Randy Newman,
Faculty Commons staff at George Mason University
Witnessing, for most of us Christians, is difficult. Witnessing to family members is even tougher. So what do we say around the Thanksgiving table?
A few years ago I authored several books on evangelism. Many of you live in the publish or perish world; among Christian writers it’s publicize or perish. I was invited often to speak on the topic and I began to notice something.
At every seminar I presented on how to evangelize, people would say to me, “This is helpful, but what do I say to my father, he’s an atheist?” The examples were seemingly endless both in their variety and anguish – “My mother’s an alcoholic.” “My sister’s now a Buddhist.” “My cousin runs an abortion clinic.”
I started interviewing people who had tried to share the gospel with a relative – horror stories outweighed success stories. But I observed some patterns. Witnessing to family took time, required deeper expressions of love, and often came through a side door.
This research led to yet another book, Bringing the Gospel Home (Crossway). On the remote chance that you haven’t read it, allow me to unpack three common elements.
Building, Not Dumping
First, most of our evangelism training models assume we’ll see people only once. But family members keep showing up…for decades. We need a gradual approach rather than the dump truck method. Perhaps asking more questions, engaging in partial conversations, and building a case rather than just stating it will prove more effective.
Second, I found that family is the place where love is always assumed but seldom expressed. At least, it’s not expressed in ways that people really feel loved. There’s a tacit assumption that we love our family…simply because we’re related. We might even say “I love you” quite a bit.
But many adult children don’t really experience a sense of love from their parents. We don’t express love all that well to a brother or sister either. We assume more than we should and the result is a painful alienation that everyone feels but no one acknowledges. So the challenge for a Christian who wants to reach out to an unsaved loved one is to find ways to make sure they feel like a loved one.
What Difference Does It Make?
Finally, many of our relatives have heard our “Jesus-sales-pitch” more times than they care to. What they need to hear now is how our faith makes a difference in our marriage or our parenting or our view of money or death or trials or a thousand other topics that faith is supposed to transform. We need to show and tell them how the gospel informs and transforms all of life…and it better be deeper than just “Jesus makes me happy.”
Witnessing to family and others close to us is difficult. But it can also be effective for the very reasons it’s difficult – the ones who know us best are likely to see the gospel in a deeper way…if we just can point it out to them and, better still, incarnate it in what we say and do.
(c) 2011 Randy Newman
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