Hope Together's Rachel Jordan-Wolf tackles a common struggle in evangelism: the belief that no one’s interested in hearing about Jesus. She shares how we can move past discouragement and discover that people are more open than we think.
It was a Sunday evening and I was rushing to church when I noticed a man sitting in the outer alcove of the church window, sketching in a notepad.
I was running late, so I was pelting along the road. But something made me stop.
“Hey, what are you drawing? It’s a great spot isn’t it,” I said.
He smiled. “Yeah, it is.”
I said “By the way, you're kind of almost in church. If you want to, you could actually come in. The service is on, and we’d love for you to join us.”
To my surprise he said, “Oh you know, that’s really interesting. I’ll just finish my sketch.”
So, I sat on the steps while he finished, and we walked in together.
He told me he’d never been inside a church in his life. Not once. Before he left, I gave him a Gospel of Mark. He was flying back to Australia the next day and said he’d look for a church there. I was hoping the flight would be a great opportunity for him to read that Gospel!
Moments like this remind me: we often wait for the “right time,” but opportunities are everywhere – if we’re just willing to stop. Jesus was willing to be interrupted, and he was willing to interrupt. Are we?
A lot of Christians have the best of intentions – we don’t want to bother people. We believe that they probably don’t want to hear about Jesus.
But is this the truth?
The research paints a very different story.
