I was recently engaged in what many would consider an “evangelistic” conversation” — one where I was speaking with another about the faith, life, belonging, and our common human condition. Our meet came about by chance. She describes herself as an “agnostic,” but is curious about life and what gives life meaning. I’m reflecting here not such much about the content of our conversation, but some of the inner dialogue that was going on in me, during and after our conversation.
Here I was, sitting before a person who was genuinely curious about faith, and I felt different parts of me fighting to take control of my words and engagement. What should I say?
Do I need a presentation?
One part of me thought I should give a straight up “gospel presentation.” In my upbringing, this is what I was taught: Share your five-minute testimony! and Always be ready to give an answer for your hope! and Jesus is the answer! I felt an inner pressure to steer the conversation in such a way that they also realize their need for salvation.
But it felt wrong.
If not wrong, at least… unnatural.
So I didn’t. Another nudge within said, “Just listen.”
Cheap models.
In that moment I realized that loving this person does not come down to presenting some salvation formula as a catch-all “solution” to her circumstances. Even when she put Christianity as one of many religious systems that she was exploring… that she wanted to know more so she knows what would be expected of her if she wanted to convert (her paraphrase, not mine), I resisted the urge to explain why Christianity was different or better. I saw that I needed to listen and see where Jesus met her in her circumstance.
I realized that sharing the Faith was not about communicating a set of doctrinal beliefs; the Faith was about a person who cares about her. I ended up not showing the superiority of Christianity over Buddhism or Islam or other religions she was exploring; it wasn’t a “battle” of religions for her. Instead I showed her how Jesus cared about people and addressed their circumstances: he fed the hungry, healed the sick, comforted the lowly, affirmed the marginalized.
As I sit here and reflect, I’m starting to see that even the models of evangelism I received had an imperialistic bent to them. There’s a savior-like posture in these models: we have the message, they don’t, so the urgency was to pass on a set of beliefs. But this felt cheap; I knew the gospel of Jesus was far richer than a cheap doctrinal package. Engaging in this model seemed to misunderstand or bypass what she was telling me about her life. I wanted to exude Jesus-like generosity in my attention and care. Even if I didn’t get a chance to articulate the gospel verbally, I wanted her to experience Jesus through my actions.
I thought to myself, When this conversation is over, would she get the impression that I cared about her and listened? or Would she get the impression that I had something I needed to say regardless of what she was sharing? It was obvious to me which was more like Jesus.
Trusting that God is the one who brings about salvation/regeneration/life frees me to imitate Jesus without worrying if I did the whole evangelistic thing “right.” It frees me from thinking that I needed to be the person who leads her all the way. It frees me from needing to be “successful” at evangelism. The Christian life is primarily about living like Jesus. If my idea of “sharing the gospel” leads me to be less like Jesus in my relationships and conversations with others, then I have to question if I’m actually sharing the gospel.
A place to belong.
Another realization I had in the midst of conversation was mixed with lament; I wanted her to have a better experience of Jesus and my mind naturally went to wanting to introduce her to a community where she could experience that love manifest in his people, but did not have a community to point her to. Even if the occasion allowed me to share the foundational beliefs of the faith in a way that she understood with her mind, she would also need to understand it through experience in order to know whether it was true. To only share the gospel with the mind would be akin to the seeds that fell in non-ideal places (Luke 8). We, as human beings, are meant to experience life with others. There was no way I could fully “share the gospel” as an individual; it requires a community to communicate the whole gospel.
I realized in that moment that she and I were the same: we were both incomplete, looking for a place to belong where we could experience the kind of love, acceptance, and belonging that comes from Christ.