RUN LIKE A CHAMPION

Evangelism – 10
Sammy Tippit: I want to welcome you back to our conversation we’re having on how to share Christ with other people. Once you’ve come to know Jesus and he has changed your life, you want to tell others about him. One of the greatest joys you’ll ever have is telling people what Jesus Christ has done for you, and then seeing someone come to Christ is so exciting.
So many people have never experienced that, and God wants you to experience that, to share your faith in Christ with others and to even see some people come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior as a result of what you do. God wants to use you. You are important. I’ve been visiting with Wayne Jenkins.
Wayne, it has been such a good rich time of talking about so many things, from prayer to the Holy Spirit to sharing your testimony and developing relationships. We’ve been getting very practical here. We talked about developing a relationship with people that is authentic because we love them, to try to share the greatest thing in the whole world.
One of the biggest problems I find is just getting started. With anything in life just getting started is hard, but especially when you come to the most important thing in life, getting started in sharing Christ with someone else. So how do we get started? How do we begin a conversation? Just on a very practical level, how do we do that?
Wayne Jenkins: Even if this is somebody you’ve built a relationship with, sometimes even sitting down with them… You’re a friend of theirs, but knowing where to start is sort of awkward for us sometimes. It becomes especially awkward if it’s somebody you meet in some sort of location, God gives you an opportunity, and you don’t know the person very well.
I find that there’s a natural flow of a conversation that will get you there. One is talk about their family. “Sammy, do you have any children?” They’ll say, “Yeah, I have children. Do you want to see all of the pictures of my grandchildren?” They’ll talk about that, and you’re talking about something that…
Sammy: That’s important to them.
Wayne: That’s important to them. Then you talk about their occupation, or maybe they’re in school. It depends on what age group you’re dealing with. “What do you do in your line of work? What’s your role? Tell me something about it.” Then you want to look for what I would term a religious word that is a neutral word. In other words, a word that would be understood by a person who is an unbeliever and a person who’s in church, somebody who’s secular in their thinking and someone who is spiritual in their thinking.
Here’s the problem. This person I’m dealing with, by and large, when I come to start talking to him, he’s way over here in the secular. He’s thinking about things he has to do in regular day-to- day things, and it may not have anything to do with anything spiritual. I have to move him over here to the spiritual to talk to him.
I’ve talked about something meaningful, his family. I’ve talked about his work, and he has been willing to share that with me, so there’s an intimate relationship beginning to develop, and I just say, “By the way, Sammy, when you go to church, where do you go to church?” I didn’t ask him how often he goes to church or anything. That’s one way to do it.
Sammy: In a number of countries this is going to be relevant, but in some countries there are not even any churches in existence. So what would you say to a person, let’s say, from a place like Iran or China who don’t have churches just down the street and on every block? Would you say, “Have you ever met any Christians? Have you ever met any followers of Christ?”
Wayne: That is another way you can do it, and that would be good. They at least may have heard the name of Christ, even if it’s in a sense of, “We don’t like those people.” You know, “Have you ever met those people?” Remember, you have a warm enough relationship now where this person is talking to you, and so you know the Spirit of God at least is working some in the life of this person. You’re trying to build a bridge here.
Sammy: From what I’m hearing you say, to get to this thing of talking about something spiritual or religious or whatever way you want to put it, first you have to get their focus on them and the things they’re interested in, their family, their job, and just begin a conversation. Then as you develop this relationship, you begin to move it into spiritual things.
I know, for instance, in a lot of Muslim countries people have heard of Jesus but only as a prophet. You can ask them, “What do you think of Jesus?” and start off there. In a Western country like Brazil or the United States, you could ask, “Where do you go to church?” So it’s according to where you are in that situation. Go ahead.
Wayne: From there you would move into what we would say would be the message, whatever form of tool you may use. You may just say, “Listen, I have a little pamphlet here that has meant a lot to me that helps me. It helped me in my spiritual life. Do you mind if I share that with you for a few moments?”
You’re asking them. You’re asking for their permission, and if they give you that permission to do it, then you begin to share it with them. If you have a marked New Testament, which we’ll talk about later, it may be that… So you can use this on any of them, any of your tools.
Sammy: For a person in a country where they don’t have the ability to have a piece of literature, where that’s not permitted, one of the things they can do is say, “Hey, I found a website that is really fantastic.” A website is nothing but an electronic pamphlet. “Go check this out.” They can use that as a means of doing it.
Wayne: Yeah, and if you have that already printed up, you can say, “Look, here’s a website,” and you just give it to them. The other thing is this point is an excellent place to say, “Do you mind if I tell you my story?” and you go right into your personal testimony. Then you can move from that personal testimony to, “Look, I have something that will help you. Go to this website.” It may be to hand them a little gospel pamphlet. It may be to give them a marked New Testament. It could be any of those things that you use to help them.
Sammy: So just some kind of tool that will explain the gospel, explain what Christ has done for us. Let me just suggest a couple of things. People in like Brazil, the United States, Romania, where they have access to be able to do this, let me encourage them to find some really good solid materials. There’s a little booklet Billy Graham has that is in a number of languages called Peace with God. Get that. I know it’s in Russian, Romanian, a lot of languages.
Wayne: Portuguese.
Sammy: Portuguese. Get that, and keep some of those with you. Then when you have that opportunity to have a conversation, you can say, “Hey, here’s something I want to share with you.”
Wayne: In places where they may have the access to developing a website they can use, a card similar to this that we have… We’ve developed a website. I can leave this for the person. It has 10 different languages on it, and it just says, “Thank you.” Somebody does a service for me, maybe a waitress, maybe at a motel, maybe at a mechanic shop. I can say, “Thank you” when I pay them, and then I say, “When you get a chance, go to that website on the back and read my story.” Again, it’s the use of your testimony.
Sammy: What is the website they would go to to find this?
Wayne: They can go to whativaluemost.com. They can put in any name, but they can put in my name, Wayne Jenkins, and they can read my story.
Sammy: So you can go to whativaluemost.com and write in “Wayne Jenkins.” That’s on your screen. You’ll see it right there, and you can use that to share with people. This is just a simple tool, something you can use to share Christ with others.