Helping Friends Meet Jesus

Christians are commissioned by Christ to go into all the world and share the good news of his death and resurrection. This seems like a straightforward calling, but if you have experienced the American evangelistic tactics, including alter calls, tracts left on car windshields, door-to-door canvassing, airplane conversations, and street preaching, you may feel some trepidation, if not downright fear, of practicing high-pressure evangelism. I know I do.

My college years were spent surrounded by a number of Christians who loved Jesus and wanted to tell everyone about him. However, their desire to share the good news of Jesus fostered anxiety in those they taught, including me. Instead of feeling joyful about sharing the love of Christ, I felt anxiety and pressure. If I didn’t get the Word out, would someone else’ eternal destination be my fault?

I’m grateful that, since college, I’ve encountered many individuals who love Jesus and want others to know him but don’t carry around the crippling anxiety of my college friends. They have taught me much about what it means to live a fully integrated Christian life. The path of discipleship is already a path of evangelism because you’re striving to let Christ be glorified in all you say, do, and think. Evangelism isn’t based on gimmicks or tricks. These Christians showed me that outreach is ultimately rooted in deep and abiding organic relationships.

Here are four lessons on relational evangelism that can shape your life.

God is relational

God works in and through relationships because God is relational. As the triune God, he has existed for all eternity in relationship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Love is the hallmark of God's character because God has known love for all eternity. He is love in his being (1 John 4:8). God created the world and everything in it because of his love. Imagine a cup overflowing with water. God overflows with love and as a result, creates out of that love. That's why it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone in the Garden of Eden. To fully imagine who God is as a relational being of love, Adam needed to be able to relate to another person in love. Humanity has always existed for the purpose of pursuing loving relationships that glorify God as a loving, relational divine being. It’s why throughout the story of the Bible, from Abraham to David to Jesus to Paul, God always enacts his plans through people in relationships, who are embedded in specific communities at certain times in history. God doesn’t come from some abstract place and coerce people to follow him. God works organically through real relationships in real places at real times. So, no, you are not responsible for witnessing to the whole world. You are a finite human being. But you are responsible for being faithfully present as God’s ambassador for love in the relationships he has put you in.

The goal is friendship

Being faithfully present as God’s ambassador of love means being a genuine friend. Often, Christian evangelism is presented as the ultimate goal of every relationship, as if the only reason you make friends is to get them to go to church. It's as if Christians need to convert secular people like a mid-level marketing company sells Essential Oils. If the non-Christian accepts your invitation to come to church or even gets baptized, the relationship is a success. However, this makes the relationship a means to an end instead of an end in itself. It doesn’t take me long before I realize someone is trying to sell me something or use me to accomplish their goal. Whenever that happens, I feel rotten. Real relationships are not meant to be transactional. Instead, real friendship means living life together and being there for one another in both the good and bad times. It means reaching out when your friend is going through grief or anxious about work. It means inviting them over for dinner or going out to a concert. As we engage non-Christians in these kinds of relationships, we will find that the way our faith affects our lives will come out relationally.

Trusting God’s sovereignty

Relationship building takes time. Chances are you won’t be sharing about your deepest values and beliefs the first time you invite your neighbors over for dinner. Yet, in God’s timing, as trust and intimacy are built, you will have opportunities to share about how you navigate life’s challenges. Often, this kind of trust and intimacy is built through seasons of suffering. A neighbor is diagnosed with cancer, they share about the recent death of a loved one, or one of their kids is stressing them out. This opens the door to practicing Christian empathy and hospitality. To minister to them as Christ ministers to us. However you build trust, the important thing is that you meet your friend in love and grace so that Christ’s light in you might shine and they can glorify your Father in Heaven (Matt. 5:16).

Respecting people’s choices

Ultimately, your non-Christian friends’ relationship with God is between them and God. As much as you want your friends to know the love of Jesus, you don’t have control over them. What you do have control over is how you react to their decisions about their faith life. You can respect them, continue to be curious about what they believe and why, and remain present as a good friend does. This exemplifies the way God forebears his children when they turn away from him.

Although there is no silver bullet in evangelism, God continually calls his children to himself generation after generation. He will not abandon his people. So, we can befriend people with confidence knowing that God is involved in the details. He’s called you his own and will continue to call others into his fold as well.