How should someone share their faith? How should a pastor proclaim the gospel? There are plenty of different ideas out there.
People do everything from fire and brimstone evangelism to seeker sensitive ministry. And there is not much patience from one end of the spectrum for the other end of the spectrum.
What is the proper way to proclaim the gospel? Instead of giving a silver bullet answer to this question, I will offer another perspective.
Jesus taught this: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) This is commonly called the Golden Rule.
Surprisingly, some Christians try to avoid this because a version of this is found in other religions and philosophies and liberal Christians tend to gravitate to it. But Jesus taught it, so it must be important.
How does the Golden Rule inform evangelism?
I have not really seen people connect the Golden Rule to evangelism, as it is usually used for ethics. But let’s play with the idea.
What is the proper way to share the gospel? What if we begin by asking how we would want to be witnessed to if we were on the other side of the conversation?
How firm would we want people to be? What kind of tone would we want people to take? How much information would we want exchanged in one sitting? How demanding would we want people to be toward us making an immediate decision?
I can imagine some responding by saying that none of this matters. People all around us are on a fast bound lane to hell and if we do not pull them out NOW, they will be tormented forever.
A firefighter doesn’t think through how they are going to rescue someone from a burning building. They just do it!
I understand that and I was once there. Much has changed in my theology, including views on hell and what it means for people to have faith.
But my pushback is actually more pragmatic. If you see the activity of evangelism to be so urgent and the cost so high, why would we do evangelism in a way that could shut them off from any further faith conversations?
Pushing through with a high pressure evangelistic message then becomes more about us relieving ourselves of guilty feelings and less about help the other person.
How this works out in my life and ministry
I experienced all sorts of evangelistic messages when I was a seeker in my early twenties. Some more effective than others.
Some of the first people who witnessed to me explained the gospel and then warned that the devil would try to kill me before I accepted the Lord so I would have to burn in hell. So I had better become a Christian right then.
I do not question their sincerity or their concern for me. But the type of evangelism they used with me ended up postponing my coming to faith because I refused to be a Christian only out of fear.
The things that really had an impact on me was meeting Christians who were just trying to live out their faith. They did not push their beliefs on me but were willing to answer my questions. Sometimes I heard them share their spiritual journey, but never with a demand that others emulate it.
I suspect that there are people that would prefer that I be harder hitting with evangelism. I have had people ask me to do altar calls, something that is not my style.
One of my guiding principles is that we are not necessarily the only Christian a person is going to encounter. We do not have to take everyone through the entire spiritual journey. All we have to do is, what Greg Koukl describes as “putting a stone in their shoe.”
Why don’t I preach “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermons? One reason is that is not consistent with my theology. Secondly, it is not how I would want to be evangelized.
I want people to be more open to Jesus. I am not going to do what I believe will make people less open to Jesus because that is what made me less open to Jesus when I was a seeker. That’s the Golden Rule.
