This is the start of a three-part series by the author.
When I have asked groups what images they have of evangelism, the answers I get are almost always negative. Street corner preachers haranguing passers-by, people standing on the street corner giving out their literature, TV evangelists pleading for more money. Almost never do people mention two friends talking about Jesus over coffee, or a group discussing C.S.Lewis’s Mere Christianity, or a Christian engineering professor giving a lecture on “Can an engineer be a Christian?” (This one used to happen on an annual basis at the University of Toronto. The answer, in case you are interested, was “Yes”!)
Such positive models are out there, and we can learn from them. When we ponder, as many churches do, why more people don’t come to church, one simple answer is that vast numbers of Canadians really have no idea what Christianity is all about, and we are not equipped to tell them. But we can learn, and watching wholesome models of how to do it is one way to do that. Here are nine of them I have observed or participated in. Let’s start with:
- Childhood Evangelism
Every Christian has been evangelized. If we are cradle church-goers of whatever tradition and we doubt it, that is only because we don’t remember it happening. We may have a sense of being “religious (or spiritual) by nature,”—but that is not the same as being a follower of Jesus. Nobody is born already knowing who Jesus is or what his claims on human life are. Every Christian had to be told by someone.
That someone was probably close to us—a parent, a grandparent, a sibling, a minister, a Sunday School teacher—who spoke words which told us stories of Jesus and encouraged us to respond by talking to Jesus and learning to love and follow him. Things were said about Jesus, and to whatever extent we were able, we accepted them as true.
If we are tempted to object, “As I child, I didn’t know any better,” I can only reply, “But you are no longer a child, and you have had many years to decide to give up your faith if you wanted—but you haven’t. So the evangelism seems to have been pretty effective, doesn’t it?”
- Baptismal Preparation
Any priest who has been involved in preparing candidates for baptism has acted as an evangelist. If you doubt me, have a look at the BAS baptismal service and the questions that the candidate is required to answer. They are pretty radical and challenging.
The first three negative questions are about things I will turn away from as a Christian, and to each, the candidate is expected to respond, “I renounce them.” The second three are positive, and speak of accepting “Jesus… as your Saviour,” and obeying him “as your Lord”—very evangelical language! To these, the candidate is expected to reply, “I do.” The two groups of three are designed to correspond precisely to the old-fashioned words, “repent and believe”—which is, after all, how Jesus followed up his announcement that the Kingdom of God had arrived.
By the time a priest or other catechist has explained and discussed all of this, any thoughtful candidate has understood some basic truths of the Christian message and has been challenged to respond. This is pretty gutsy evangelism! We just don’t realize that’s what it is.
- Discussions of the biography of Jesus
One of the issues I faced when teaching evangelism at Wycliffe College was what to give students by way of an assignment. Evangelism is not the sort of topic where a purely theoretical assignment would be enough, and yet, what could I ask them to do practically? Preach on the steps of Convocation Hall in the middle of the university? Probably not.
In the end, I asked students to find a friend with no church connection and ask if they would be willing to help with a school assignment: to join them for four half-hour discussions of the life of Jesus. I suggested four studies they could use, all from Luke’s Gospel: a miracle, a parable, the passion, and the resurrection.
Students were then asked to report on how it went. Almost invariably, the students had a very positive experience and came back elated. Their friends were interested and fascinated by the four studies. Many had never read the stories for themselves, and certainly never discussed them. At least once, when the students got to the end, their friend said, “We can’t stop now!”
In the next part of this series, I will discuss some less familiar forms of evangelism. Examples include a way to link the celebration of Valentine’s Day to church, and the use of a special pack of cards to engage people in direct conversations about spirituality. Stay tuned.
Healthy Evangelism: What Does it Look Like? (Part 1)
This is the start of a three-part series by the author.
When I have asked groups what images they have of evangelism, the answers I get are almost always negative. Street corner preachers haranguing passers-by, people standing on the street corner giving out their literature, TV evangelists pleading for more money. Almost never do people mention two friends talking about Jesus over coffee, or a group discussing C.S.Lewis’s Mere Christianity, or a Christian engineering professor giving a lecture on “Can an engineer be a Christian?” (This one used to happen on an annual basis at the University of Toronto. The answer, in case you are interested, was “Yes”!)
Such positive models are out there, and we can learn from them. When we ponder, as many churches do, why more people don’t come to church, one simple answer is that vast numbers of Canadians really have no idea what Christianity is all about, and we are not equipped to tell them. But we can learn, and watching wholesome models of how to do it is one way to do that. Here are nine of them I have observed or participated in. Let’s start with:
Every Christian has been evangelized. If we are cradle church-goers of whatever tradition and we doubt it, that is only because we don’t remember it happening. We may have a sense of being “religious (or spiritual) by nature,”—but that is not the same as being a follower of Jesus. Nobody is born already knowing who Jesus is or what his claims on human life are. Every Christian had to be told by someone.
That someone was probably close to us—a parent, a grandparent, a sibling, a minister, a Sunday School teacher—who spoke words which told us stories of Jesus and encouraged us to respond by talking to Jesus and learning to love and follow him. Things were said about Jesus, and to whatever extent we were able, we accepted them as true.
If we are tempted to object, “As I child, I didn’t know any better,” I can only reply, “But you are no longer a child, and you have had many years to decide to give up your faith if you wanted—but you haven’t. So the evangelism seems to have been pretty effective, doesn’t it?”
Any priest who has been involved in preparing candidates for baptism has acted as an evangelist. If you doubt me, have a look at the BAS baptismal service and the questions that the candidate is required to answer. They are pretty radical and challenging.
The first three negative questions are about things I will turn away from as a Christian, and to each, the candidate is expected to respond, “I renounce them.” The second three are positive, and speak of accepting “Jesus… as your Saviour,” and obeying him “as your Lord”—very evangelical language! To these, the candidate is expected to reply, “I do.” The two groups of three are designed to correspond precisely to the old-fashioned words, “repent and believe”—which is, after all, how Jesus followed up his announcement that the Kingdom of God had arrived.
By the time a priest or other catechist has explained and discussed all of this, any thoughtful candidate has understood some basic truths of the Christian message and has been challenged to respond. This is pretty gutsy evangelism! We just don’t realize that’s what it is.
One of the issues I faced when teaching evangelism at Wycliffe College was what to give students by way of an assignment. Evangelism is not the sort of topic where a purely theoretical assignment would be enough, and yet, what could I ask them to do practically? Preach on the steps of Convocation Hall in the middle of the university? Probably not.
In the end, I asked students to find a friend with no church connection and ask if they would be willing to help with a school assignment: to join them for four half-hour discussions of the life of Jesus. I suggested four studies they could use, all from Luke’s Gospel: a miracle, a parable, the passion, and the resurrection.
Students were then asked to report on how it went. Almost invariably, the students had a very positive experience and came back elated. Their friends were interested and fascinated by the four studies. Many had never read the stories for themselves, and certainly never discussed them. At least once, when the students got to the end, their friend said, “We can’t stop now!”
In the next part of this series, I will discuss some less familiar forms of evangelism. Examples include a way to link the celebration of Valentine’s Day to church, and the use of a special pack of cards to engage people in direct conversations about spirituality. Stay tuned.
John Bowen is Professor Emeritus of Evangelism at Wycliffe College in Toronto, where he was also the Director of the Institute of Evangelism. Before that, he worked a campus evangelist for Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. For over thirty years, John has been a popular speaker, teacher, and preacher, on university campuses, in churches and in classrooms, and at conferences, across Canada and the USA. His most recent book is The Unfolding Gospel: How the Good News Makes Sense of Discipleship, Church, Mission, and Everything Else (Fortress 2021).
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