Witnessing angry is like giving someone a good kiss with bad breath! Ralph Moore said that our ability to reach people for Christ comes “in direct proportion to our ability to stop judging and to begin caring.” Surely you’ve heard the adage: “People don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care.” I’m not talking about counterfeit caring for the purpose of winning a soul. I mean genuine compassion and love.
“Winning over someone” isn’t the same as “winning someone over.” It’s Pharisaic pride that seeks to win debates about Jesus rather than win people to him. Coming out on top in a theological debate usually just pushes people further away from God. The holiest thing we can do is surrender any compulsion for verbal jousting as an evangelistic tool. (It’s purely coincidental if it sounds like I learned these things from any debacled evangelism attempts of my own!)
Ready, Fire, Aim! is not a good strategy for witnessing. The swing-first-and-ask-questions-later method is nothing if not painfully reminiscent of the ancient crusaders who slashed everything in their path and blamed it on Providence. We’re supposed to serve people not stab them with the truth.
– Originally published in Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends
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