For a lot of people, evangelism elicits one of two kinds of feelings:

 1.“Evangelism is a work I feel pressured to do.”

2.“Evangelism is a joy I feel privileged to participate in.” 

I imagine the majority of us want to be in the camp of #2 but often find ourselves in the grasp of #1. So how do we move from one to the other?

I want to walk you through one of the most common pressures people face and how you can approach it as a privilege with a small shift in mindset. I know this is a blog, I know your time is short, but I do encourage you to read through this slowly and give it some serious thought. I am confident your experience in sharing the gospel will change for the better because of your willingness to do so. 

Turning the Pressure into a Privilege

I remember when I trusted Christ. I was 20 and at a funeral of a good friend who had died in the process of doing a lot of the same very dumb things I was doing at that time.

Sometime during the funeral, I was invited to come and talk to a young man who fumbled through a gospel presentation while trying to simultaneously talk to me and read from the tract trembling in his hands. Even though I knew nothing of the Bible, church, or Jesus, after he finished up, I was convinced Christ was my Savior. But why? Was it because of his perfect, fearless gospel presentation? No, it was because of our perfect Savior who uses even our feeblest attempts to bring people to Himself. 

Since then, I can’t tell you how many times I put the “mess” in “message” as I explained the gospel to others. I would think, “I didn’t really explain sin that well…”, “Did I define repentance right?” “Did I use the right illustration?”, and so on. What happened? They wanted to place their trust in Christ anyway. 

The point is many people feel like they need to have all 66 books of the Bible available at instant recall to form the perfect gospel presentation. However, if you’re familiar with EvanTell at all, you’ve likely heard one of our key messages: “The Bible is 66 books, but the gospel is 10 words: Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead.” We don’t mean for that sentence to be a gospel presentation in itself, but it is to be a reminder of its simplicity. We simply need to communicate that we’re in need of a Savior, why Christ perfectly meets that need, and how we can place our trust in Him and be saved.

Of course, I’m not saying, “Just say whatever you want!” What I am saying is when the Holy Spirit leads you to tell someone that Jesus Christ is the only answer to the sin problem we all share, you can open your mouth and obey Him with the confidence that God will take care of everything else. That, my friend, turns the pressure into an incredible privilege.

If you are looking for a helpful method to share the gospel clearly and simply, please visit our gospel webpage to learn about the “bad news, good news” approach to sharing the gospel. 

Look for the next blog in this 2-part series where I’ll share more details on this privilege and how we can keep ourselves from slipping back into a state of pressure.