can read another one from ‘Becoming a Contagious Christian’ or scan the entire section of 60 ‘Encouragement Efforts’ articles. And, as ‘Comments on Quotes’ will be the topic of my next post and you can check out some previous ones here.

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Evangelism: An Issues Process and More

Posted on October 25, 2020 by coachmc

How many words is too many for a ‘Readables’ article suggestion?

This graphic is somewhat ‘hard’ to read, though it has only about 147 words in it. The article I’m going to suggest you tackle, has a little over 44 times that many. But if becoming more equipped to share your faith is what brought you to my site, I think it may be worth it.

“How do we engage with people in practice?” is the last article of a three-part series adapted from chapters by Tony Watkins in Beyond the Fringe: Reaching People Outside the Church. It looks in depth at how to bring a Christian perspective into many of those conversations we have with friends and family.

As you dig into this article, you’ll read about the three main types of groups conversations fall into; Personal Issues, Issues in Society, and Issues in the Media; three important factors to work on to get better at these talks; Know the Gospel, Know what’s going on in current events, and Know people’s beliefs and values and where they get them; and steps you can take to evaluate the conversation so that the right message comes forth.

P.S. I read the complete article as I prepared this post and, among other things, have this quote as a great take away for myself, and perhaps you.

“There is a world to be won and most of us need all the help we can get.”

But Wait, There’s More…

  1. Read previous ‘Readables’ articles in this series
    1. Evangelism: A Task of Importance
    2. Evangelism: A Post Engagement Process
  2. Take a quick look at the 15 ‘Readables’ dating back to 2013
  3. Check out my Training Tips articles

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Everyday Eisenman’s – Times Have Changed?

Posted on August 30, 2020 by coachmc

Tom Eisenman, writing in the introduction to Everyday Evangelism, says, “The world today is a tough place. People are in pain. People live in fear…People are used, abused and discarded. Everybody is banged up. Nobody knows which way to turn. The point is, things have gotten so bad that even the simplest acts of love and caring have become big news.“

Wow…he’s really summed up the issues were facing with the Covid-19 pandemic, politicized rhetoric coming from the right and left, racism that’s being experienced on levels beyond belief, crime and violence erupting from peaceful protests, and so much more. Only he wrote this in 1987…33 years ago.

But then, he says something quite startling. In speaking of the world’s situation at the time, he writes it “should be a tremendous encouragement to us in the church.” How can that be you might be thinking? His rather surprising statement is based on his conclusion that “we are living in a day when the normal Christian person can make a huge contribution for Christ with even a moderate investment of love and kindness. Just a touch of love today can turn the world upside-down for Christ.”

We probably all know that the love he’s talking about is not that feeling we have being around that special someone. It’s about doing and caring for others and here are a few ideas I grabbed from an article at Project Inspired.

  1. Compliment a stranger when you see them doing something nice.
  2. Give someone a smile; they are contagious!
  3. Send a handwritten letter or card to a loved one.
  4. Start a conversation with someone who looks a little ‘down in the dumps.’
  5. Give a gift…anonymously.
  6. Volunteer…the gift of time is wonderful

Now, we don’t do good so that people will ask us what prompted our behavior, thus opening up a door to share the gospel. We love because it’s God’s greatest commandment. But when we love, the chances that people will be drawn to us, and that an opportunity to share will become a reality, can greatly increase.

Want More Resources for Sharing Your Faith?

  1. Another Everyday Eisenman’s article that looks at common life situations
  2. Comments on Quotes by 10 different authors
  3. One of my favorite all time series – Top 10 Reasons to Prefer Evangelism over Riding a Bus
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Retribution and Rejection: Gone for Good

Posted on July 12, 2020 by coachmc
We Know Which We Want for Our Friends

To get a sense of the power behind sharing the gospel, think of these two areas of life that are guaranteed to befall those who leave this earth without Christ…Retribution and Rejection.

There truly will be hell to pay for those family members and friends of ours who never receive the gift of faith from their creator. An eternal punishment for their life, no matter how good, which did not match the perfection of Christ, and a forever separation from the one who created them…Retribution and Rejection…not anything to look forward to.

But there’s hope for them and it could be found through the words we speak to them. God is the one who saves, so we never need to feel bad if our good efforts to share our faith don’t result in a changed heart. But He can use our love and communication to draw someone toward and into the heart of God.

John Blanchard, in his book, Right With God, paints us a beautiful picture of what it can look like if our Father takes our words and uses them to draw someone to salvation in Christ. “In the matter of our punishment, God looks on the death of Christ and says ‘It is sufficient’; in the matter of our acceptance, God looks on the obedience of Christ and says ‘I am satisfied’. As a result, the sinner is not only spared the punishment but is brought into fellowship with God.”

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Evangelism: A Post Engagement Process

Posted on June 28, 2020 by coachmc

In my last ‘Readables’ article, Evangelism: A Task of Importance, I shared that hearing about God’s gift of salvation through faith in Christ’s work on the cross is paramount to dealing with the lack of hope for the human soul after death. Today I’m going to look at an important step to consider before speaking up.

According to Tony Watkins‘ article, A Biblical Foundation for Engaging with Culture, “the further a worldview is from ours, the harder evangelism gets….If we want to reach a culture, we need to understand it. And to really understand it we need to enter into it in some way.”

Now he doesn’t mean becoming like those without Christ that we meet. In fact, when speaking about Daniel and some other Israelite’s, he points out that “they engaged with the culture but maintained their distinctiveness.” What he’s speaking of is something we can learn from the life of the Apostle Paul.

“He knew them well enough to engage with the ideas seriously, respectfully and yet critically. He understood the culture well enough to take his thoroughly Biblical message and express it in the thought forms, ideas and phrases that were part and parcel of that culture. He understood where his listeners were coming from well enough to move at least some from complete ignorance to faith.”

Steps You Can Take To Engage

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Strengthening Your Evangelistic Efforts

Posted on June 7, 2020 by coachmc

Get Out There and Share Your Faith! Too often that’s what we hear (or think) when it comes to our responsibility to communicate the gospel with people we know. But according to Doug Powe, director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership, focusing on four key practices can demystify the concept of evangelism.

Before digging into each individual practice, he says, “For some, evangelism is an important objective, but the methods of pursuing it are vague or ineffective. For others, the term itself is uncomfortable, bringing to mind doctrinally rigid or manipulative ways of leading people to faith. Focusing on the characteristics of biblical evangelism can help demystify evangelism and strengthen our evangelistic efforts.”

He then lists and explains the four practices — proclamation, community, service, and witness. I think these are worth studying and that’s why, as part of today’s Character Challenge post, I’m encouraging you to check out his article.

What Other Steps Can You Take?

  • Check out some other Character Challenge posts
  • Raise your resoluteness with one or more of these Confidence Builders articles
  • Motor into Evangelism-ville by reading my Top 10 Reasons to Prefer Evangelism over Riding a Bus.
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Little’s Bits: Don’t Pony Up the Phony

Posted on April 19, 2020 by coachmc

I went looking online for some reasons people don’t like Christians and found an article by Tony Morgan, the Founder and Lead Strategist of a group that helps leaders grow healthy churches. Wait…someone who works with pastors wrote about why he didn’t like Christians?

At first I thought this wouldn’t work and started thinking of looking for an article by a non-Christian. But then I realized that if a Christian could find fault with fellow believers, maybe that’s just what I needed. Mr. Morgan identified 10 Reasons he didn’t like some Christians but I’m going to focus on #8 – They are fake – because it fits perfectly with a quote from Paul Little’s book, How to Give Away Your Faith.

Tony wrote, ” They dress up a certain way on Sunday and they live as completely different people the rest of the week.” That sounds very similar to this longer quote from Paul Little…

“Our non-Christian contemporaries are looking for something real. What we offer them must be genuine enough to withstand a careful and thorough probing. Sick of phony solutions, they’re even more fed up with phony people. They aren’t fooled by the pious person whose religion goes only skin-deep.”

Ouch! If I’m honest, that hurts because it’s true about me to some degree, and I fear, about most of us too. We’re not perfect so there will be times where our phoniness stands out plainly for others to see. But with God’s help, we can minimize the times we live opposite of how we say we should live. And when that happens, we’ll more likely be used by Him to impact an unsaved life with the gospel.

What’s Next?

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