Rethinking the Cold-Call

A friend of mine recently asked me to listen to message by Tim Keller on evangelism (available here) to see what I thought of the ideas presented there. I recommend listening to the whole thing, as I found that my mind was alive with brainstorming about sharing the gospel throughout the whole talk, but I will admit that the best stuff is in the first 45 minutes or so.

The gist of the message can be summed up by an oft repeated phrase from Stephen King's Dark Tower series: "The world has moved on." Keller makes the case that our tried and trusted methods for evangelism have lost all of their effectiveness in this postmodern world in which we live. This is not a new idea, of course, but Keller has a way of thinking through the issue from various angles that helped to stir my own thinking on the subject in a way that even Mark Driscoll has not.

Let me tell you what I heard from this. Now, my ideas spring of course from my own experiences and passions, but I think that one of the ideas that I had while listening may be helpful for others. I heard (or thought) that evangelism encounters do not have to contain the full content of the gospel. Now let me try to explain why that might be important.

I have conducted evangelism experiments and ministries in two large cities and one rural countryside. In Louisville, KY and Louisville, IL, I have sought to make the entire truth of the gospel clear in one conversation. Now, this has often led me to several conundrums. Do you try to explain the Trinity? How can they get the gospel without fully knowing the details of the Godhead? Do you explain creation, election, eschatology? All of those ideas have a direct bearing on the gospel, but are a little too much to pack into even an hour-long conversation. When we have come back from a completely unsuccessful witnessing trip, I have remarked, "Well, it's not like we're trying to get these people to change their toothpaste. We're trying to get them to change their whole life!"

A second observation I have made when conducting these experiments/ministries is that I would have absolutely no idea what to say to this person if I returned to his or her door in three months or so. I have already given them the gospel, what more could I say?

These problems may be solved by some of the ideas that Keller is tossing around. Evangelism has to be more of a process, he says. Paul didn't give the Areopagites all of the gospel, he says. Jonah only gave the Ninevites the barest scrap of warning about judgment. Here's what I take from that: maybe our door-to-door or street evangelism encounters ought to be simply about handling one little truth at a time. Maybe instead of having a pre-programmed presentation, we should simply let the conversation come from what is currently on the subject's mind. That way, we begin to build a relationship that can continue, we begin to sow seeds of a worldview that may blossom, and we have plenty to talk about the next time we meet that person. And then we can be intentional about going back and talking again.

This is not a call to water-down the content of the evangelistic encounter, but rather a call to realize that the "evangelistic encounter" may in fact, by God's sovereign grace, be 25 evangelistic encounters that add up to sum total of the truth being presented over time. Throughout the process, a real relationship is also developed, and facts of theology do not have to be poured out in one disheveled lump.

I like these ideas and will soon try to put them into practice. Please feel free to comment on Keller's message, if you listen, or any of my thoughts.