"My Evangelism Isn't Working" is a Very Creepy Thing to Say

Two points, labelled "Point A" and "Point B" with a straight line between them. Image source.

I came across this article from The Gospel Coalition: 3 Overlooked Ways to Do Pre-Evangelism by Randy Newman. It's about some things one might say to one's non-Christian friends to possibly make them more receptive to hearing about Christianity.

At the beginning of the article, Newman tells us about his attempts to present "the gospel" to a high school friend he had recently reconnected with after 50 years. He says:

Today, I continue to pray for him, reach out to him with phone calls and emails, and talk about meeting up when I’m nearby (we now live more than 1,000 miles apart). I’m convinced I need to pursue some pre-evangelistic conversations with him before he’ll be ready to hear the gospel in a way that can penetrate. I’ve tried the direct evangelistic approach several times, and that hasn’t worked. I need another strategy.

Umm. So let's talk about what's wrong with this line of thinking. Well, it's pretty well summed up by the line "I've tried the direct evangelistic approach several times, and that hasn't worked."

"worked"?

What does he mean by "hasn't worked"? Well, it means he didn't get the result he was trying to get. Which is to say, his friend hasn't become a Christian.

Isn't that bizarre? To think that we should try to get people to change their religious beliefs, to think that there's some "strategy" we need to figure out in order to get people to change, to think that if it's "not working" that means we need a new strategy that will hopefully "work."

See this is what I mean when I say Christianity definitely did NOT teach me about boundaries, and in fact taught the exact opposite. All this evangelism stuff is based on the assumption that there's something wrong with people having whatever personal religious beliefs they have. And that as a Christian, I should try to get people to change their beliefs to match my beliefs. Instead of just respecting that that's none of my business and people have the right to believe whatever they believe, I should try to convince them to change. And if I can't get them to change, I should try harder, and get advice from other Christians about how to make my evangelism "work."

Now that I'm not in that ideology any more, and now that I know about boundaries, the whole thing sounds incredibly messed-up.

Yes, very very creepy to say your evangelistic efforts "aren't working" because your friend continues to believe whatever he wants to believe, as is his right.

And another thing I'd like to point out from the article:

Here are three strategies for pre-evangelism that might help your friends move from “Are you crazy? Christianity is ridiculous, narrow-minded, homophobic, and stupid!” to “Well . . . maybe I need to rethink this” to “OK, I’ve not been fair in the ways I’ve pigeonholed religious people” to “All right, I’ll take a look at that book about God you gave me.”

Imagine your non-Christian friend's beliefs are at point A. Your Christian beliefs are at point B. Now, A and B are so far apart that it's not realistic to think your friend can simply move from A to B. No, this article advises us about how to add points C, D, E, and so on in between A and B, and gradually move your friend along toward point B.

All of this is based on the assumption that point B is the perfectly correct set of beliefs. That I, a Christian, am not going to change my beliefs at all. We're not going to learn from each other. Nope. Sure, Christians pretend they want to "have a dialogue" and "listen" to other people- I know I did, back when I was all about evangelism. But it's all fake. We wanted to change other people. We didn't want to learn from them and change our own beliefs.

"But wait," you might say, "surely you do this too! When you meet a friend who believes some very wrong things, you try to persuade them to change." And yes, I do. But here's the difference: In boundaries morality, you can offer your reasons for why your point of view is correct, and you hope that the other person will agree rather than continue to follow their bad ideology, but you recognize that it's their right. If they believe something really harmful and nasty, you can't change them, but you can choose not to interact with them anymore. In boundaries morality, we don't believe there's some magic strategy out there that can manipulate other people into agreeing with us.

And the other difference is, when I talk about beliefs that people might have that I would want to talk them out of, I'm talking about things like racism. Things that are actually harmful. Not religious beliefs. I don't care what religion people follow; I care how they actually treat people in the real world.

It's extremely messed-up that I used to believe it was my job to talk people into changing their religious beliefs. I didn't know about boundaries. I thought it was about me- how I should pray, how I should talk to them, how I should show them God's love, and if I did all this correctly, then it would "work." I didn't know that other people's religious beliefs belong to them, and no matter what I do, I can never "earn" the right to make them listen to me and agree with me. It just doesn't work that way.

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Related:
Yep, I Totally Did This Creepy Evangelism Strategy
From "Virtues Morality" To "Boundaries Morality"