#32: Where the Gospel Meets Evangelism

#32: Where the Gospel Meets Evangelism

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

RACHEL SZABO: Okay.

JESSE EUBANKS: Whatcha got for me?

RACHEL SZABO: So every October, thousands of people converge on this small city just outside of Dallas, Texas.

JESSE EUBANKS: For what?

RACHEL SZABO: Well, here, listen.

AUDIO CLIP: Welcome. Your journey has finally brought you to the place of eternal agony. Here you will be subjected to constant torture and everlasting pain…

JESSE EUBANKS (laughs): Wha-a-at is that? What is that?

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, so that is called a Hell House, the Christian equivalent of a haunted house.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so I’ve actually been to a Hell House. Actually I’ve been to two Hell Houses. So the first one was at a church and we followed this young girl through a bunch of different rooms and scenarios, but then like it culminated in us watching her commit suicide. 

RACHEL SZABO: Oh my gosh.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. And then the next room we went into — apparently in real life this girl had a twin because that twin played her dead body in a coffin.

RACHEL SZABO: Whoa. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, it was really, really intense. The second one that I went to was the goriest experience that I’ve ever had in my life. I have never seen that much fake blood all over the walls.

RACHEL SZABO: Ugh.

JESSE EUBANKS: It was disconcerting to say the least.

RACHEL SZABO: What’s weird about that is that Hell Houses are supposed to be an evangelistic tool.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah.

RACHEL SZABO: Like the whole reason is you come in, you like go through this haunted house-type thing that shows you like ‘this is your life in hell’ or ‘this is your life without Jesus’ and at the end it’s like ‘and here, now you can accept Jesus.’

JESSE EUBANKS: So I think, like, my own experience with Hell Houses has not been very helpful. I get that they’re trying to be evangelistic tools. I am not certain that they are achieving what they mean to be. But I guess that like this begs the question, y’know, are there acceptable and unacceptable ways to do evangelism?

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and so I think that’s a good question, and I think really the answer just depends on who you ask because all the stats are showing that Christians’ attitudes towards evangelism — they’re changing.

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JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Every episode we hear stories of social action and Christian community.

JESSE EUBANKS: Today’s episode is where the gospel meets evangelism.

RACHEL SZABO: Right off the bat we wanna acknowledge that for some of you listening that word ‘evangelism’ might be off-putting. Maybe you’ve had a bad experience or seen evangelism done in a manipulative way and the whole topic of evangelism is just sour to you.

JESSE EUBANKS: But I encourage you to stick with us because we’re gonna take a long, hard look at evangelism. We’re gonna look at what works well — and what doesn’t work so well. What is it even? Are there more types of evangelism than we’ve previously thought? And what’s at stake if we just choose not to evangelize at all? Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.

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JESSE EUBANKS: At the beginning of last year, Christianity Today ran a headline that said this — ‘Half of Millennial Christians Say That It’s Wrong to Evangelize.’ This of course sent a shockwave through the evangelical community. In response, Relevant magazine commented that, quote, ‘millennials are the most evangelism-averse generation on record.’

RACHEL SZABO: Whoa. The most averse to evangelism ever?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. And then check this out — according to Pew Research, Christianity and church attendance have been on a steady decline in this country for the last 10 years.

RACHEL SZABO: So are you trying to say that this aversion to evangelism is, like, part of the cause of that decline of church attendance?

JESSE EUBANKS: Well I don’t think that it’s the only factor by any means, but I do think that our approaches to evangelism have not done much for the flourishing of the church.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, so if half of millennials think that evangelism is bad — first of all, define a millennial Christian.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, sure. So this would be those that are born roughly between 1980 to 2000 who are active in their Christian faith. It’s as simple as that.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, so like that would be me.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah. Okay, so if that’s true, then half of the Christians in your generation think that it’s wrong to evangelize. That’s troubling.

RACHEL SZABO: That is a really big claim to make. Like where does this stat come from?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, so it actually came from Barna. And at the time, Barna had just released a new study, and the stats did indeed show that almost half — 47% — of Christian millennials said that they agreed with this particular statement. And here it is — ‘It is wrong to share one’s personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith.’

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m assuming that this is something that’s not really been seen in previous generations. Like previous generations would have heard that sentence and said, ‘No, that’s fine.’

JESSE EUBANKS: Correct. Yeah.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, which begs the question, why the sudden distaste in evangelizing?

JESSE EUBANKS: I think that’s a great question. I would also say that, before we go any further, I think we need to be clear on why evangelism is a part of our faith.

At the end of John’s gospel, the disciples are gathered together in a locked room. They’re afraid because their leader, Jesus, has been killed, which makes what happens next even more shocking — because suddenly, this resurrected Jesus stands among them in the room.

RACHEL SZABO: Dude, how freaky would that be.

JESSE EUBANKS: Which is why the first thing that he says to them is, ‘Peace.’ And he tells them, ‘As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ And this is where we get our Christian calling to be missional. Jesus was sent with the purpose of ushering in God’s kingdom, and now all of us who believe in him are given that same purpose.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, but here’s what’s interesting. So I was looking into that Barna stat you mentioned, and being missional is not what millennial Christians are averse to. In that same Barna study, there was also this stat that 96% of those same Christian millennials who said that it was wrong to persuade someone to believe in their faith also said that part of their faith means being a witness about Jesus.

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, that’s confusing.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: So they all agree that we should evangelize, but half of them think that it’s wrong? That seems contradictory.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, I know. So there’s no shortage of Christian millennials at Love Thy Neighborhood, so what I did is I put out a call to our alumni and I asked them, y’know, ‘What are your thoughts on this? Can you help clarify this?’ Two of them spoke up right away, and so Jesse, you and I each spoke with a different person, and so why don’t you share the conversation that you had first? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, great. So I talked with our alumni Erin Villarose. Uh, she’s 22 and she served with Love Thy Neighborhood in summer 2018. Here’s Erin.

ERIN VILLAROSE: The first thing that comes to my mind is like people like going up to others on the street and like, being like, ‘Hey, can I tell you about God?’ 

JESSE EUBANKS: In fact, while she was here in Louisville, part of what she did was practice a version of this with the other volunteers at the nonprofit where she worked.

ERIN VILLAROSE: We all got together and we split into like small groups and were kind of talking about how we can evangelize, and honestly like I struggled very hard with that. I just didn’t know what to say. Even though I was talking to believers, I just struggled to like get the words out. While like everyone else was like, ‘Here’s this, this, and this reason based on this Bible verse and like this chapter or whatever of why you should believe,’ and I was just like, ‘I don’t even know what to say right now.’ 

JESSE EUBANKS: And part of that can be due to a lack of knowing the Scriptures, y’know. Not everyone is great at whipping out Bible verses on the spot. 

ERIN VILLAROSE: That’s definitely another part of like why I struggle with evangelism is because I’m not super confident in what I’m saying. Not that I’m not confident in my faith — I’m just like not super confident in the expression of it.

JESSE EUBANKS: But what Erin had to say next, I think it’s more at the heart of the matter.

ERIN VILLAROSE: Who am I to like tell you that you’re wrong in what you think? Especially if they’re of another faith, how is what I believe any more valid than what you believe? 

RACHEL SZABO: That’s exactly what was said in that Barna statistic, like ‘it’s wrong for me to tell you what to believe.’

JESSE EUBANKS: And I think that’s a lot of what is behind millennials being against evangelism, is that they’ve grown up in a world where truth is relative. You have your truth, I have mine, and I can’t tell you that you’re wrong.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, okay, that is probably true, and we could spend an entire episode dissecting, y’know, absolute truth, but I don’t think that that is the only factor at play here based on the conversation that I had.

MARY HELEN THOMPSON: I don’t know that I would say that millennials don’t care about sharing their faith. I mean, maybe some don’t care, but in terms of how to do it, I think that could be challenging to know what’s best individually for different personalities.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, so this is Mary Helen Thompson, and she served with Love Thy Neighborhood in summer of 2017. And for her the issue isn’t so much, y’know, ‘you have your truth, I have mine.’ It’s more about just bad experience. So when Mary Helen was in middle school, her church really wanted to emphasize outreach and evangelism. And one of the ways they did that was by offering a Sunday school class about it. 

MARY HELEN THOMPSON: They wanted some families to do this class together, as like parents working with their children learning together how to evangelize.

RACHEL SZABO: So her parents signed up for the class right away, and so once a week Mary Helen, her mom, her dad, and her older sister all went to this class to learn about how to go up to strangers and start talking to them about Jesus.

MARY HELEN THOMPSON: We did several videos a week. We had like class after church.

RACHEL SZABO: And then, every so often, the church would provide opportunities for them to practice what they’d been learning in the class.

MARY HELEN THOMPSON: So we had a, like, a community event at church. This was one of the times that those of us in the class were supposed to go out and talk to people.

RACHEL SZABO: Now I think it should be noted that Mary Helen self-identifies as an introvert. Now that doesn’t mean she can’t talk to people — it means that it takes a lot of energy out of her and is a bit more challenging to do. So Mary Helen decides to strike up a conversation with an elementary school-age girl. Basically the thought process is ‘lemme start off easy. Lemme start off with someone younger than me. Maybe it won’t be as hard.’ So, she starts talking to this girl and she starts going through the formula that she’s been taught in the class.

MARY HELEN THOMPSON: We had to remember a bunch of questions, different questions related to sin, and then you sort of work towards the gospel message in that conversation. I’m talking to this girl, so I brought up a verse that talks about, ‘If you have hated anyone, then you are a murderer in your heart.’ And I don’t think I quoted it exactly correctly, so then at the end of the conversation she was stressed out because she thought that she was a murderer. 

JESSE EUBANKS (laughs): Oh, no. Kids do not understand metaphorical language very well. This poor child’s probably thinking that she killed somebody and she wanted to know who it was and where they are.

RACHEL SZABO (laughs): I know. It’s like funny, but it’s not funny.

JESSE EUBANKS: Aw, Mary Helen.

MARY HELEN THOMPSON: So then I remember talking to someone in the group afterwards being like, ‘I just had this really bad conversation,’ and then they of course were like, ‘Well, that’s not what you should have done.’ So it was like I had done it incorrectly, like I asked the wrong question at the wrong time. 

RACHEL SZABO: So, you know, naturally this whole experience of trying to evangelize has Mary Helen feeling incredibly flustered. 

MARY HELEN THOMPSON: And specifically as a more introverted person, it can feel like you have to go in with your talk all straightened out, all your stats, all your different things to be able to sort of win versus the other person coming in with their beliefs and stats trying to sort of challenge you.

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh, I know what that is because we are in the thick of election season. That is called a debate. What she just described — it sounds like she’s like getting ready to go into the ring, you know, to take her sparring partner down. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, totally. And, you know, Mary Helen’s like, ‘If this is what it means to evangelize and to be sent out by Jesus, then like no thank you.’

MARY HELEN THOMPSON: So with that being what is being shown and advertised, then it’s like you don’t feel equipped.

JESSE EUBANKS: Hold on, here’s the problem. I don’t think that that is what it means to be sent out by Jesus. 

RACHEL SZABO: Oh, you mean he didn’t want us to go out and be little debaters?

JESSE EUBANKS: No, I don’t think that that’s what he wants us to go out and do all the time. So before we go any further, I think that we need to go back to the basics of missions. 

LARRY MCCRARY: Evangelism, though, from the New Testament what we see is sharing with someone the good news of the gospel.

JESSE EUBANKS: Coming up — reclaiming our true identity and what millennials get right. We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Today’s episode is where the gospel meets evangelism.

JESSE EUBANKS: The data’s showing that young Christians have an aversion to evangelism. But before we look at solutions to that problem, we need to have an understanding of what evangelism is and why it exists. 

RACHEL SZABO: Well, and you’re in luck because I tracked down a sort of evangelism expert.

LARRY MCCRARY: Yeah, that’s a great question…

RACHEL SZABO: So this is Larry McCrary, he is in his 50’s, and he is the executive director for the Upstream Collective, which is an organization that helps Christians live into our identity as evangelists — which can be hard because, y’know, in today’s society we most often use the word ‘evangelist’ as a marketing term. 

LARRY MCCRARY: You know, even in marketing, we see the word ‘evangelism’ these days, kind of like ‘product evangelists,’ y’know, for Apple or Garmin.

JESSE EUBANKS: I mean I agree with him because I think that all human beings are evangelists. We all evangelize about the things that we’re passionate about, like ‘Hey, have you heard about this new product? Hey, have you seen this new movie? Hey, have you gone to this restaurant?’ Like, all of us evangelize about the things that we care about. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and so when we talk about evangelizing for our faith, all of a sudden we feel like we’re a sleazy car salesman trying to make a quota.

LARRY MCCRARY: Organizations have to find ways to measure effectiveness, and so often the question becomes, ‘How many gospel shares did you have this week? How many opportunities have you had to see a person say yes or no to the gospel?’ Y’know, and while these questions aren’t bad questions, finding the proper metrics can be a challenge to some people. They start seeing people as projects instead of people.

JESSE EUBANKS: You know, we now live in an age where the word ‘evangelism’ gets thrown around in two different ways. The broader culture throws it around as almost like a marketing term, like you can be an evangelist for a product. Christians throw it around like it can only mean proselytizing. But evangelism doesn’t really actually mean either exactly of those things. Evangelism is simply sharing the good news of God and his kingdom. You know, I love that quote from Tim Keller where he says, ‘The gospel is not good advice. It’s good news.’ Advice is like, ‘Hey, here’s the fifty things you have to do to make your life better.’ Good news is ‘Hey, your life is kind of messed up, but I’ve got some good news for you.’ And that is so much better for the human soul. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and because, y’know, we have misinterpreted what evangelism means, we take it to mean more of like a job title. 

LARRY MCCRARY: I think we have outsourced evangelism to pastors, to missionaries, to church planters, and we say, ‘Okay, that’s their job, they’re professionals, they can do that’ instead of making it a part of who we are. 

RACHEL SZABO: So according to Larry, the bigger problem here isn’t just bad or ineffective methods of evangelism. He sees this as an identity crisis for Christians, that sharing about Jesus, or evangelizing, isn’t just a thing that we do and then we can check it off the to-do list — it’s supposed to be ingrained in who we are.

LARRY MCCRARY: And we see in Scripture it’s our responsibility and really identity of that of a witness.

JESSE EUBANKS: So for us as Christians, we believe that the center of our identity is as beloved children of God. And so out of that belovedness, it’s in our identity to be evangelists for Jesus. Okay, so there’s actually this, this clip — and it’s actually the only time you’re gonna hear from this guy in the whole episode — but it’s this guy Alan Hirsch. I think he articulates this issue so well. Uh, he’s an author, he’s an adjunct professor, he’s a missions strategist. And here’s that clip. I just wanna play it for you real quick.

ALAN HIRSCH (AUDIO CLIP): So, so what we say here is that God is a missionary God. And what we mean is that God sends the son. In other words, the son is both sent by the missionary God, he himself is a missionary, and — guess what — he sends the spirit, he and the Father send the spirit into the world. We discover actually the spirit is actually a missionary spirit too. He’s a sent one into the world with a purpose. And as you hear from the text, ‘As the Father sent me, so I send you,’ darned if we’re not all sent! Every Christian is a sent one. There’s no such thing as an unsent Christian who does not participate in the eternal purposes of God through the church.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so you listen to Alan Hirsch talk here, and one of the things that  repeatedly he’s talking about is he’s like — he talks about the Father, he talks about the Son, he talks about the Spirit — all relationships, and he talks about us in relationship to the Father. So like he keeps getting back repeatedly at this idea of relationships and that it’s out of relationships that evangelism and being sent comes forward. Y’know, as Christians, we start talking about Hell Houses and we start talking about tracts and we start talking about like five-minute door-to-door conversations without any follow-up — like, all of that is like such a low relational demand on the evangelist. I’m just not sure that that’s really the healthiest, most robust version of evangelism looks like.

RACHEL SZABO: Again, here’s Larry McCrary.

LARRY MCCRARY: People are weary of the gimmicks and programs of evangelism. My generation may have made it too unnatural in sharing their faith. And sharing our faith really just needs to be normal. It really is a normal expression of our discipleship, of who we are in Christ and Christ abiding in us day in and day out and being able to share that with people. And I think when, y’know, if it’s millennials or others — and again I’ve seen it across the board — when they see, ‘Okay, I’m supposed to be an evangelist now sharing my faith; that’s my duty’ versus this is a part of who I am and I naturally do that, then I think they smell something and they don’t really like what it smells.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so where does this put us then? I mean, if we’re all sent, if we’re all given the identity and capacity of missionaries, of evangelists, what does it look like for us to reclaim our identity as evangelists? And therefore what does it mean to reclaim evangelism?

RACHEL SZABO: That is a great question and honestly I think a really important question for the future of the church, and if you have answers and ideas I will gladly listen to them.

JESSE EUBANKS: So, one of my good friends — his name is Jeff Rogers. Uh, he works at a seminary in the Dominican Republic, and one of the things that he teaches on is evangelism. And he and I have been talking about how to help Christians reclaim evangelism, to take it out of marketing, to take it out of simply handing out a tract and to practice it in ways seen as Scripture. Jeff and I started talking a little bit about some of Alan Hirsch’s stuff — the guy that we played that clip from earlier — and we started putting our heads together, and we ended up creating this chart that shows four different styles of evangelism, four approaches if you will. They’re broad. They’re not comprehensive. But I do think that they’re helpful as we consider our personality, as we consider the way that we’re kind of wired as people. Which one of these four do I most naturally gravitate towards, and which of these four do I tend to neglect that I need to grow in? So all four taken from Scripture, and what I’d like to do is actually just walk through these four styles with you. 

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, that sounds great.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay. Here we go. 

So the first style is proclamation, and this is when the gospel is declared. It takes the lowest relational investment, and it’s typically geared toward a broad audience. Here’s my friend Jeff.

JEFF ROGERS: Here’s the Romans road. Here’s your tracks. Hit the street. You know, start distributing, having conversations with complete strangers. Go door to door, knocking on doors. And this is how you lead someone to Christ. We are broadcasting to a large audience, but we may not have any relationship with these people.

JESSE EUBANKS: And this style of proclamation is typically what comes to mind when we think of evangelism. I don’t know you at all, but I’m gonna tell you about Jesus right now. And here’s the thing. This approach — it does have a place. 

RACHEL SZABO: And we see Jesus do this in the gospels. Y’know, he goes village to village, town to town, and he’s preaching to the masses, y’know, ‘repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.’

JESSE EUBANKS: And the reality is, for many of us, this is gonna feel really unnatural or uncomfortable. There are some people who are actually really skilled at this.

JEFF ROGERS: My friend and colleague John Martinez is one of them. He could sit down at a restaurant and be praying over the server and talking about Jesus with them in like two minutes, and it’s completely natural. It doesn’t feel put on. It just like comes out of him.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, I mean so this is like when you think of like a Billy Graham. The ability to speak to the masses and to connect, y’know, relationally with the masses —

RACHEL SZABO: In a broader sense.

JESSE EUBANKS: But in a broader sense, yeah.

Okay, so proclamation is the first style. The second style is apologetics. This is where the gospel is defended.

JEFF ROGERS: This is the one that isn’t just saying, ‘Hey, you need Jesus,’ but they’re also saying, ‘Here’s why what we’re saying about Jesus is true, here’s why we can trust the authority of the Scriptures, this is how this all works out.’

JESSE EUBANKS: So like proclamation, apologetics still requires pretty low relational effort. It’s typically geared toward a larger audience as well. The difference is that it addresses specific issues related to that audience — what are the arguments, the disagreements?

RACHEL SZABO: Or the questions.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, what are the hold-ups that the audience has about the gospel or about truth or about God? And I need to know those and listen thoughtfully and then respond to those questions.

RACHEL SZABO: It’s like highly contextualized.

JESSE EUBANKS: That’s right. So examples of this would be like Tim Keller’s The Reason for God, C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, this podcast. Y’know, one of the best examples of this in Scripture is when Paul is in Athens and he’s speaking in the Areopagus and he’s speaking to their philosophers, their religious leaders, y’know, he’s quoting poets. Like he’s appealing to the philosophies of the day and it’s a clear sign that he very well knows their hesitations about this new religious set of beliefs that’s emerging and he is very slowly bringing correction to those ideas.

So these first two styles — proclamation and apologetics — the temptation for folks who really excel in these areas is gonna be truth without love. The temptation is ‘As long as I’m telling people the truth, as long as they’re comprehending and they’re being made aware of what is good and true, I can be a little bit of a jerk.’ That’s going to be the real temptation.

RACHEL SZABO: Truth by any cost.

JESSE EUBANKS: Truth at any cost. That’s right. Proclamation and apologetics — they tend to be lower on the relational side, and that is something that might turn off some younger generation Christians, who want more of that authenticity, more of that realness. So, let’s talk about the third style — right after the break. Stay with us.

COMMERCIAL

JESSE EUBANKS: Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And Rachel Szabo. Today — where the gospel meets evangelism, which I’m realizing right now is a really funny title, like ‘where the good news meets sharing the good news.’

JESSE EUBANKS (laughs): Yeah, exactly, exactly. But there is some thought that needs to go into the ways in which we do tell the gospel, and that’s what we’re going through right now. We just finished the first two styles — proclamation and apologetics — and now we’re moving on to the last two, and these are just more relationally intimate in nature. And so the third style is conversation. This is where the gospel is discussed. Jesus used this all the time — uh, with the woman at the well, with Nicodemus, with the rich young ruler.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, he’s having conversations with particular people about particular things. And actually Larry McCrary and I talked about having conversations about the gospel, and he actually had this really, really helpful analogy that I’m gonna share with you.

LARRY MCCRARY: The gospel is like a 10-ton message, and we try to put it all at one time on a one-ton bridge in the same place. And most of the time it does not work. And so from an engineering perspective, when you put 10 tons all in one place on a one-ton bridge, it compromises the construction of the bridge. But if you displace that 10-ton load across the bridge, the bridge can structurally hold it, it can hold the heavier load.

JESSE EUBANKS: So we would see this mistake all the time when you and I worked at a homeless shelter. We would get like the young seminary student who would come in, and they would want to unload every ounce of theology that they knew to guys that were recovering addicts. And the folks that we saw the best results on were the ones where these young seminary students would come in and realize ‘I need to take time and slowly unpack at the pace that this person can do it.’

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and I think that’s where this style of conversation can be so helpful because you have the time to kind of spread it out and focus on different elements at different times. However, as I was talking about this with Larry, he did give a word of caution regarding this approach.

LARRY MCCRARY: I’m reminded by a guy — and he doesn’t mind me telling this story because I know it’s happened to me as well — but he was in a country in Europe and he had been having coffee with this guy every week for almost two years and they really got to know each other well and they did things together outside of just having coffee and they became good friends.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, so yeah this sounds like a classic conversation approach — takes more relational effort, is typically in a one-on-one or small group setting. 

RACHEL SZABO: Well so this guy who was a missionary, um, ended up moving to Germany. Before he moved, he asked his friend that he got coffee with all the time if they could hang out one last time before he left. 

LARRY MCCRARY: They went to have this coffee and he’s sharing and he says, ‘I need to tell you about something that is just so important in my life.’ And so he tells him the gospel, and this is after two years of having coffee. And the guy looks at him and says, ‘if it’s that important to you, why did it take you two years to tell me?’ 

RACHEL SZABO: So the caution is that with this style it’s easy to stay casual and never cross the threshold into serious spiritual conversations.

LARRY MCCRARY: So the downside is that we can fall into the trap of never getting around to sharing the gospel in the friendship. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, y’know, which by definition it’s not evangelism. Y’know, evangelism, it does require words. So 20 years ago, when I was a young adult myself, someone sat me down and they said, ‘I want you to imagine that there’s a scale, a see-saw, and on one end of the see-saw is word and on the other end of the see-saw is deed.’ Word is all about speaking the truth, and deeds are about how you live the truth. And they said, ‘You are heavy on the deed side, and you are weak on the word side.’ And they were right. Like it was just true. Several years ago, when we finally launched Love Thy Neighborhood, I became really concerned that we were attracting all these young adults into our program that were killing it on the deed side, doing all these amazing acts of mercy in our city, but that they were failing to be able to share the gospel in such a way that it would give listeners an accurate picture of who Jesus is and how they can respond to him. When words are coupled with actions, they can send a really powerful message. And that actually brings us to the final style — investment. And this is where the gospel is demonstrated. This one takes the most time and energy, but it is essential for God’s kingdom. And investment is what Jesus did with his disciples. Another term for this could be ‘doing life together.’ And it’s not manipulative. I’m not doing this just so that I can hopefully convert you. It’s not that kind of thing. This is a genuine commitment to those around you. And in fact, this is Jeff’s preferred style of evangelism. And it’s one where actually he’s seen some pretty amazing things happen where he thought nothing was ever gonna happen — like with his former neighbor, Miss Belle.

So before moving to the Dominican Republic, Jeff and his family lived here in Louisville and they lived in a neighborhood that had some racial tensions. Now Jeff and his family, they’re white, uh, but their next door neighbors were African American. 

JEFF ROGERS: And this family was just suspicious of us, not really at all friendly — which I understand why, I mean, we were strangers and we were white folks and culturally, educationally different with different values. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Y’know, but Jeff thought, ‘I’m gonna be this great Christian neighbor, talk to them.’  Except they actually never wanted to talk. Y’know, the only interaction Jeff could get with them was out by the car parked on the street.

JEFF ROGERS: And I’d either get something out of my car that I didn’t need in the house or I’d go put something in the car that I didn’t need in the car just to create that relational rub where I could say hello. And so just like, ‘Hey, how are you guys doing? You guys doing all right? Yeah, yeah. We’re fine.’ We pull off, pull away, walk into the house. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Now, y’know, of course this, this takes some discernment because some people will genuinely never be interested in interacting with you and you trying to push isn’t always going to help, but Jeff just sensed that there was the possibility of something more here. And as it turns out, he was right.

JEFF ROGERS: And then one day, there was a big party at their house. It looked like some kind of family event that they were celebrating. And so I just asked one of the, one of the ladies in the front yard — I said, ‘Hey, can you ask Ms. Belle if she’d like some family photos? We’ve got a decent camera. We’d be glad to take some pictures for you guys while you’re all here.’

JESSE EUBANKS: Miss Belle was the mother of the family that lived next door. 

JEFF ROGERS: She’s like, ‘Belle, your neighbor wants to take pictures of the family.’ (laughs) Miss Belle came out, and she’s like, ‘Okay, all right.’ And she’s like the matriarch of the family, so she starts kind of shouting out orders to everybody, ‘stand here, stand like that.’

JESSE EUBANKS: So Jeff and his family got to be photographers for a brief moment at their neighbor’s party. And then, just two weeks later for the first time ever, he was invited to come inside their house.

JEFF ROGERS: We got invited to a birthday party at their house to be the photographers. (laughs) We weren’t invited to the party. We were asked to perform a function. We’re like, ‘Yeah, great.’

RACHEL SZABO (laughs): That’s so funny.

JESSE EUBANKS: I know. And as Jeff and his family continued to just be present around their neighbors, they got to learn more about their backgrounds and their thoughts on church.

JEFF ROGERS: Learning this family’s context and their worldview, the husband was not hostile towards the church but Miss Belle was because of how she had kind of been proclaimed against by her sister, who she characterized as a Bible-beater, y’know, trying to cram Jesus down her throat.

JESSE EUBANKS: Now up to this point, Jeff hasn’t even had a gospel conversation with them because investment is a slow build over time. The actual sharing of the gospel didn’t actually come until several months later.

JEFF ROGERS: I’d just gotten back from the Dominican and, uh, I was weed-eating and the grass up against the house was like three feet tall. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Even though they didn’t live permanently in the Dominican yet, Jeff and his family made regular trips there for their missions organization. So while Jeff is outside weed-eating, Miss Belle’s husband Joe comes out on the porch to smoke a cigarette.

JEFF ROGERS: I was just praying while I was weed-eating for an opportunity to chat with him. All of a sudden the weed-eater broke and then he asked me how I was doing and he asked me how my vacation was.

JESSE EUBANKS: Joe knew the family had been gone. He just assumed it was for vacation.

JEFF ROGERS: Anyway, he was like, ‘So how was your vacation?’ I told him, I said, ‘Well, it wasn’t really a vacation. It’s just the other part of my job.’

JESSE EUBANKS: This particular trip they had gone back to help out with medical clinics and health programs.

JEFF ROGERS: And he goes, ‘So you guys just really like to help people, don’t you?’ I said, ‘Well, yeah, Joe,’ I said, ‘but let me tell you something.’ I said, ‘We do what we do because we love Jesus and we think this is what loving Jesus looks like and we’re just trying to embody that. We don’t always do a good job of it. We’re just Jesus followers and we love you guys and we think this is what love looks like.’ I said, ‘That’s why we’re the way that we are, and that’s why we love you guys so much. Jesus loves you. We do too.’ 

Now, I’d like to say at that moment, you know, led him to personal faith. I don’t know, actually, but that was an answer to prayer from something that we’d been building out for a long time, just creating influence relationally to people that were — at least some of the people in that family were — hostile to the gospel completely. That hostility went away because of how God taught us to be present over a matter of several months. After about a year and a half of investing, we were in a relationship where on Christmas morning we would stop by her house before we go to our families and exchange gifts, that they knew who we were and how we were because of Jesus, which didn’t get led out in the front. And so that’s what investment can look like. 

JESSE EUBANKS: The reality is just that the world needs us to be people of both truth and love, and that means we have to courageously step forward into all four of these styles knowing that we’re gonna tend to excel at one or two of them far more than the others. But the world needs us to be people of both word and deed, not word or deed.

RACHEL SZABO: You know, and I think what is good for us to remember about the whole purpose of this, about evangelism — it isn’t so that, you know, we can be these great communicators or we can feel really good about our interactions with people and how awesome we evangelize. Like the whole purpose is about God bringing people into his kingdom. And we can be someone who’s great at all four of these styles, but saving souls is not based on how well we did or didn’t follow through and evangelize. The purpose of the styles is to help us be obedient to the work that God is already doing in people’s hearts.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, y’know, like we could set the perfect stage, say the perfect words, do everything according to the book, and the truth is that it’s an act of the Holy Spirit for people to come to faith. These four styles just help us know our part, but only God chooses when and how he’s gonna intervene.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and I’d actually like to share one more story about that from Larry McCrary. So on this particular occasion Larry was overseas — and for security reasons he wasn’t allowed to say exactly where he was.

LARRY MCCRARY: …A large German area on a different continent on a place that I really — I did not know the language. 

RACHEL SZABO: So Larry’s preferred evangelism style is conversation. He enjoys being around people, engaging them in dialogue, and he actually tries to be intentional doing that wherever he goes. 

LARRY MCCRARY: We decided we would actually just go out and we would pray and we would try to find ways that we could connect with the culture and, y’know, share our faith.

RACHEL SZABO: So he and a local believer who is going with him as a translator, they start walking around the city to learn more about the area they’re in, learn, y’know, what sort of things can be good conversation starters in this context. So after about thirty minutes of walking, they come to this place that’s pretty crowded. And it’s like a monument site, so there’s tourists there, there’s local people there, there’s just all kinds of people just milling around, hanging about. And Larry thinks this is a great place to start a conversation with somebody. So he notices this guy. he doesn’t seem to be with any group. He’s sort of off by himself.

LARRY MCCRARY: And we go up to this guy and I knew enough English and he knew enough English for us to be able to have initial conversation. I don’t think we had any canned approach or method. We were just trying to find ways to, to connect with people, learning about the city, ‘tell me about this area,’ because we were, we were kind of in a landmark area. ‘Hey, tell me about your city, tell me about the people here.’ But after that, pretty quickly, y’know, I ran out of words, y’know, and he ran out of words and being able to understand.

RACHEL SZABO: So it seems like the conversation is over, but then this guy starts wanting to know more about Larry. So Larry starts telling the guy about why he’s here in this city.

LARRY MCCRARY: Through a translator even, I’m able to share my story about how I became a believer and my walk with Jesus today and able to share the gospel with him.

RACHEL SZABO: So, y’know, from our four styles of evangelism that we looked at, this would be proclamation — which isn’t what Larry prefers, but as he’s speaking, y’know, this guy seems to be hanging on every word that he’s saying. So then Larry comes along —

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh my gosh, yeah. Larry comes along. Larry just thinks like he’s just gonna show up for like a few minutes or an hour and talk to this guy and share the gospel. He’s actually part of a way bigger story. Like God’s been speaking to this guy for a while, and Larry’s just coming and like bringing a conclusion to this mystery.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, totally.

LARRY MCCRARY: God was working in his heart, and he asked Jesus to, to be his Lord and Savior. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh my gosh, this is amazing. Like out of all the people in this whole crowd, Larry chooses to go up to this guy and then this guy — I mean, he’s in a sea of people, he could talk to anybody — but he ends up choosing to talk to Larry out of anybody. Like that’s incredible, like that is a testament to God’s sovereignty.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and I love this story because it wasn’t Larry’s awesome evangelism strategies that gave this guy faith. Like, y’know, it was the work of the Holy Spirit like you were talking about. And I think that we can get this idea in our heads that we are like these awesome saviors that bring this message to people, but like we don’t save anyone. All we do is show up. We proclaim, we invest, and we just join in the larger story where God is already at work.

JESSE EUBANKS: You know, one of the real hardships that I think millennial Christians are facing is that they see Christians that have gone before them do evangelism very poorly, and so it makes them reluctant to engage in evangelism. But the truth is this — any of us that are Christians, we are Christians because someone was faithful to the Great Commission. Someone was faithful enough to tell us the truth about who Jesus was and to model it for us in such a way that we wanted to know who this Jesus was.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and whether they did that through proclamation, through conversation, through investment, at some point we have heard the good news. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So I think the natural question for us as Christians becomes, ‘Lord, how can I be somebody who declares the gospel, who defends the gospel, who discusses the gospel, and who demonstrates the gospel? And Lord, who in my life doesn’t need more good advice but they need good news, and how can I help bring that to them?’

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JESSE EUBANKS: For even more resources on this topic or to hear past episodes of this podcast, visit our website at lovethyneighborhood.org/LTNpodcast.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Special thanks to our interviewees for this episode — Erin Villarose, Mary Helen Thompson, Larry McCrary, and Jeff Rogers. Special thanks also to Alan Hirsch. 

RACHEL SZABO: Our senior producer and host is Jesse Eubanks.

JESSE EUBANKS: Our co-host today is Rachel Szabo, who is our media director, producer, and the girl that walks with too much swagger ever since she hurt her foot.

RACHEL SZABO: Our media assistant and audio engineer is Anna Tran. Additional reporting for this episode by Alex de Freitas and Annelise Collins.

JESSE EUBANKS: Music for today’s episode comes from Lee Rosevere, Podington Bear, and Blue Dot Sessions. Theme music and commercial music by Murphy DX.

RACHEL SZABO: Apply for your social justice internship supported by Christian community by visiting lovethyneighborhood.org. Serve with us for a summer or for a year. Grow in your faith and life skills. Learn more at lovethyneighborhood.org.

JESSE EUBANKS: Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, ‘Go, and do likewise.’