Being a witness
My home group had a fantastic discussion last night about personal evangelism. It's a tricky subject and most of us struggle to know how to talk about God in ways that don't push people further away because of all the negative stereotypes out there. So we discussed a case study last night.
What do you do when someone else hi-jacks your attempt to share your faith? One group member said that recently she'd tried to bring her faith up in conversation with friends by saying she'd had an inspirational weekend doing something with church. One of the other people in the conversation made a negative statement to the effect that she's had some not-so-inspirational contact with Christians.
What do you do? We agreed there were a variety of possible responses.
(1) You could point out that other religions are worse. (I said there were a variety of possible responses, I didn't say they were all good ones!)
(2) You could simply ignore the comment and reiterate that YOU had a positive experience.
(3) You could just let the whole thing go.
(4) You could acknowledge the comment, but then continue by explaining what was inspirational about YOUR weekend.
(5) You could lie like a dog.
(6) You could be confrontational and argue.
(7) You could ask "Do you think all Christians are like that?"
It's really hard to know what to say sometimes. That's true even for me as a pastor. What can I say that won't sound canned or disingenuous? What can I say that won't sound judgmental or like I'm proselytizing? We are having great discussions.
What do you do when someone else hi-jacks your attempt to share your faith? One group member said that recently she'd tried to bring her faith up in conversation with friends by saying she'd had an inspirational weekend doing something with church. One of the other people in the conversation made a negative statement to the effect that she's had some not-so-inspirational contact with Christians.
What do you do? We agreed there were a variety of possible responses.
(1) You could point out that other religions are worse. (I said there were a variety of possible responses, I didn't say they were all good ones!)
(2) You could simply ignore the comment and reiterate that YOU had a positive experience.
(3) You could just let the whole thing go.
(4) You could acknowledge the comment, but then continue by explaining what was inspirational about YOUR weekend.
(5) You could lie like a dog.
(6) You could be confrontational and argue.
(7) You could ask "Do you think all Christians are like that?"
It's really hard to know what to say sometimes. That's true even for me as a pastor. What can I say that won't sound canned or disingenuous? What can I say that won't sound judgmental or like I'm proselytizing? We are having great discussions.
