How to Share Jesus Without Being Pushy or Preachy

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You want to share Jesus with someone you care about. But you've seen what it looks like when someone comes on too strong, and you don't want to be that person. So you wait. And the conversation never happens. In this episode, Blaine Larsen, Mary Jo Sharp, and Dr. John Hopper talk through what it actually means to be too pushy, why evangelism is a process and not a one-time event, and what a natural gospel conversation actually looks like in real life. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Our goal isn't just getting the message out. Our goal is that it would actually be received.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

It sounds to me like you're worried about yourself, that you're not actually worried about the other person.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Jesus lets him walk away without really answering the question. Rick from Nashville wrote in and said, I want to share Jesus with a friend, but I don't want to be too pushy or preachy. And I think that's such a common question. Great question. So, John, how would we begin to answer this question? And in particular, what do you think people mean by like being too pushy or preachy?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Well, I love the question. I love the question for two reasons. One, because he wants to share Jesus with his friend at work, right? I mean, that's a great thing. So um and secondly, he doesn't want to do something that uh unnecessarily hurts the relationship. So both of those things are great things that are sort of tied up in this uh question here. So he's communicating that he doesn't want to, as a result of sharing Jesus, push someone away.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Yeah, and it's definitely a concern that people have. So we're gonna we're gonna unpack it. Okay. So um what are some bigger picture ideas that can help us to not be so pushy?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yeah. Well, I think the first big idea, it's one that we talk about a lot here at search, and I'm sure it'll come up in many of our podcasts, is that evangelism is a process. And I think that's the opposite view that a lot of people have of evangelism. They think of evangelism as this point-in-time sort of event, like today I'm gonna go share, or our church is doing evangelism on Saturday morning, right? So we're gonna go do it. We're gonna go lay out every piece of the gospel to anybody that we encounter on this day at this time, as opposed to seeing evangelism as this ongoing conversation where we don't necessarily force people to drink the whole cup at one time, but we're giving them a chance to take a sip at a time at the speed that they're ready to drink drink it in. So I think that's probably the the first, maybe the most important of the big picture ideas is just that evangelism is a process.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Yeah. People are learning about God. And they're learning stuff a lot of times they don't know. And sometimes people say, well, is that really true? But you know, I grew up in the 80s in a part of the country where I didn't really have a lot of Christian influence and there weren't churches on every street corner. So I didn't really know Christianity. I had to encounter it over and over from um people witnessing, you know, reading the Bible and then starting to study before I comprehended what was really going on.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Aaron Powell, especially adults, right? Whether you like it or not, for most adults who have experienced life and particularly hard things, it's usually not something that they'll do a 180 on in a cup of coffee. We don't want to be pushy, but what is the goal when we're having these conversations then?

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Aaron Powell Our goal isn't just getting the message out. Our goal is that it would actually be received. Because we can all pat ourselves on the back that, hey, I got the gospel out. I I yelled it at somebody, or I I made them sit down and I forced them to listen to me as I'm going through the different ideas around the gospel. But have we really done what God has called us to do? One of the pictures that we see in Scripture is it's an agricultural picture where uh we don't just force a plant to grow. Like there's this process that's involved. There's a tilling of the soil, there's a fertilizing, there's a watering, all of those kinds of things. That that takes time, right? Because we know that uh you can't really force a plant to grow, right? So you have to do the other steps. And so for us, it's not just about sort of forcing the seed in the ground, it's it's about doing all of the things that are necessary to see that that seed actually grow for people to actually receive the gospel that that we give them.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Yeah. Okay, let's get practical. Okay. All right. That's a great uh discussion introduction. How do we not be pushy in in conversations, all right? Maybe they're listening to this and they're running to a meeting where they've got an opportunity maybe to talk about Jesus. Like how do they do that in in some practical ways?

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Aaron Powell I share things in what I call tentatively. Now, I've come over the years to hold the things that I see in Scripture sort of more firmly than I ever have. But I've also learned that if I share those more tentatively as opposed to dogmatically, that they're actually more likely to be received. So for example, I I might say to someone, hey, that I I totally see where you're coming from on that. I I know there's a lot of people that think that way. You know, I I've kind of think about it another way. Maybe this is helpful for you. And then I'll share a few thoughts about what Scripture has to say about Jesus or the gospel. But you see, in that method there, I'm not saying, hey, you idiot, you shouldn't believe that. Here's what you should believe. I'm suggesting an alternative, and I'm doing it in a way that sort of allows that person to consider is that maybe a better way than the way that I was thinking about it?

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Yeah, I would say also to be curious. Uh so a practical tip is instead of coming in loaded with all of these scriptures and arguments, maybe just be more curious about where the person is at. So maybe they say, I'm atheist. What does that mean to that person? Come in with more questions about what it, you know, what do they believe and why do they believe that? So maybe ask them some things about that so that you don't go off answering questions or concerns that they're not actually concerned with.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

And that's such a great point. That's right. Yeah. So, John, talk a little about this idea because I think it's it's actually so critical in these conversations. We we sometimes can feel like we've got to just put everything out on the table. How do we think through that in the in terms of not being too pushy?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Aaron Powell We have to recognize that when we sort of lay out the whole gospel, there's there's a number of pieces of it that are probably going to be new and almost mind-blowing for people, right? So so if I paint a picture of God as this one who's holy and righteous and his watching what we do, and and he's he's he's calling us to live up to his standard. Like that can be mind-blowing scary to people, right? This idea that we have to respond and trust to Jesus. Like there's a there's a whole lot of ideas there that um can be all fresh and new for people. And a lot of people, and I'm sure this is you know true for me too, we can we can swallow maybe one new idea at a time, right? So so often in our conversations, what we have to do is we we just have to take it a step at a time. Just help someone understand sort of one element of the gospel and come back to it in another conversation and maybe develop another idea at another time. And that keeps us from, I think, being too pushy.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of Jesus' methodology. He gets asked something like 140 or 80 questions or whatever the number is in the in the gospels, and then he asks about twice that many or or more in return. In fact, I was just looking at the uh rich young ruler passage yesterday, right? You know, what must I do? Uh and and he doesn't go, here's what you do. He starts with like two or three questions, and then he gives him some stuff that he doesn't want to hear, and and then it leaves it a as a cliffhanger. And I'm thinking my natural reaction if somebody said, What must I do to get eternal life? I'm like, lay up, let's go, right? Let me tell you. And yet Jesus lets him walk away without really answering the the question. There's really a lot of biblical support for what we're we're talking about here, helping people think through and process in their own time.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

So I have a really good example of that. So a few years back, so we had a huge uh hurricane storm in Houston and it flooded thousands, tens and thousands of homes. I got connected with this elderly man whose home got flooded. So I went and helped this fellow out with his home. And he was super grateful. Uh a week or two later, he said, Can I take you out to lunch? And so we went out to lunch and he asked me what I what I did, and as a result, he made this comment. He said, You know, um, I've been reading the Bible over the last year. He's a fellow who was about 80 years old, and so I was kind of surprised. He said, It's the first time I've looked at the Bible, but I've been reading it the last year, and I said, Well, what do you think? And he says, Well, I like most parts of it, but I don't like the fact that it calls me a sinner. And he had told me a number of things about his life. He this guy was a good guy, he'd done a lot of good things for people, all right. And so I said, Ted, um, I can see you're you're a really good guy in a lot of ways. I mean, all these things that you've done, that's great. There's something really crazy though to me when we look at the Bible and we look at what Jesus said, Jesus said that it's not just about our outward behavior, it's also about what goes on in our hearts and in our mind. And I said, you know, at one point Jesus said, you know, you have heard that it was said, do not commit adultery, but I say, if you have lust in your heart towards a person, then you have committed adultery. And his eyes got as big as saucers. He said, Oh my, you have given me much to think about. And I knew at that point that I shouldn't go any further. Like I just needed him to sit in that. Because here all of his life he'd seen himself as a good person, not as a sinner. And in that moment, there was a a little bit of a dawning there. And I needed that dawning to sit. Now I have many conversations with him after that, many lunches. And before he died, I think that he made a clear profession desire to follow Jesus. But it but it all started with this conversation where I didn't force the whole gospel. We just talked about one part that we fall short, we don't meet God's standard, and I let that sit. I wasn't too pushy, and I think that was helpful in Ted ultimately receiving the grace of Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Yeah, and it reminds me too just the importance, I don't think we can overstate it, but even just being prayerful as you're having these conversations to be sensitive to those intuitions that you have. Like that's not the case for everybody, right? For Ted, it's like you just kind of knew I gotta stop here. Other people you don't, or it's just everyone's different. But if we're praying, God give me wisdom, even as we're talking and in those moments, uh, that's that's really critical.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Absolutely. The pacing that we use with people, it's not gonna be the same all the time, right? There's some people that are just eager, tell me more, tell me more, right? Like, well, we can keep on going. But other people, you can s you can tell um oftentimes, and again, if we are praying in the midst of our conversations, God will give us check. Like that, that's enough, right? That you've given them enough for today, and we can come back. Now, one of the things you know that we want to do so that we're not too pushy is we want to earn the right to the next conversation, right? Because if we are too pushy, then maybe people don't want to talk to us again. So we have to learn to see those cues that people give us so that we don't go too far and then we lose the opportunity for a next conversation.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

And how that plays into not being pushy is that's letting yourself mature so that when you do get into these situations, you don't have to push because you're secure with where you're at. And a lot of times I've told Christians, um, you know, but shouldn't I, you know, aren't they gonna go to hell if I don't finish this? If I they'll say seal the deal. And I'm like, it sounds to me like you're worried about yourself, that you're not actually worried about the other person. And so I think sometimes in the moment when we're talking to people, we gotta keep ourselves in check because you have to acknowledge, I really want to push this. But that a lot of times is for you and not about the other person.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

There's gonna be times, right, where we we don't do it well, right? I mean, where we we go a little too far and you know, we see the person's getting a little uncomfortable, you know, they're checking their watch, they're they're trying squirming in their chair, whatever. And but we want to get that one more point in, and we do, and then afterwards we go, why did why did I feel like I needed to do that, right? So so what do you do at that point in time? Because we aren't going to be perfect with it. We need to be honest. I mean, we need to even apologize to the people that we're talking to. I'm sorry, I I can tell you need to go. I I've taken this conversation too far. When we show that self-awareness and that humility in that, that goes a long way to encouraging the next conversation.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yeah, I think that's really good to point out. I love that you put in their self-awareness. That's really that's the hard part.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

Okay, so let's make it even more practical. I'm gonna put you two on the spot a little bit. All right. So we're gonna do a little mock conversation and see how this could play out in real life. And and we have not scripted this, so this is a real fake conversation.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

We don't know where it's going. We don't know.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

But uh so John, you're you're gonna be the Christian, okay, right? And and MJ, uh, you're gonna be the person that he's talking to that's maybe got questions and isn't fully on board with Jesus yet. And so we're gonna see how this works out and and how self-aware maybe John is in this conversation. All right, I'll turn it over.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Great. All right, Mary Job, I I've so enjoyed whenever we've gotten together and had coffee or whatever, and just learning about you and your life and your family and all those kinds of things. There's one thing I I've been kind of curious about because along the way, as you said things, you've you've brought up God every once in a while. You say, oh, thank God for this or thank God for that. And so uh what I've been curious about is like, what do you think God is like?

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Like, I don't know if I think about that a lot. I don't know. Maybe he's the the being that set the universe up and just kind of let it go.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Maybe that's more of where I'm at. I don't know if I can really know who God is, but m maybe there's something there.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Aaron Powell I think that a lot of people sort of they think there's something out there, but they don't really know what it is. It's sort of in this descript, sort of gray a little bit. So I think you probably picked up in some of our conversations that um I I call myself a Christian. And there's a couple things that um that I've seen about God in the Bible. And I I don't know, would you be willing to hear maybe a couple of those things that Yeah, sure. I won't I won't try to push them on you, whatever, but just a couple things that that I've found helpful about God. Um the first one that I've seen about God is that just how much he loves us. Like it's crazy. I mean, what do you think about that like image of God that he would love us?

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Um I think I would like for that to be true. You know, if that were true, that sounds really lovely. Yeah. Uh I don't know if I believe that to be true.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

I I can s see right where you're at. I mean, we can make God into anything, right? So why wouldn't we want to make him into a loving God? But is is he really that way, right? So absolutely. There's another part of God um that uh it's not as comfortable for me when I read the Bible. And that part of God, he shows himself as this holy righteous God that that has this standard, he measures us by it. Like and he even gives consequences if we don't live up to that standard. And I read that part and I'm like, yikes. I mean, when you hear that, like what do you what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 17:06

I mean, I've heard this before, you know, street preachers and such telling people they're going to hell because they don't believe in him. And you know, it's hard for me to think that, first of all, that that's the only way um to go to heaven, that this loving God would make you have to believe in him to go to heaven. But the other one is like that, you know, I mess up and so now I I'm not going to heaven. Um, that's really hard for me to believe, you know, because there's billions of people who are messing up all the time. And so for him to be so judgmental of me, uh, that that one is very off-putting. Um, very off-putting.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Yeah. I mean, it almost seems unloving, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:51

It does.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Like, how do the two even go together?

SPEAKER_00 17:53

That's the way, yeah. I would say it's unloving.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that's been helpful to me, and I don't know if it'll be helpful to you, to kind of reconcile those two things because they seem so polar opposite. It's just sort of looking at the way that parents deal with their own children. Like, let's suppose that um a parent never disciplines a child for anything. The parents, well, I love you, and they don't ever do anything. I've come to see like, well, that really wouldn't be loving at all, because we're not setting them up. We're not setting the child up to be flourishing really in life, how to treat people and how to care for things. And and so when a parent actually has a standard and and meets out some consequences, that's actually loving. It's true, parents could be too harsh or too judgmental, right? But I it just helps me to sort of see, well, maybe those two things about God aren't so like crashing against each other or whatever. So I mean, does any of that make sense to you?

SPEAKER_00 19:02

I mean, maybe. It's the first time I'm really encountering that. So, you know, I I kind of think I might need to think on that. And I've I've got some people I need to get to, but I I'd love to think on that.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Well, I mean, thanks for letting me go there. I mean, I know it's kind of out of the blue or whatever, but when you've made those God comments, I just thought, I wonder what she thinks about God. So that's cool. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, hey, I'll let you go because I know you gotta I know you gotta go. So I think it'd be great to just spend a couple minutes here deconstructing that conversation a little bit. What did you see maybe, Blaine, in that conversation that touched into what we talked about today?

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Uh what I love that you did was really model uh asking permission, right? Would you be open to sharing this and right? Sometimes people go, not really. Uh but mostly they'll go, yeah, sure, I'll do that. And so that was that was awesome. What what did you guys think?

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Well, I try in my was you know, in sort of laying out these two things about God to not be heavy-handed with them, sort of model that tentativeness that we talked about.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah, it was hard in this situation to watch the body language, and and I don't do that real well. But so I think what's really good about what John did is when I said, Hey, I need to think on that. Let them go. If this were a real coffee shop, that might be the only cue I give you.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

And you know, when we're in real conversations, if we have this mindset that I've got to get the whole gospel out, we're probably in that situation gonna say, Hey, well, I got one more thing I want to say before you take off.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

That.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

And that one more thing is the thing that probably will hurt the availability of the next conversation. If we don't want to be pushy, one of the things we need to keep in mind is that we don't need people to drink the full glass of the gospel in one sitting. We can allow them to take one sip at a time.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Thanks for listening to the Reach Podcast. If you've got a question that you'd like to submit, go do that on reachothers.org slash podcast. And that whole website, reachothers.org, was developed by Search Ministries, which is our parent organization. And Search has been doing relational evangelism in the United States for almost 50 years, and we want to give the best of what we've learned away to you, and that's what we've done on reachothers.org. Hope you enjoy it. Come back and listen to the next episode.