Fresh Air for Evangelism Training
Becky Pippert
The way from God to a human heart is through a human heart.
Samuel Gordon
The world is far more ready to receive the Gospel than Christians are to hand it out.
George W. Peters
"I know I'm supposed to witness, but I tried it once, and I felt like a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman, trying to sell something nobody really wanted. After that I told myself, Never again." Most pastors have heard something like that over and over.
Getting people to do personal evangelism is one of the toughest challenges we face. Many parishioners remain plagued by fear, guilt, and negative attitudes in this area, and consequently they don't reach out to others. How can we get around these walls of inactivity to make effective witnesses out of ordinary Christian lay people?
Becky Pippert, an evangelism specialist with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, has found keys to making personal witness both enjoyable and fruitful. From years of experience in the field, she shows how one-on-one evangelism can be changed from an "ought to" to a "want to."
I've discovered that most church folk, whatever their denomination, have a similar reaction to evangelism: "That's just not my cup of tea, thank you." You can almost hear the iron gates clanging shut in their minds.
When I ask people why they don't evangelize, I've heard:
"I've never been fond of imposing something on someone."
Or, as one Reed College student so succinctly put it, "Evangelism is how many people I've offended this week."
Or one of my favorites, "You know, I would evangelize if I didn't love people so much."
Most Christians are so afraid of being labeled part of the lunatic fringe that they say nothing about their faith, save in the friendly confines of the church. Any effective evangelism training ...
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