Meeting People Where They Are
5 Evangelism Principles from Christ After the Resurrection Part 2
If we want to be effective in our Christian witness we need to be able to connect, or reconnect, with people the way Jesus did after the resurrection. In part 1 we learned the first principle of effective evangelism in Christ’s encounter with Mary at the tomb; Jesus made the first move. In fact not only did Jesus make the first move with Mary but with all of the post-resurrection encounters. God always makes the first move! Our second principle comes from John’s encounter with the empty tomb. Jesus not only makes the first move he also meets people where they are.
We have to start meeting people right where they are. Because guess what? We can’t meet people where they are not. One of the things we quickly notice about each of the post-resurrection encounters is that they were each a little different. They were different because every person is different and effective evangelism understands this.
Os Guinness, in his book Fool’s Talk, said : “Jesus never spoke to two people the same way, and neither should we. Every single person is unique and individual and deserves an approach that represents that uniqueness.” This is why just one approach or method of evangelism won’t reach all people. We need to use many methods in order to reach many people.
The Greek word used for Mary seeing the empty tomb is different than the one used with John. The word for “seeing/looking” used with John means to investigate, analyze, observe, to think about something. Mary didn’t need to go into the tomb but John did. According to Timothy Keller, “Mary was a feeler and John was a thinker.” Jesus meets them both where they are. The message, “the tomb is empty” is the same. However, the way people related to, saw, processed, and believed the message was different depending on the person. For some, all it takes is seeing it in the Bible but Johns need more than that. Pad answers do not work with Johns. If we want to become better evangelists we need to get better at apologetics. Not only do we need to understand the Bible better, but people’s objections to the Bible better.
We have to become familiar with secular thinking, not just as a church growth strategy, but in order to have greater empathy with the world around us. There are many Christian writers/thinkers that have been successful with connecting with a more secular worldview, i.e. CS Lewis, John Lennox, Lee Strobel, Soren Kierkegaard, Alvin Plantinga just to name a few, (oh and I just started reading Martin Rees’ book Just Six Numbers, EXCELLENT!) Timothy Keller in His book “Center Church” talks about starting Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC. It grew to be one of the largest churches in one of the most secular places in the world. And what’s interesting is when people came to study how Redeemer did it. They didn’t find a program or a particular style of worship, but the principled approach of Jesus. Redeemer not only spoke to the Marys but the Johns.
Everyone is on a different journey and are in different places in their life and we need to do the best we can to try to meet people where they are because when we do like when John investigated the empty tomb. After he examined the folded linens and face cloth, John realized the most logical explanation was that the resurrection must’ve happened. What happened in John 20:8 will happen to others, “John believed.”
You can check out the video presentation of this article on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/X2ZeoSyGNL0