BOOM!
It may have come to your notice that gospel conversations with your unbelieving friend or neighbor have become more challenging in the last couple of decades. It’s not your imagination. Postmodernism and religious disaffiliation have carved out a large piece of the American demographic pie and it doesn’t appear to be returning to the plate. Finding and conversing over common bonds with your proverbial neighbor has become not only increasingly rare, but also precarious. Spontaneous conversations with those holding differing worldviews have potential for spontaneous combustion. If our elected representatives do indeed represent American sentiments, a Pew Research study confirms that we are more polarized than at any time in the last 50 years of measuring (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/).
Our response to the difficulty can’t be to surrender our Christian witness and retreat to safer confines. The gospel must go forth and God uses His human ambassadors to make His appeal(2Cor 5:20). So how do we engage in redemptive conversations with people who think and perceive the world so differently from ourselves? That’s a big question, but I think it can be made more accessible by breaking down our efforts into smaller, more manageable goals. If my goal is to lead my neighbor from living as if there is no God, to a saving faith in Christ, that process is most likely to require a number of fruitful spiritual conversations stemming from a relationship built on trust. Note that this is a different kind of interaction than a cold contact gospel presentation with a stranger on the street, with whom I’m unlikely to meet again. Such evangelism is good and useful and has its place, but it is not the same kind of evangelism we employ with our neighbors, family members, and friends. These are relationships we want to maintain and nurture. In short, they are relationships we seek to keep open doors, and thus try to avoid the kinds of conversations that go BOOM! with spontaneous combustion. Yet, those BOOM!s are hard to avoid if our only paradigm for sharing the gospel is superimposing the Romans Road on any particular conversation we’re having, usually the weather or latest sports news.
If we agree that sharing the gospel with those in our near circles of life will most likely happen incrementally over the course of time and relational progress, how can we adjust our approach to this kind of evangelism? Is it just a matter of waiting for the perfect moment to strike with our presentation of Four Spiritual Laws or Three Circles analogy? Let me propose another way to think about the spiritual conversations you can have with those in your life that lack faith in Christ.
At ABWE we use a chronological Bible study that introduces “The 8 Gospel Fundamentals.” That is, the gospel can be told in 8 words, or another way, the truths of scripture unfold in 8 steps. A useful image is a bridge:
Being familiar with these eight gospel fundamentals can give us handles for our spiritual conversations. The truth is, we rarely have the opportunity to expound a full gospel presentation in the context of our normal conversations with others. However, it isn’t as difficult to touch on one of these topics. When we do, we can move our neighbor further along the bridge toward understanding the gospel. Here’s an example:
Neighbor: Did you hear about that pastor that was having an affair? I can’t believe he was deceiving all those people. What a hypocrite!
Me: You’re right, that was heartbreaking and hypocritical. I really feel for the people in his church, I’m sure they’re devastated. I guess it does really confirm what the Bible says though, ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ We all need God’s grace and mercy, even the people who might look like they don’t.
What was accomplished in this conversation turn? Did I present the gospel to my neighbor who might have been expecting to get a rouse out of me with his comment? Not exactly, but he did hear a biblical perspective on sin. That’s something to build on!
Neighbor: Can you believe what Trump said yesterday? What a liar. That man is so evil.
Me: It sure seems like politicians are constantly letting us down. I try not to put my faith in any of them. I know God sees everything clearly and His justice will be perfect, so I try to keep my trust in Him. I’m looking forward to when He judges the world rightly.
Now obviously, these are rather caricatured conversations, and maybe even a bit contrived. But hopefully they illustrate the point. Spiritual conversations are often much more brief than whatever gospel presentation we imagine in our mind. I’ve never had a neighbor say to me, “Steve, why don’t you share with me all about this Christianity thing. Start from the beginning. I’ve got all day.” But I do have opportunities to interject spiritual truth into our conversations on occasion, even when it seems like my neighbor might be trying to light off a BOOM! And most of the time, that’s not even the case. More often than not, we’re discussing the weather, the Chiefs game last Sunday, or the surprising arrival time of the garbage truck this week.
Sometimes I like to play a little game. I see how long I can keep the conversation going. The longer the conversation goes, the greater the chance I’ll have an opportunity to talk about something spiritual ie. one of those 8 gospel fundamentals. It doesn’t always happen, but it does happen sometimes. And rather than acquiescing to the foregone conclusion of my neighbors’ lostness, I’m pushing back against the lie that reaching them with the gospel is impossible. Like everything good in life, it requires a bit of intentional effort and perseverance. Yet, with these relationships that progress slowly and consistently, I trust that the intentional effort over time will yield fruit. And THAT is a gospel conversation that doesn’t seem nearly so precarious or impossible.
