Last year, I wrote an article evaluating popular evangelistic phrases that potentially water down or replace a Biblical response to the gospel. The discussion that article generated was quite interesting! As a long overdue follow up to that post, I’d like to evaluate a couple of common approaches Christians use when initiating evangelistic conversations with unbelievers. My goal is not to be nit-picky or critical, but to help us think through the implications of how we communicate the gospel to unbelievers.
“If you died today, are you 100% sure that you’d go to heaven?”
How do you talk to a complete stranger about Jesus? According to Evangelism Explosion, one of the best ways to start or steer a conversation towards the gospel is to ask people if they think they’re going to heaven. Through the years, countless Christians have used the question above (or similar ones) to initiate gospel discussions with unbelievers. I have no doubt that many people have genuinely come to Christ through those conversations. Praise God for that! Nevertheless, I have concerns about an evangelistic approach that begins with heaven instead of God. Let me explain…
In light of where we’re at culturally, I’m not sure that asking strangers about death and heaven is the best way of engaging folks with gospel truth. My main concern, however, isn’t cultural, but theological. I fear that a question like this might unintentionally reduce God to a means to an end.
Instead of focusing the sinner’s attention on God (His authority, worth, holiness, etc), this question starts with something that everybody wants: comfort. The ensuing conversation becomes primarily about how we can get to heaven. The gospel, however, isn’t primarily about heaven. It’s not a “get out of hell free” ticket. The gospel is fundamentally about God. God is both the giver and the gift of the gospel. Christ suffered and died to “bring us to God” (I Peter 3:18). People reject the gospel because they would rather have sin than God (John 3:16-20). When we speak with unbelievers, we must make sure that the gospel we’re presenting is centered on God, not man.
“God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life!”
This approach is significantly more problematic than the first. Salvation essentially becomes me getting what I want – a wonderful life! God is presented as a man-centered Being who exists for our well-being. Sounds a lot like the prosperity gospel, doesn’t it?
Commenting on this approach, Paul Washer once noted: “So you walk up to this sinner and say, ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life!’ And he goes, ‘What? God loves me? That’s fantastic! I LOVE ME TOO! And He loves me more than I love me? Well, that’s hard to imagine. I’ll take a God like that. You got two of them?” People will never understand the nature, beauty, and depths of God’s love until they are first come to terms with the the truth about God’s holiness and their sinfulness. Without a proper understanding of these realities, God’s love becomes yet another ego-boost to the already self-absorbed man.
One more thing to note: a big part of this “wonderful plan” includes suffering, loss, rejection, and possibly martyrdom. I wonder if people would be as open to listening to the gospel if they understood what this “wonderful plan” was really all about.
The Romans Road Approach
The book of Romans provides the most thorough, comprehensive explanation of the gospel in the Scriptures. The “Romans Road” approach to evangelism highlights a number of key verses in the book that explain the core truths of the gospel. This approach can be extremely helpful to use when speaking with people who have had significant exposure to the gospel. The danger of this approach, however, is that it can be overly simplistic for those who might not have a Christian background. I remember hearing a very sincere brother in Christ walk through the Romans Road with a complete stranger in two minutes and then proceed to lead her in a “sinner’s prayer.” The poor gal had no idea what just happened!
We can’t assume that people today understand what we mean when we talk about God, sin, Jesus, repentance, or faith. We must not only to teach the truth, but also expose error so that people don’t fall prey to the dangers of syncretism. Tearing down the strongholds of false ideologies and replacing them with truth takes time. If we don’t embrace a “long haul” evangelistic mindset, I fear that we will experience very little fruit in our endeavors to make new disciples of Jesus.
Conclusion
I have written elsewhere about the nature, goal, and message of evangelism (you can click here and here to read those articles) that elaborate on some of the above-mentioned points. In the next article, I will provide some ideas and approaches that might be helpful to use when we initiate gospel conversations with unbelievers.
