How Should Christians Do Evangelism?

This stunning photo shows the Ark on the screens with a lightning bolt in the background! Yes, it was some great publicity (and the Reds won!). But back to the game Mally and I attended a few days later.

I posted this story to my social media pages, and it certainly generated a lot of comments—with a lot of people not understanding what I was saying (often because they didn’t actually read everything I wrote!), but it’s an important teaching point, so I am going to share it here on my blog as well.

As Christians, we need to carefully and prayerfully think through our methods and make sure they are wise and biblical.

And please don’t misunderstand me—obviously I am not against evangelism, open-air preaching, or even the people who were doing the evangelism I’m commenting on. I’m thankful Christ is being preached and for their boldness and courage! And we pray God used this to save people. But I do think, as Christians, we need to carefully and prayerfully think through our methods and make sure they are wise and biblical.

Now, with all that in mind, here’s the story I shared on my social media.

As we were walking to the stadium, we came across some (I assumed very well-meaning, and as several of those involved have reached out to me personally, I know they were indeed well-meaning) people holding up banners with statements such as “Obey Jesus Or Hell,” and preaching (basically yelling) into a microphone, telling people if they didn’t trust Jesus they were going to hell.

I don’t question their motivation or burden to reach people with the gospel message, but I do question their methods, particularly in a post-Christian culture where generations increasingly just don’t understand Christian jargon and don’t know who Jesus is or what the Bible is. We have generations today who have been taught against the Bible and anything Christian.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I want to emphasize this. There is a place for open-air preaching—and I’m certainly not discouraging open-air preaching or evangelism; we need more, not fewer, public declarations of truth and evangelism!—but this must be done in a way that really does engage people so one can present the message with gentleness and respect as God’s Word commands us to.

God can certainly use any situation he wants to bring people to salvation.

Again, I certainly don’t want anyone to misunderstand me. God’s Word will not return to him void: “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). God can certainly use any situation he wants to bring people to salvation. But I am challenging us to be wise in the way we do our witnessing so we can be as effective as possible.

We need to understand the culture and how people think, and we need to understand terms to ensure we are communicating in a way they will comprehend. I’ve said for a long time that we live in an Acts 17–type culture (a “Greek/Babylonian” culture that knows nothing of God or his Word) and not an Acts 2–type culture (a “Jewish” culture that has a basic, foundational understanding of God as Creator, of sin, etc.) as we once did—and this means we need to change our method of presenting the gospel while understanding that the message of the gospel never changes.

One of the most successful open-air evangelists I know is Ray Comfort, along with his team at Living Waters. We at Answers in Genesis love Living Waters and have worked together with them in various ways over the years. Ray is a personal friend of mine.

I asked Ray to sum up how he does open-air ministry. He sent me this:

Most people think of open-air preaching as someone yelling at passersby who don’t want to hear the gospel. But I’ve been preaching open air for more than 50 years, and I’m a strong believer in engaging a crowd rather than shouting at them. That’s why, for many years, I’ve used trivia to draw people in.

I stand up on a box (because I’m short) and announce, “I’m asking trivia questions. Here’s the first one: What’s the capital of France?” I deliberately make the questions easy so that people win a dollar.

As a crowd begins to gather, I’ll ask someone, “What’s your name?” A guy in the crowd says, “Fred.” I reply, “That’s right! Here’s your dollar.” That makes people laugh and creates goodwill. All the while, I’m watching for someone who’s answering questions confidently.

When I spot him, I say, “Jump up on the heckler’s box, and if you’re a good person, I’ll give you five dollars. I’ll even give you five dollars if you’re not.” So he climbs up, and away we go—through the Ten Commandments and into the gospel.

The Apostle Paul said, “by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22, NKJV). This is one of the means I use, and it’s remarkably effective in getting people to stop and listen to the glorious gospel.

Of course, Ray and his team do many other things too and have produced a phenomenal number of videos that have had many millions of views on YouTube. So many have trusted Christ for salvation through the ministry of Living Waters.

I noticed on Saturday that those screaming through the microphone outside the Reds’ stadium about people going to hell, well, they didn’t seem to be impacting people positively (though, again, God can certainly use whatever means he wants to save!). I heard many making negative comments and making derogatory gestures at them. And, of course, as many people in my comments section pointed out, there will also be those offended by the truth (we certainly understand that here at AiG!), and we don’t let that stop us. But we should pay attention to the response and see if the methods we are using are as effective as they could be.

I’m not an open-air preacher—I’m not called to that, but Ray Comfort is. And for me, if we were trying to witness to those coming to the Reds’ game (as AiG staff often have), I think I would be handing out some evangelistic apologetics booklets to reach people where they are and engaging them in conversation if the opportunity arose. Also, this year we are sponsoring Faith Day at the Reds’ stadium and will be handing out all sorts of resources to people to impact them.

And we do promote the Ark Encounter attraction at Reds’ games as you can see from the photos above. Incidentally, 30% of our Ark Encounter guests are non-Christians, and our research indicates 70,000 people a year (minimum) trust Christ for salvation as a result of God using this attraction. Another 25,000 people a year trust Christ after coming to the Creation Museum.

I feel the need to repeat this because of the comments on social media: I am not coming against open-air evangelism, I am just challenging people to understand where our culture is and use wise methods in accordance with biblical principles to reach the lost with the most vital message in the universe—the saving gospel.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AIG’s research team.