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Sharing Our Faith

Loving Them This Much

It was on vacation, walking to a train, that our family met “Gretchen.” Conversation unfolded among us in the blistering sunshine. We were all drawn in by the details of her home country, the stories of her life there. At 30, Gretchen was pretty and successful. She traveled around the world.

Perhaps that’s why I was intrigued by two of my kids after disembarking the train, when she’d warmly wished us well and waved to us out the window. Separately, they asked me if we could pray for her, that she’d know Jesus too.

I could be wrong about my kids’ motivation at that point. But I think they wanted something more for Gretchen, whose life seemed—even to an attentive child—as if she were chasing something.

We’ve all seen evangelism’s insurance policy equivalent, or even been its recipients: the tract left with the woefully small tip or in the bathroom stall. The door-to-door “training.” The scalding lecture about the consequences of our current lifestyle.

Compare these with the blind man who can’t wait to tell people, Hey, I can see! When our own encounters with God have cooled or been a disappointment, our evangelism is inevitably less convincing or motivated.

Permanent Truth

Sharing our faith is about:

• a courageous compulsion, emerging from God’s love for us and our mutual love for others, to tell of God’s change inside us—a contagious joy.

• caring enough to compassionately seek out where a person most feels their own longing for God, including their questions, story, and pain.

• as Ruth Haley Barton puts it, “an invitation to spiritual transformation offered by someone who can bear witness to that transformation in their own life…so much more than selling an insurance policy regarding life in the hereafter.”¹

To put it simply, sharing with people the faith that’s given me so much life has to flow directly from loving God and loving them. If I slide my agenda before my concern—We must get this person saved from hellfire and brimstone!—I’m the annoying gong, the clanging cymbal, the car alarm everyone wishes would shut up. People don’t hear, “God loves me!” They think, You didn’t even respect me enough to really see me.

Not Your Grandma’s Evangelism

I noticed a similar phenomenon after living in Africa. Often we Westerners give—quite generously and sacrificially—because it makes us feel good to finally do something. And in all senses, we should.

But at times, we give in a way that cements Africans in handicapping cycles of poverty. When we don’t take time to understand the nuances of their need, we sometimes put our own desires (to assuage our guilt, to feel happy about giving, to help, etc.) above their needs.

Decades ago, East Africa had a thriving textile industry. But once Westerners began sending their charitable used clothing, the industry tanked and has nearly vanished. Now, East Africans walk around in castoffs we often can’t sell in our own nations because of the clothes’ condition.² Eager efforts to “help Africa” robbed them of what they did have to propel themselves forward, leaving them the poorer for it.

Similarly, when our evangelism is agenda-driven rather than thoughtful, rather than love- and people-driven, our delivery methods of the gospel can become a point of (yes) anger and resistance to those in front of us.

Great evangelism techniques shouldn’t help us better manipulate people toward knowing Jesus. They should help us love and tell the truth better.

I do believe there has been a vast generational shift in how our culture is reached with the mind-blowing message of grace and true peace. Though there was unquestionably a time for tracts, formulas, giant events, and the evangelistic equivalent of a “cold call”—and many people are still reached this way—those techniques can trigger knee-jerk repulsion, as younger generations consider faith a starkly personal issue. These techniques can even stoke the fires for future flat-out rejections.

In its demand that we acknowledge our utter need for God and our helplessness to save ourselves, the gospel is offensive enough. First Corinthians 1:23 calls it “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” We don’t need to add to the offense with insensitive social skills.

That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t talk to the woman next to me on the flight or express on Instagram something God has done. That sensitivity to social situations doesn’t dampen my courage or the frequency with which I diligently work to extend this gift. It means that in this culture where people can sniff out an agenda a mile away, my boldness and sense of urgency must proceed solely from deep regard for the person in front of me. Like in parenting my kids, all agendas for them must proceed from that source.

When I was trained as staff with Cru, president Steve Douglass taught, “The gospel flows best through the holes in people’s lives.” We are most receptive to Jesus in the seasons and areas where we most feel a need for his answers, where we ache with longing for God and an eternal home. (Keep in mind all those people who sought out Jesus because their own healing propelled them.)

We see this in Acts 17 as Paul approaches a group of Stoic and Epicurean philosophers in Athens’s Areopagus. He begins with affirming their own spiritual searching and locates one of their longings—expressed to the point of worship via an idol “to an unknown god.” Yet, then he logically appeals to a point of their misunderstanding: “The God who made the world…does not live in temples built by human hands” (verse 24).

Before they even have a chance to get their feathers ruffled, Paul returns to another point of agreement, using a poet from each group, both Stoics and Epicureans, connecting with the philosophies of both and their natural curiosities. He’s clearly engaged with current cultural ideas.

So, talk with older kids about how to compassionately listen to and come alongside friends in hard times with true hope and comfort, using even song lyrics or what they’ve seen on Hulu. (See the section in chapter 8, “Community,” for ideas for helping kids be a safe place.)

From the Barna Group’s research, President David Kinnaman reports that non-Christians’ hopes in discussing religion are, first, someone who listens without judgment—followed by not forcing a conclusion. However, only one-third see this in Christians they know personally!³ So, we can train kids to patiently hear someone’s story and ask intricate questions core to who they are. To accept in faith that helping explore and lift someone’s shame takes longer than a seven-minute conversation. To discuss our kids’ own mess or unanswered questions. (Non-Christians are sometimes better at this.)

A lot of our kids want to please and fit in. They can leverage this to be winsome in how they share Jesus—and yet, confident despite inevitable rejection, and even, as we are warned, persecution (2 Timothy 3:12).

Wrath Is Real

One of my ongoing confusions is my children’s inability to unpack their lunch boxes. (I refuse to do this on principle.) Isn’t it better to do it in the premold phase? But on a Monday morning, I saw Baden unpacking said lunch box. Actually, he was placing the leftovers packed the previous Friday morning back into the fridge. No food wasted, right?

Color me revolted.

Like the inevitable furry petri dish soon to make itself known in my Rubbermaid, God’s wrath is coming because of sin, even though we can’t see it. And to pretend we are not sinners in the hands of an angry God is dangerous. Condemnable.

God’s words to Ezekiel also caused me to shudder: “If the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand” (Ezekiel 33:6 ESV). In this verse, I understand there’s a grave responsibility on me for those I “watch over” to adequately communicate God’s warning of what’s coming.

If I love someone, it doesn’t make sense not to care enough to share Christ with them—it would be like hiding the cure for cancer. Atheist Penn Jillette agrees:

How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? I mean, if I believed beyond the shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you, and you didn’t believe that truck was bearing down on you, there is a certain point where I would tackle you. And this is more important than that.⁴

We ask our kids to confess sin not just because it is good for their character. We model confession because God is indeed holy. His wrath is indeed real.

Thankfully, Jesus has taken every ounce of God’s wrath for us and for our kids, if in fact they choose him as their substitute. In Romans 8:1, the apostle Paul promises that there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” We need not be fear-driven parents who make more of sin than what Jesus has done for it! But sin isn’t a naughty kitten who needs to be put outside. It is a cancer. And it separates us from God. True care propels us to let people, even strangers, know the fullness that has finally satisfied us, finally filled all the holes in our souls.

How could this unfold with real kids like mine? (I’m talking about a child who, upon request, sucked on his brother’s eyeball to the point of leaving a hickey. But I digress.)

The Place of Apologetics

Apologetics unquestionably serves its place in the church in proving the veracity of our faith to many who would turn away amid loud voices defying Christianity’s historic and scientific plausibility. Apologetics also preserves our kids.

Yet, rather than arguing someone to Christ in stratifying or scoffing arguments, which can occasionally cause a person’s heels to dig in even further, you can make sure these conversations take place in ways that affirm someone’s intellectual curiosity and journey. Intellectual arguments can be channels for questions the heart asks: questions of human pain and darkness, of whether we really can love God with all our minds.

Yet our kids could have all the right answers, but none of the heart to hear and love the person in front of them. If kids see an unbeliever as an opponent rather than a person with deep questions, they will answer what a person’s heart isn’t asking. But if they see a non-Christian or a questioning Christian as a person feeling their way toward God (Acts 17:27), perhaps they can view the situation more like finding a dangerously injured, even combative person lost in the woods, who desperately needs someone to stop, shoulder the pain, and help them to the trail.

Any child—any human, for that matter—naturally wants to share what’s fantastic in his or her life: “Look what we found in the clearance aisle!” “I met someone!” “I got into my top choice!” So, before sharing our faith comes the experience that our faith is compelling and life-changing and worth sharing. Kids excited and filled by Jesus will share their faith as a natural outpouring of who they are. To give a reason for the hope they have (1 Peter 3:15), first they must have that living hope.

This is one of the areas where they pick up cues from us. Ours is not a dogged religion that “works our way to heaven.” It’s an experience of acceptance and purpose from a stunning, captivating God. As we experience him, our kids are equipped every day to know what their faith looks like in any given situation.

As much as tracts and other tools can give kids brilliant steps and thus boldness to share their faith, I am increasingly convinced that traditional methods can actually distance people from our kids because the methods are socially alienating to a modern Western audience. Day after day, the best and truest evangelism seems to be accomplished by great lovers of people and lovers of God. A lack of evangelism—a horizontal issue—may be an indicator of a vertical problem: a lack of a lively, leafy relationship with God. The vital message for our kids: We are not the savior, but the saved. We’re about humility, not results.

Make your home the locus.

Did you know that much of the evangelism in the book of Acts happened from homes?

In the past, I was always coached to invite people to church—and this is still a fine idea. But the nuanced cultures of churches can, depending on the person, occasionally cause our friends to feel like outsiders. We’re not inviting them to a social club with all the trimmings or seeking to pass the evangelistic buck to a trained professional.

Instead, we can invite kids into a place where they see everyday love, maybe alongside a plate of cookies. One of the best evangelistic tools around is a healthy home with an open door and a little extra time.

Yet, this insight should not instantly transform your chaos into Stepford mode: a plate of warm cookies on the counter, no one arguing, zero snark. I don’t believe that veneer is appealing to the general public because that’s what it is: a veneer. The message of the cross isn’t “Fake it better, and with feeling!”

Jesus doesn’t make us perfect. He makes us forgiven. Hopeful. Lovers of grace. And those, when lived inward, then outward, make for a compelling home.

Expect a wild card.

For holidays, or dinner together, or a weekly open-invitation soup-night, or a simple after-school hangout, ask God to open your home to whomever he would have you invite. With both sides of my family, I can expect guests who might not have a lot of extended family or who need a place to hang out. They’re welcomed like family, and maybe even have a gift under the tree. I don’t always know whom my own kids will bring home, but that’s a happy part of our home being God’s.

Articulate your faith.

For weeks around the dinner table or while driving, we’d quiz our elementary-age kids: What’s grace? How is someone saved? We’d ask application questions too. Help them understand and love how God has saved us inside and out, not with confusing platitudes—“I asked Jesus into my heart!”—but in kid language—“I said yes to Jesus paying for my sins.” “I couldn’t get to God because of my sin. But God sent Jesus to me.”

Help your kids learn to tell their story in various lengths. Talk with them as they write down ideas about life during and after meeting Jesus—as well as before, if that’s something your child can remember or that helps better communicate Jesus’s transformation.

Pray regularly as a family for those around you to know Jesus.

A couple of years ago, Corinne started praying for the salvation of an important adult in her life. We had some good conversations about how she might gently make her faith known to him.

As we prayed for him, God also seemed to give us opportunities to care for this person amid his family’s hard times. Soon, Corinne asked me about more overt ways to talk with him about Jesus. She was only in fifth grade, but her lack of guile, I think, made it less awkward than if she were an adult. She crafted him a special Valentine: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

As a family of fellow sinners, let your prayers for your community voice true love and humility and that God is the great softener of hearts. After all, he softened ours! Ask him to help you make the most of every opportunity (Ephesians 5:16) and to season your conversations with salt (Colossians 4:6).

Role play.

In this chapter I’ve shied away from handing you methods that might help you articulate your faith or approach someone better, but possibly cause you to love them worse. In our current culture, it may prove more helpful to guide our kids into creating and guiding spiritual conversations. A lot of our effective training with our kids comes in coaching them through situations with kids at school and ways to help their friends. Corinne consistently chews over girl drama with us—how to respond with love to the girl who snubs her, how to tactfully help the left-out kid. (See how these are the message of Jesus, worked out?) Jack needed help handling a bully, so we prayed for the bully, as well as about ways to return a blessing for an insult (1 Peter 3:9), which is, in a form, the gospel played out.

I find evangelism to be more like service in this respect: We may not share Jesus with everyone in our path. But like with the Good Samaritan, sometimes it’s about meaningfully helping the one in our path.

Older kids might like having a few questions in their back pockets to help them.

Here are some they could use after hearing about something tough going on in a friend’s life.⁵

•Would it be okay (or totally awkward) if I prayed for you right now?

•How has [what happened in your life] shaped how you think about God and spiritual stuff? Who do you lean on when you’re freaking out? Where do you go when you’re stressed out?

•What’s the story behind your tattoo? (I kid you not. It’s a great way to hear about a transforming moment or something meaningful to the bearer.)

•What’s the biggest question that’s been rolling around in your head lately? What do you believe about Jesus? (The Bible? Life after death? Truth? Suffering?)

Important: Help your kids know when to drop the conversation, particularly when people aren’t interested or things get offensive or heated. Anger indicators include crossed arms, raised voices, clipped sentences, jabbing gestures, continued failure to engage, or people directly saying, “I don’t want to talk about it.” Your child could respond with, “Okay. I can respect that. If I’ve frustrated you, I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Talk about your own pain.

When Will weathered a cancer scare, God used his faith brightly—not because my son had an agenda to use his pain to win his friends, but because as he worked through his pain, he talked about his trust in God no matter what would happen. Because our culture seems to have a Spidey-sense about anything manufactured (not to discount intentionality), speaking naturally about what we’re going through is far more powerful than “You too can have all the answers!”

Ask the right questions.

Working with Muslim refugees in East Africa, I read J.D. Greear’s Breaking the Islam Code. One of Greear’s central premises is that Westerners often answer questions the Muslim mind and heart aren’t asking. For example, Muslims don’t ask if they can be forgiven. But they spend their entire lives seeking to be clean. Their hearts naturally long for more intimacy with God, since the nearest reference to closeness to Allah is a sura stating he is as close to them as a sword to their jugular vein.⁶ (Whoa.)

In building relationships with people, we find out not what plug-and-play puzzle piece to apply, but instead understand, as with Nicodemus or Zacchaeus or the woman at the well, what they long for. Ask older kids about their friends who don’t know Christ: What questions is this person’s heart asking? What’s under their anger, offense, or resistance? What are they really looking for?

•Together, memorize verses that equip kids to talk about the gospel. Find 12 of them on free, printable memory cards from Seeds Family Worship’s Seeds of Faith—then download the songs that go with them to make memorizing easy.

•Older kids might find Cru’s “The Words” project intriguing, or their Soularium resource. They use words or pictures to help people tell their own story and jump-start spiritual conversations. To be clear, this could be a decent tool to help us listen.

•As good conversation starters with older kids, look up some videos on YouTube: “That Awkward Moment When You Try to Share Your Faith” from the Billy Graham Evangelism Association, and “Real Conversations” with Jonathan McKee.

•Ask at least one person in your life, “How did you become a Christian? What factors did God use to bring you to him?”

•Why do we care about whether people know Jesus?

•How often are you involved in actively sharing your faith through actions or words?

•What’s your biggest obstacle in talking about Christ with others?

•Reflect on your own story of conversion. Ask yourself, Do I believe that just like Jesus was able to bring me from death to life, he can exert the same power over the person I want to share him with?

I suppose I understand the heart behind questions like “How many times did you share Jesus with someone this week?” But right now, that feels a little like someone asking about how often I talk about my husband or my kids.

I love them. They make me so happy I could spit. My life is full of them. To not talk about them would be weird—a curious declaration about my family or me or the listener. When it comes to my kids sharing their faith, in every way, I hope they love God enough to do so.

Prayer of the Dependent Parent

Lord, evangelism requires so much love: overflowing love for you and understanding of this gift of salvation, love for others that overwhelms our comfort and our agendas, that goes the distance to listen to people and the questions their hearts are asking.

Don’t let us be a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). Don’t let us fear people instead of you (Galatians 1:10).

I pray for our family what Paul asked the Ephesians to pray for him: “That whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel…Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should” (6:19-20). Let us make the most of every opportunity (Ephesians 5:16), being trustworthy to express the mind-blowing hope of Christ in season and out of season (2 Timothy 4:2). Make us ready to gently and respectfully give an answer for the hope we have (1 Peter 3:15).

As we share, create patience and faith in us for your timing, your results. You feed many more than we expect from a few loaves and fishes. Any wins in sharing our faith are the work of your Spirit.