Evangelizing vs. Proselytizing (#1-1)

Evangelizing is not about manipulative tricks or clever ploys to embarrass other people and force them to submit to your point of view, or ways to belittle or humiliate those who disagree. This is what Pope Francis calls proselytizing when he says “It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows...” It is by evangelizing. You may be surprised to learn that evangelizing is often most effective when done through the use of questions rather than statements or assertions. We learn the effectiveness of questions by examining the New Testament where we learn that Jesus almost never answered a straight question with a straight answer: Jesus asked 183 questions and gave only 3 direct answers. He answered 307 questions with a - you guessed it – a question. And while sharing the gospel is our task, when you think about it, it is God’s problem. Here’s what I mean, we are to share the gospel as clearly, graciously, and persuasively as we can. It is God’s job to take it from there. Conversion is the purview of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, all you need do is put a stone in their shoe, get them thinking about the reasons for their own beliefs. If you can do that, you have accomplished something important. There are three “best practices” I’d like to recommend when just starting out with exploring how to evangelize. The First Best Practice is necessarily prayer. More on that and the other Best Practices next time. In Christ...