Top Tips for Personal Evangelism

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Here are Tim Keller’s top ten tips for personal evangelism:

  1. Let people around you know you are a Christian (in a natural, unforced way)
  2. Ask friends about their faith – and just listen!
  3. Listen to your friends’ problems – maybe offer to pray for them
  4. Share your problems with others – testify to how your faith helps you
  5. Give them a book to read
  6. Share your story
  7. Answer objections and questions
  8. Invite them to a church event
  9. Offer to read the Bible with them
  10. Take them to an explore course

He apparently goes on to say that we too often start with 8-10 because we think these are what count as true evangelism, but we need to start with 1-4 with most people. Indeed we may need to loop through them several times before we can move on to 5-10. (HT - Tim Chester)

I guess the tricky bit for me is #4. And yet it is so important - last week I was preaching on 2 Corinthians 4, which is all about God's power and glory shining through our weaknesses and cracks. Yet so often we feel as if we have to put a strong face on everything. Don't. Let people see the glory of Jesus' resurrection life shining through us.

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