CE: Coaching Evangelism

Ever since I first advocated a shift to making positive statements about our beliefs instead of primarily negative ones I have struggled with ways to make clear how this should be done. This past week, one practical suggestion came to mind. After asking several individuals who have grown up in the church to explain to me, pretending I am unsaved, why they believe what they do, what they believe, and why I should believe it, my eyes were opened to the radical need for a clear testimony. Who among us can readily answer these questions? Why is it that every believer cannot?

The work of God in our lives is perhaps the most meaningful thing we can share with those who we know and are trying to reach, and yet it seems to be the most difficult thing to express without digressing into limited jargon and technical terms that most unbelievers don’t understand. The testimony is a perfect way to speak the truth of the Gospel while avoiding an excess of negatives. It is the perfect positive witness, and we ought to be sharing it instead of complicated systematic-theology driven presentations that most people will not be interested in anyway.

While FAITH and the Roman’s Road and EE all have their place, if you want to inspire people to share their faith, you have to start somewhere that is much less daunting. Too many churches are filled with people who are too intimidated by the aforementioned programs. They then give up and resolve to not share their faith at all, because they have mistakenly thought they must have some complicated method or it will not work.

If we are going to turn the tide in this nation, it will come as we are more effective in actually reaching the lost and not just gaining members from churches and denominations. We have to take the “ministry” of the church out of the pulpits and start mobilizing the congregations, encouraging them to just tell people about their walk with God.

Will this take some work? You bet. Will it take some training? Probably. At the very least our people will need coaching as they go. We can help them express themselves better, we can give them opportunities to practice, and we can then suit up like the rest of the team and get out there and do it. While this is just like coaching baseball/football/pick-a-sport, the difference comes in the last point. Most football coaches do not get out on the field and play, but they do guide their players, and they do make them practice. We ought to be like those coaches, those of us leading our churches, to equip them to get out and play the game. We then have to take it a step further and get out there ourselves and play too. If we adopted this sort of model to our evangelism efforts, I would imagine that we would see a difference.

100 percent mobilization will yield much greater results than 10 or 20 percent mobilization any day. And our congregations will be fulfilling their calling to be as salt and light, as a city shining on a hill, and every other command we are given in the New Testament. So what do you say? Join us on the field or keep warming that bench Coach?