Why No One Likes Evangelism

Over the years, I have encountered many Christians who do not feel comfortable with evangelism.  Loosely, evangelism is the process in which Christians seek to convert or share the Gospel of Christ to others.  When you say the word “evangelism” at a church meeting, thoughts of door knocking, Bible tracks, and street preaching come to mind.

Guy Kent at the Good Preacher/Homiletical Hot Tub blog, posted a funny telling of a Charlie Brown cartoon:

A Charlie Brown cartoon once had Lucy proclaiming to Charlie Brown, “I would make a good evangelist.”

Charlie Brown responds, “And why do you think that?”

“Well, I convinced the boy who sits behind me in school that my religion is better than his religion.”

Now Charlie Brown is intrigued. “How did you do that?”

Lucy tells him, “I hit him over the head with my lunch box!”

The “hit’em over the head” approach is often seen as the worst example of evangelism.   These days, post modernity has made us shy about sharing our faith.  Anyone who holds to an absolute truth is a nut or is too rigid.  Isn’t there a better way?

In our lectionary text for Sunday (Luke 9), Jesus “sets his face towards” Jerusalem, meaning that he is on a mission.  Jesus sends messengers ahead and they are not received.  Jesus asks two people to follow Jesus and they give excuses. Jesus is batting 0-3 now. Jesus almost seems to be frustrated because he says to one of the men, “Let the dead bury their own.”

We share in this frustration too. We have a command to share the message of God and we are uncomfortable about sharing our faith. What is difficult about evangelism is the fact that we must transition from a place of comfort to a place of risk.  Evangelism is risky because we could be rejected.

For every opportunity we have there is the possibility for someone to go from transition to transformation.   These two men who spoke with Jesus were uncomfortable because Jesus wanted them to transition from their current lives and to be transformed into new lives. This is the task of evangelism and there is a little turmoil every time we, like Jesus, ask someone to church, invite them to a Bible study, or other church activity in order to get people to form a relationship with God.

Very few people have a heart for evangelism because it is hard.  There is a high rejection rate and people have difficulty with low results.  Perhaps, that is the problem with our perceptions of evangelism.  We bring a numerical mind when we think about success of evangelism.  However, we see that there is no command from the Bible for achieving a high numerical success rate.

Transition to transformation.  It’s about process.  Not about results.  Let us do the process and let God worry about results.  People do not save people.  God saves people. May we be a people willing to invite people into the transition of acceptance of the Gospel and may we let God transform people.