Tim Keller – 10 tips on evangelism for ordinary Christians

In our home groups this week we are studying Jonah 3. It’s amazing to consider the impact of God’s compassion on ‘that great city’ (Jonah 4:11) using a reluctant and ordinary spokesman for his message.

Christians believe the gospel of Jesus is great news, relevant to all people. We want to share it with others (evangelism), but may be inhibited by fear of what others could think of us, feelings of our own inadequacy to answer their questions and explain our beliefs, or the pressure of other priorities, etc.

Tim Keller recently gave 10 tips to help ordinary Christians with evangelism. Martin Salter has recorded them in this blog post which I found so helpful I have copied it below:

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

What Keller also advises is that we (generally) start with 1-4. If people are interested and want to talk more you can move them to stages 5-7. If they’re still interested go on to stages 8-10. Sometimes people will want to go straight to 10, but often people start from way back and need some time to think and discuss things in a non-pressured way. We often think that only stages 8-10 count and invest all our energy there. TK suggests that to get people at stages 8,9,10 you have to put the work in at 1-4. Sometimes you’ll have to keep going round the loop multiple times.

TK suggests to leaders that we should aim to get 20% of our folk doing this (as a start).

Let’s pray that as we consider God’s compassion for ‘that great city’ we will grow in our compassion and  plan and pray for ‘ordinary’ ways we can share his gospel with others.

Related Posts:

 Engaging in more spiritual conversations

Tim Keller on evangelism in the 21st century

Tim Keller on evangelism in the 21st century

Some excerpts (slightly paraphrased):

What is the relationship between word ministry and deed ministry?

Word ministry and deed ministry go hand in hand… integrating the two is very necessary but is not that easy to do.

How can we bring word and deed ministries together?

Word and deed ministry integrate best at the one-on-one level. If you are reaching out to a neighbour and trying  to talk to them about Christ… yet they have any kind of personal needs… just to be involved with those folks as a Christian friend means you’re going to be bringing word and deed ministries together.

How can evangelism through word ministry be approached?

Word ministry for lay people:

1. Let other people know you go to church. It’s a pretty simple thing, but it’s important, sometimes you say ‘I’m going to church’ to four people, and one of them later on asks you about it.

2. Let people know that you are a Christian and that it means something to you. It may be a passing comment, sharing something and saying “My Christian faith has really helped me here”. Just a passing comment…if your friend picks it up and says “Really, how?”, good. If she doesn’t,  fine, there are a lot of simple behaviours that lead in an organic way to more extensive, in-depth discussions. You should do the simplest behaviours first: loving people, caring for people, being a person of integrity, letting people know your Christian faith is there, and it will just bubble up naturally. Most of us feel if I’m going to do word ministry, then I need to find a way to get the whole gospel out in one conversation or get into a debate. That’s not the way to go, be simple.

How can we share the gospel with people living in cities?

 Cities are so diverse which means there is no one way to share the gospel. You have to learn how to share the gospel differently with different people. It’s the same gospel, there’s still the same gospel kernel: God, sin, Christ, your need to repent and believe. In cities you have to be more culturally sensitive, spend more time talking with people to understand their culture.

How do you approach contextualising the gospel?

Contextualising largely means different ordering of gospel truths. For example in Acts, with Greeks Paul starts with the doctrine of God, but with the Jews he goes to the Scriptures first and gets to Jesus more quickly. Eventually he has to get the whole counsel of God to a person, but the order and emphasis is the key to contextualisation.

(H/T:  L-T Hopper   )

All of life is repentance – Tim Keller

Tim Keller writes: Martin Luther opened the Reformation by nailing “The Ninety-Five Theses” to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. The very first of the theses was: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ…willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” Repentance is the way we make progress in the Christian life. Pervasive, all-of-life-repentance is the best sign that we are growing deeply and rapidly into the character of Jesus.

The transformation of repentance. It is important to consider how the gospel affects and transforms the act of repentance. In ‘religion’ the purpose of repentance is to keep God happy so he will continue to bless you and answer your prayers. This means that ‘religious repentance’ is a) selfish, b) self-righteous, and c) bitter all the way to the bottom. But in the gospel the purpose of repentance is to repeatedly tap into the joy of our union with Christ in order to weaken our desire to do anything contrary to God’s heart.

‘Religious’ repentance is selfish. In religion we only are sorry for our sin because of its consequences to us. It will bring us punishment – and we want to avoid that. So we repent. But the gospel tells us that sin can’t ultimately bring us into condemnation (Rom 8:1.) Its heinousness is therefore what it does to God-it displeases and dishonors him. Thus in religion, repentance is self-centered; the gospel makes it God-centered. In religion we are mainly sorry for the consequence of sin, but in the gospel we are sorry for the sin itself.

 ‘Religious’ repentance is self-righteous. Religious repentance often becomes a form of self-flagellation in which we convince God (and ourselves) that we are so truly miserable and regretful that we deserve to be forgiven. In the gospel, however, we know that Jesus suffered and was miserable for our sin. We do not have to make ourselves suffer to merit forgiveness. We simply receive the forgiveness earned by Christ. (1 John 1:8) says that God forgives us, because he is ‘just’. That is a remarkable statement. It would be unjust of God to ever deny us forgiveness, because Jesus earned our acceptance! In religion we earn our forgiveness with our repentance, but in the gospel we just receive it.

To read the rest of this helpful and practical article click here

Related: Here’s a helpful table of some of the practical differences Gospel Christianity v False Religion   from Tim Keller’s  Gospel in Life curriculum.

Historical reliability of the NT Gospels – Tim Keller

As with the earlier post on Peter Williams , I invite you to watch the first five minutes of this talk by Tim Keller on “The True Story of Jesus” and see if you find it as helpful as I did. He has three points: 1. Why it’s important that the story of Jesus is true, 2. Why it’s important that the story of Jesus is about Jesus 3. Why it’s important that the gospel is not a set of bullet points, but a story.