This past summer, our youth group took a mission trip to Washington, D.C. For several of our youth, this was their first trip, as well as their first opportunity to share their faith. We used an evangelistic tool called the God Test, which is basically just a set of questions that allows one to open up a conversation and draw someone out. Asking questions like, “who is God?” and “what does God require” allows the listener to get at a person’s worldview and personal conception of God. And at the end of the questions, the listener gets a chance to share the biblical view of God and especially the good news of Jesus Christ.
It’s a great tool that I’d encourage anyone to check out. It was a very helpful way of equipping our teens to share the gospel with complete strangers.
It was particularly fascinating was to see how the simple act of sharing the gospel, of going out on a limb and telling the story of Jesus Christ invigorated our teens. Evangelism had an impact on the ones doing the evangelism.
After thinking about it, I wonder how much of the spiritual lethargy I see in the church, and in myself, is due to the fact that we don’t share the gospel. We attend church. Maybe we even read the Bible and pray every day. But talking to our neighbors about Jesus, knowing that they don’t want to hear it? That’s hard. In August, Ed Stetzer wrote an article concerning this disparity between the conviction that Christians should share their faith, and those that actually do. The research Stetzer cites says that while 80% of Christians believe that they have a personal responsibility to share their faith, 61% haven’t done so within the past six months.
If as James says, “faith without works is dead,” what does this say when we confess Christ, but don’t do the work of an evangelist?