Starting from next Saturday, each cell groups will take turns to participate in street evangelism. If this is your first time evangelising, it may even be difficult to share gospel tracts. Our evangelism team will explain how to evangelise on the day, but I also wanted to explain on paper in advance. Even if you remember only a few things here, it will greatly help.
Evangelism is comprised of largely three relationships: God and I, the person we’re evangelising to and I, and the person and God. There’s prayer in the first relationship, eye contact and smile in the second relationship, and delivery of the gospel tract (blessing) and conversation in the third relationship. These three things are involved in leading a soul to Christ, so we can extend this application throughout our lives.
The first step is prayer. We cannot evangelise by our own efforts, so we obviously need to pray. One well known saying about evangelism goes like this, ‘Wherever evangelists go, God also sends nonbelievers with them’. God will pre-arrange a meeting for us to meet someone who needs to hear the gospel in a particular street and at a particular point in time. This is why we always pray before approaching anyone. When we look at the first meeting between Ruth and Boaz in the Bible, it says ‘as it turned out, she found herself working in a field belonging to Boaz’ and ‘just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem’ (Ruth 2:3-4).
The second step is to make eye contact. A genuine meeting takes place when our eyes meet. It is natural for our eyes to follow someone we are interested in or love. Our eyes are the window to the soul, so that’s why we try to make eye contact to truly get to know and meet the other person. But because people don’t make eye contact on the streets, we approach people by greeting them, saying ‘Good morning, Sir/Madam! How are you?’.
The third step is to smile. This expresses our serving heart during a short meeting. This occurs concurrently with making eye contact. We smile with a merciful heart, thinking ‘You may not know, but you were made by my Father and are so valuable that Christ died for you.’ Evangelists need to approach everyone with a serving attitude, in accordance with the gospel message (2 Cor 4:5, 1 Cor 9:19-20)
The fourth step is to share the gospel tract. After prayer and establishing a relationship, we now move to sharing the gospel message. We call this blessing, because we are sharing a tract which explains Jesus Christ, who is the source of all blessing. As we give out the tract, we say ‘God bless you!’, ‘Have a good day’ or ‘Jesus loves you!’. It is a simple greeting, but Jesus also did the same (Mat 10:12-13). It is similar to saying hello, but Jesus promises that it will actually have effect. They are not empty words, but a true blessing.
The last stage involves making conversation. After the person receives the gospel tract, it is best to be open and say upfront that ‘I’m a Christian and we are here every week to share Jesus Christ’. Then, you can go through John Harper’s story of sacrifice within the gospel tract and connect that story with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. You can even share your personal testimony on how you came to believe in Jesus or talk about any aspects of the gospel they are curious about. Evangelism is not a time for argument, but a time to listen to the other person’s thoughts and to explain the gospel we know and understand.
