I was just reminded of one part of the church teaching I have heard for so many years, that it is important to share Christianity with people not only because it is important, but because we live in a post-Christian society, and people today haven't even ever heard the Gospel. "We can't just assume people know the Gospel! A lot of people don't even know John 3:16 anymore! We have to actively be sharing our faith!"
But actually, my impression is that most people in our culture here in the US of A have actually heard the Gospel before. They may understand it in ways that Christians disagree with, but they are in fact usually familiar with the basic concepts of Christianity.
(This is what sparked my thoughts, by the way. Specifically, the panel after the Scientology bit, about halfway down the page.)
Soooo... if you go out thinking that you need to share the Gospel every chance you get, you're going to end up in conversations where you are probably either nervous and unprepared, or just repeating a bunch of the perfect answers and bullet points that you've memorized. And you are probably not Spirit led, and you are going to give information like a tract; either a poorly-written one, or a boring, cliche one.
And the person you talk to will think that you are stupid. He or she will think that you are blindly following a religion, and will either laugh at the fact that you don't even know how to properly explain what you believe, or laugh at the fact that you had to memorize it from bullet points, and will make assumptions about the rest of what you must believe and be intolerant of. He or she may pity you, because he or she knows that you aren't having any fun because you feel guilty if you do or think anything that doesn't have to do with God, he or she they will probably walk away feeling at least as shut off from Christianity as before what you tried to tell them.
I'm not saying this happens every time. There are good spiritual conversations that can come out of awkward situations. I have heard plenty of stories about faith-sharing that end out well! (That's my brief disclaimer so you don't start clamoring with all those stories and not get the point I'm trying to make.)
But, I have also heard stories that were painfully awkward, and have had many friends that are not Christians, and have had very different experiences with them when we have spiritual conversations that are honest and two-sided, whenever the time is right, rather than trying to force the conversation a certain way.
What I want to say is more or less this.
STOP!
Reassess your methods! Analyze your ideology of the world!
I am saying what many, many traditional church people need to hear. The mark of modern evangelism is an unwillingness to truly listen, it is marked by just wanting to talk, and it becomes worrying about putting conversion notches on belts.* This simply causes the majority of people who are not Christians to continue thinking that it is a religion that is flawed, over-institutionalized, and full of stupid people who willingly disconnect their brains and allow themselves to be fed whatever their pastor cooks up.
It is hard for a lot of Christians to even start to think about changing their methods, because there are so many places where tradition has gotten mixed in with the good stuff. Tradition, when it was created, was not tradition, it was modern. And it was good for the time and the world it was created for, but when the world changes, sometimes methods have to change, too. And that includes the methods used by religious people to relate to the world they live in.
I don't have any big, perfect answers, just really one very simple guideline:
Listen.
*(I know the notches on the belt may sound unfair and mean, because Christians in this share-the-Gospel-to-everyone mentality have a good-hearted end goal, for everyone to go to Heaven and stuff...but I think the BeltNotch metaphor has a lot of critical value that needs
to be considered thoughtfully. In evangelism, what does it look like to value quantity over quality,
conversion over compassion? When is the hurry to get people in the door to the parabolic feast actually about a Christian's Good Works, rather than about the people outside in the dark?)
