Determination to Evangelism

I cracked open Mark Cahill’s One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven (the link is to Amazon but you can buy it from his site for just a donation) yesterday during a moment’s respite from the mad cleaning we undertook to get our house in a sembalnce of order before our community group came over to plan the picnic in the park (August 17th if you want to pray for good weather and contacts in the community for us!)  The first chapter pointed out to me a big reason why I find witnessing so intimidating – lack of practice!  I don’t do it because I haven’t practiced, but I don’t practice because I don’t know know how to do it… stupid circle eh?

Reconciling the message of relational evangelism with straightforward sharing the gospel message is like a fishing line snarl to me.  It looks impossible and I’d rather just cut it off and throw it out.  My stubborn nature when it comes to fishing usually leads to me spending 30 minutes unravelling the snarl to save the hook, while my friends outfish me.  I think I am reaching this place now.  I am becoming more and more determined to unravel this snarl and figure out how to sharer my faith effectively and well.  I do remember last year the co-worker who I carpooled with at the time served me up a softball, so gently tossed my infant son could have hit it out of the park.  She actually asked the question that everyone thinks nobody asks.  She asked me “So, what is it you believe anyway?”  I completely fumbled it.  I said some nice things about Jesus, and about how good it is to follow Christ, but I did not give a clear gospel presentation at all.

But I am going to figure it out.  If I can talk about politics with strangers all the time, I can talk about the next most offensive topic of discussion: religion.

Tags: evangelism, fishing, gospel, Mark Cahill, relationship