How to be a normal Christian

In a small patch of grass in Hyde Park, London, is a famous spot called Speakers’ Corner. In this space, anyone can legally speak and debate on any subject. It is a noble tradition that emerged in the 1800s, and famous speakers have included Karl Marx and George Orwell.

But when I visited Speakers’ Corner, I struggled to sense the nobility of free speech. Standing on makeshift soapboxes, Christians, Muslims and a smattering from other religions were berating and yelling over each other in a verbal brawl. I couldn’t imagine that anyone would be persuaded to change their beliefs after listening to these evangelists—whatever their cause.

Jesus told us to make disciples of all nations, teaching everything he had taught (Matthew 28:19). In Jewish tradition, to be a disciple meant to closely follow your leader and act as he did. Disciples are created in relationships, and nurtured through example. Evangelism is a noble calling. Our mandate is to be an example of the truth and character of Christ. Yet, too often, we have ended up yelling from a soapbox.

Rather than being a natural extension of our faith, evangelism has sometimes become an embarrassment for Christians. It feels awkward. It feels impolite. But maybe it doesn’t feel right, because the way we’re approaching it isn’t right.

Becoming normal

If someone comes to your door and strikes up a pleasant conversation before trying to persuade you to switch power companies, you probably wouldn’t consider that person a genuine friend. Similarly, if as Christians, we strike up a friendship with the goal of ‘selling Jesus’, we are not being true friends. We are not making disciples.

Dave Mann, who headed up the Hope Project, says that although this seems controversial to Christians, the first thing we need to do in a relationship is take the gospel ‘off the agenda’. ‘We can’t hold relaxed conversations; we become nervous Christians and guarded non-Christians. But the opportunity to share our faith can be natural when we learn to listen without pushing our viewpoint.’

The formulaic way we have ‘done’ evangelism means that many Christians have compartmentalised it away from their ‘normal’ lives. We need to reintegrate it back into our everyday lives so we can speak in a natural way about our faith.

Authentic relationships don’t usually start with deep, spiritual talks. Most people are acquaintances first—we might chat while dropping the kids off at school, waiting for the bus, or in the office. But as the friendship deepens, we find ourselves talking about more personal things. The layers of our authentic selves are revealed over time.

It may not feel natural to bring up faith issues when you’re talking about sports, so don’t. But if you’re talking about what got you through a hard time in your life, it would be natural and genuine to talk about how you prayed, and how you felt God’s presence. If your goal is to be an authentic person, then you will be an authentic evangelist.

Learning to listen

One of the evangelistic traditions we may have to ‘unlearn’ is that the most important thing is to get our message across. Actually, the most important thing is to listen.

Jesus knew how to listen and discern people’s needs. Have you ever noticed how Jesus often asked more questions than he answered?

‘Do you want to get well?’ he challenges a disabled man (John 5:6).
‘Who touched my clothes?’ he beckons to a sick woman (Mark 5:30).
‘Who do you say I am?’ he asks his disciples (Matthew 15:16).

To be a good listener, we have to be genuinely interested in what that person has to say. That means we listen without an agenda and without defensiveness. We’re not just waiting for the opportunity to have our say. So what if they believe in cosmic rainbows or something equally colourful? We are listening so we can better understand them and their spiritual needs.

In a culture where Christians are perceived as judgemental, it is healing on both sides to have a truly open conversation about spiritual beliefs. For Christians, it’s freeing to have a chat without the pressure to ‘say the right thing’. And for non-Christians, it may be the first time they’ve had a genuine spiritual conversation with a Christian.

Asking the right questions

We also need to learn to ask the right questions. Jesus listened to discern a person’s true needs, and he questioned to allow them to explore their own beliefs.

Brian Goodwin, a 72-year-old disciple of Jesus, recently told me a story that illustrates how to listen like Jesus did. He was having lunch in a café when he noticed a young woman crying in the seat next to him. He approached her gently and asked if she was okay. She explained that her mum had died recently, and her dog had died that day. Brian listened with compassion, and during the conversation asked, ‘What church do you go to?’ She replied, ‘I used to go to church, but I said to God that if my mum died, I was going to stop going.’ This simple question revealed some deep spiritual hurts, but Brian didn’t try to argue with the woman’s viewpoint. He simply encouraged her to go back to church and ask for support.

This is a wonderful example of listening the way Jesus listened. Firstly, Brian had the courage to approach this young woman, listening to and following through on the Holy Spirit’s prompting. Then he listened to her story. Brian asked a simple question that helped her open up about her own spiritual needs. Then he pointed her toward God, without preaching at her.

Brian says that asking the question ‘what church do you go to?’ is particularly helpful. Although many people in our culture aren’t churchgoers, this open-ended question allows people to talk about their spiritual beliefs if they want to.

According to Greg Koukl, the following three questions, asked gently, can be very effective:

What do you mean by that?

How did you come to your conclusion?

Have you ever considered ...?

These aren’t meant to be rhetorical questions, asked only so you can answer them yourself. They are a way of helping others discover their own beliefs. If you want to have an open conversation, be open yourself—using a non-defensive tone and body langue—and really listening to their answers.

Express yourself

Sometimes as Christians we can be scared of trying new ways to express our faith. We know that concepts such as sin, repentance and justification are essential to the gospel, but at the end of the day, it’s the concepts—not the words—that matter most.

The great evangelist Paul modelled this for us when he spoke about being adaptable to all cultures, so he could explain the gospel to all people. ‘I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings,’ he says (1 Corinthians 9:22-23).

For example, acknowledging our sin is fundamental to entering a life-giving relationship with Jesus. But ‘sin’ has become a word that’s full of baggage for many people, and there really is nothing wrong with speaking in a way that people can relate to. We can speak about the fact that we’ve all made mistakes, that we have regrets, addictions or dysfunctional relationships. Many people will not relate to being ‘sinful’, but almost everyone can relate to making mistakes.

This is not a watering down of the gospel; it is helping people find Jesus within the language of our culture.

When Oprah Winfrey asked evangelist Rob Bell to describe God, he gave a beautiful explanation: ‘[God is] like a song you hear in another room and you think, “That’s so beautiful, I need to get in and listen to that song.” But you can only hear it a little bit, so you start opening doors and rearranging furniture so you can get into the room. And when you get in, you turn all the knobs to the right so you can hear the song, and then you open the windows because you want the people in the next houses to hear it.’ What a wonderful description of God’s alluring beauty, and our desire to share him with others!

Many people are offended by Bell’s unorthodox expression of faith, but he is bringing people who have rejected Christianity closer to a relationship with Jesus. He is using Paul’s method of speaking the language of our culture.

God is greater

This is really about normalising evangelism into our everyday lives, and it’s not meant as a criticism of what has come before. God, in his grace, seems to delight in using (even our worst) human efforts to draw people to him.

I once heard a guy speaking who became a Christian after reading a bumper sticker. He was at breaking point in his life, and he saw a bumper sticker on the car in front of him that said, ‘Jesus Loves You’. He prayed, ‘Jesus if that is true, please save me.’ If God can use a bumper sticker, he can definitely use you and me to draw people to him!

There are no real rights and wrongs to how we share the gospel. The Bible doesn’t have any formulas. Nowhere does it even explain the gospel in clear, easy bullet points. All God asks of us is that we act like Jesus, and try to be like Jesus to all people. This is both simple, and the most profound challenge of our lives.

But most of all, it means that we love others. If we share our beliefs with someone and they reject it, we don’t stop loving them. We’re not power company salespeople. Our job has never been to persuade anyone into the Kingdom, but to simply love all people as they are. Part of that is sharing with them the life-giving story of Jesus. It also means being a good friend, being sensitive to their needs, being a listening ear. Ultimately, though, salvation is in God’s hand, not in ours.

The point of evangelism is to open up people’s hearts to the question that Jesus asked: Who do you say I am? And that’s a question only Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, can ask. We don’t need to be paralysed by fear, or driven by guilt. We just need to be ourselves —our true, authentic selves.

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by Ingrid Barratt (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 7 February 2015, pp12-13.
You can read 'War Cry' at your nearest Salvation Army church or centre, or subscribe through Salvationist Resources.