Guest Post: Persistent Evangelism

This series on effective entry strategies in the modern American landscape has stirred my thinking on evangelism. Pheaney has me setting aside neatly formulated methods to wrestle with Scripture in my context. How and when am I to share the Gospel?

In previous posts, we were asked if there were any Biblical examples of slower evangelism. 

Do I need to knock on every neighbor's door and draw 3 Circles for them? 

Or can I happily live my quiet life, mind my own business, and call it lifestyle evangelism?

The question being asked is, “Must we share the gospel in every single encounter with a lost person, or is it appropriate at times to do “slower evangelism?” But, if your heart is anything like mine, it turns slower into slow- which rhymes with no. 

Our flesh wants an excuse to practice “slow/no evangelism.” It wants to delay the awkward conversation, the possibility of rejection, the sweaty palms and fumbling Scripture references as long as possible. I’ll lead a quiet life and with any luck, no one will ask me for the reason for my hope.

This version of slow evangelism is a result of low worship. We are more focused on ourselves than on Jesus, who is worthy of the worship of everything that has breath. He is more glorious and wonderful and majestic than our frail minds and hearts can comprehend, and yet we were created to know Him and love Him and worship Him. 

And so is our lost neighbor. 

So does the majesty of Christ and the glory of His Gospel demand immediate proclamation in every encounter with the lost? Or is it at times appropriate to take a “slower approach”? 

Passages such as I Thessalonians 4:11-12, ‭I Peter 2:11-12, I Peter 3:15-16, and others speak of a witness born out of a faithful life of obedience and good deeds which soften hearts and invite spiritual conversations - what one might call a slower approach.

Yet, I wonder if we could avoid the slide from slow to no evangelism by reframing it as persistent evangelism. 

While SLOW sharing seems to indicate we are allowing time to pass before we share the Gospel,

PERSISTENT sharing calls me to make every minute count for the gospel, sometimes with words, always with deeds. 

SLOW could be a reticence to share Jesus.

PERSISTENCE is an eagerness to share Him with my life if not with my words.

SLOW is not now but later…maybe.

PERSISTENCE is always

SLOW allows me to ask if I should share the Gospel. 

PERSISTENT only asks how I should share. 

Sometimes, the Spirit will ask us to shout it from the rooftops.  At other times, he will call us to a peaceful and quiet life that compels people to ask us about our hope.  But always the Gospel is to be persistently ringing out from our lives to our neighbors and the nations.

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” Let the one who hears say, “Come!” And let the one who is thirsty come, and the one who desires the water of life drink freely. Revelation 22:17