Opinion: Sharing the Gospel is Only as Hard as You Want It to Be

Oct 8

I recently started a new job, in a new industry, with virtually no experience or product knowledge. It is exciting and scary. Fortunately, the company I work for understands the obstacles and provides thousands of hours of training. One training gave me pause.

The Training

In the training, the instructor told us: "When new people join, they want to jump straight to the products and skip over how to talk to people. They say things like, ‘I talk to people all the time at work, at home, at the park, that’s easy. Tell me what I need to know so I can sell it.’ All the while, they don’t really know how to talk to people. They find out the product doesn’t really matter if they don’t like you."

The Concept

It traces back to the famous Teddy Roosevelt quote,

“No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”
– Teddy Roosevelt

But what if showing someone you care isn’t an action? What if showing someone you care is as easy as learning how to talk to people?

That’s what my new company suggests, and I think they are on to something Christians can learn from when sharing the Gospel.

Sharing the Gospel is only as hard as we want it to be.

Let’s be honest, talking on the phone is ridiculously simple. For most of us, we don’t even have to touch the phone to make a call (ex: Hey Google. Call mom).

But the fear of speaking to someone is/can be debilitating, especially if you’re new at it. This same fear exists in many of the same ways when we think about sharing the Gospel: What if they reject me? What if I say something wrong? What if I don’t have the answer? What if... you fill in the blank.

The Advice

What if they accept?

What if the receiver has no objections and simply wants to know more? What if you spend so much time training for the objections that you subsequently prepare yourself to be unprepared for sharing the Gospel?

The first step to sharing the Gospel, therefore, isn’t being prepared for objections. Rather, the first step is simply knowing Jesus and sharing that.

You get better by doing.

This, in my opinion, is the hardest part of sharing the Gospel. Too often we look for, seek out, and even pray for the perfect moment. Babylon Bee noted this in their aptly titled satirical article, Woman Still Waiting For Co-Workers To Ask About Her Faith.

According to my trainer, I need to make 1,000 phone calls before I can start becoming more efficient at relating to people on the phone. I’d venture to say the same is true with sharing the Gospel. It will take numerous approaches to get started.

All of us here at A Clear Lens want to help you be better equipped to share the Gospel. It is my opinion that the missing link between a Christian wanting to share the Gospel and a Christian sharing the Gospel is not the knowledge they have, but the gumption to do it. Remember, Christianity is not a debate you are looking to win. Nor is Christianity a foreign concept to the world. We are all born with a longing for something bigger than ourselves. It’s in our design.