One of the things I have always struggled with on my walk of faith is sharing it with others. It’s not necessarily a fear of looking silly or just being honest – it’s more that I sometimes fear being “that Christian” who ends up turning someone off because out of ignorance or stupidity.
Further, my attempts at evangelism with people I am closer too (and theoretically in a position to grant grace if I screw something up) have not been all that successful. There is data out there that suggests that as many as 9 out of 10 people would go to church if invited by a friend. If that’s the case, I either don’t have many friends as I thought or I am so terrible at evangelism that the mere thought of attending church with my family and me is truly horrifying (I am joking – sort of).
Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:11-13 that evangelism is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. While I certainly feel like I have gifts in some areas, this clearly isn’t one of them. That’s OK, though – no one can be good at everything.
I do, however, sometimes feel bad that people who I know and care about are suffering needlessly perhaps because I am a terrible evangelist. Maybe if I were more charismatic or interesting, people might see what a huge blessing church life can be. Sometimes, I feel like I can do nothing but watch helplessly as someone’s life unravels.
Generally, I don’t think or dwell on this too much, but lately these feelings have been more persistent. It’s not a guilt thing, but I do have some close friends\relatives with amazing hearts who are struggling in many ways. To hear some truth poured into their souls could do some incredible good, particularly with the series of messages we’re going through at the church. But, I can’t seem to find the right words to get people to move…frustrating!
In the midst of that frustration, though, I was helped to see a different perspective on evangelism that I hadn’t considered before through an email I received from my pastor this morning. To provide some context, one of the ways that I serve the church is to produce a podcast of the weekly sermon. It doesn’t take very long and is something I consider a small service, but the email I received helped me realize that there’s perhaps a bigger impact to being a “computer geek for Jesus” than I had thought:
“Awesome news! I saw this on my Facebook wall on Sunday. Wanted to celebrate with you as YOU are the reason these folks were able to listen to the sermon online.”
The post that was shared on Facebook was a post by a book publisher who shared a link to last week’s sermon where one of their books was a recommended “digging deeper” resource. The gist of their post was that they highly recommended listening to the talk (which they called great). Reading some of the comments on the post made me smile as well.
Now, while I didn’t have much to do with the sermon prep, what I realized is that my little corner of “techie evangelism” reaches people I’d never imagined. A responsibility I consider a “small service” ended up being a big deal to God, drawing people I have never met to Him. Pretty cool.
My encouragement in all of this is that God can use small things to do big things – we just have to keep our eyes open to what He’s doing. And maybe, the picture we have of what evangelism “should” look like is not the picture God would necessarily have for us right now at this time on our journey. And, that’s all good, because He is good!