By April Terry

Right before Christmas, we got a letter from a lady who attends one of our services because her mother is one of our seniors. She wanted to tell us about how our messages and music had helped her through a couple of personal losses that she had been going through. She’d lost some longtime friends of the family, and even more recently, had lost a cousin who was a deputy sheriff killed in the line of duty. In remembrance, she decided to do something positive to help her through the loss of her cousin, and she bought one thousand pocket angels.

After our service one day, we decided to invite her to have lunch with us and she described how she would hand them out. Whenever she met someone new that she thought might like or need one, she would produce one. Sometimes she told her cousin’s story, and sometimes she didn’t. What astounded me was that she had already given more than one thousand and was nearly up to fifteen hundred.

It’s an amazing amount of people we meet over a number of months, if we think about it and she was able to put a number on her connections because she had her pocket angels to give. Imagine a beautiful, white, glass angel sitting in the palm of your hand and then imagine giving one to ever person that you meet and connect with. When I think about it, it kind of puts a picture in my head about the part we play in this world.

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by Randy Siever

“But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,” 1 Peter 3:15 (NIV)

Be prepared, says Peter. It’s the Boy Scout motto, and in modern decades a primary motivational verse for much of the evangelistic training we’ve all endured. Being prepared in recent evangelical history has meant to be ready to give the right answer to any question our seeking friends may come up with. It means to study the common objections to the faith and memorize the proper responses to counter them. Memorize the Four Spiritual Laws (and their corresponding Bible verses, if you’re really serious). Practice drawing the “Bridge Illustration” so you can diagram the Gospel for the visual learners. Memorize clever little phrases that you can use to steer any conversation to something “spiritual” (where you can present your carefully memorized pitch). You can add your own stuff to this list, I’m sure (I’ve done them all, believe me). It’s pretty endless.

So what has been the result of all this preparation? Do we have a growing army of prepared Christians going out to explain the Gospel to their friends? Is the bulk of the Body of Christ stepping up to the Great Commission, having had the benefit of billions of dollars and countless hours worth of training and preparation?

You know the answer to that one, don’t you? It’s sad, but charitable estimates indicate that less than 10% of Christians participate in evangelism at all. Something is terribly wrong here. Are the other 90% just slackers? Are they chicken? Lukewarm? Or are they simply overwhelmed by the amount of information they seem to need to be armed with to do this well? I’ve heard this question countless times from serious Jesus followers regarding evangelism: “What if they ask me a question I can’t answer?” (“I don’t know” is the universally acceptable answer to that question, for what it’s worth)

People are literally paralyzed by preparation.

What is Peter really trying to say to us in this frequently (mis)quoted verse? Is he warning us to become smarter, more clever and better prepared than those we are to present the Gospel to? I don’t think so. What is it that Peter is asking us to be prepared to do? To give an answer. To what question? “Why do you have hope?”. Has that ever happened to you…someone you’ve been hanging out with, listening to, caring about, asks you why you seem to have hope in your life? Peter seems to assume this question will arise often enough that we should be ready for it.

And what is the correct answer to this probing question? What list do we need to present, what clever response should we be ready to offer? Well, how about this one? “Jesus, I guess.” They’d likely want more information about that, like how Jesus has brought hope to your life, and how following him has affected your inner life and outer relationships with others. Are you prepared to answer those kind of questions?

The beauty of this clear intent of 1Peter 3:15 is that you cannot get the answer wrong. It’s YOUR STORY, your experience with Jesus, your personal transformation that is the answer to this question. You might not express it eloquently, but it’s your story. Nobody can say, “That’s not true.” And they won’t…they’ve noticed hope in you that has intrigued them.

Still, some folks are afraid to tell their story because it isn’t very dramatic or laced with titillating incidents. They didn’t do drugs or kill people. They had a happy, normal, Christian upbringing with pretty decent parents who didn’t abuse them or abandon them. Some people actually believe they don’t have a story because it’s so…ordinary. But I can assure you, if someone asks you to offer a reason for the hope they see in your life, you have a story to tell. Tell it however you want to, but tell them the truth. They’re interested, and they’re inviting you to tell it.

This all presumes you actually HAVE hope in your life. You can’t fake it for the sake of doing evangelism. If Christ hasn’t made this kind of difference in your life, you won’t get this question from anyone. It also presumes you’ll be in close enough proximity to people without hope that they will become curious about your life. This also can’t be faked.

Being prepared isn’t so much about giving the right answer as it is about expecting people to be asking about that hope you have. That means that you’ll have to actually be engaged with those who are without the hope you have in Christ in some significant ways. You’ll have to pay attention to people all around you and listen to their stories. You’ll have to be in proximity to those who are far from Christ. That may sound daunting, but the reality is you already ARE in proximity. Just start paying attention to people all around you.

Oh, and when they actually ask you for a reason for the hope you have, the only rule that should guide your response is also given by Peter in the last part of this verse:

“But do this with gentleness and respect.”

If you want to memorize something, memorize that.

Randy Siever is speaking about the need to view evangelism differently (aka: Doable Evangelism) Sunday, August 9, at The Rock Church in Sparks, NV.  Services are at 9 and 11 a.m.  Come hang out if you’re in town!