Earlier this summer, I shared some thoughts on “Sharing our Light with the World.” I’ll offer some additional thoughts here on the topic of evangelism.
What does it mean to be a witness for faith?
On Palm Sunday afternoon, I almost ran over a church lady (a kingdom hall lady, from the Jehovah’s Witnesses). My wife and I got in our car, opened the garage door with the remote, were about to back out of the garage, and suddenly there she was, standing immediately behind us in the driveway. I stopped, got out, and talked to her. She was ever so urgent about inviting us to the Memorial of Jesus’ Death that they were observing that week. I was rather impatient with her, I’ll admit. I advised her that what she had done was not safe. She went on her way to the next house. She was well-meaning in her efforts, but probably not particularly successful.
On Memorial Day weekend, I traveled to Oregon. As our daughter got us from the airport and drove us into Portland, I was struck by some confrontational billboards along the roadways. In big, bold letters, one said, “Real Christians OBEY Jesus’ teachings.” Another, in stark white lettering on a black background, said, “Are you preparing to meet Jesus?” I did not call the number on the billboards for more information. It seemed the main thing they wanted you to know about Jesus is that he’s going to judge you (which is not, in fact, the main thing to know about Jesus). Portland is the least religiously-affiliated city in the United States.* The traditionalist religious organization putting up those billboards** was not likely to win anyone over that way.
When I was a young man studying for ministry, I was trained by a traditionalist religious organization. We were taught not to spend much time on small talk when doing outreach. We were to get to the big question to ask: “If you were to die tonight, where would you be?” There was a planned outline for talking about where people thought they’d be spending eternity and why. I will say, the template they gave us for such conversations did emphasize Jesus as our Savior (not as someone eager to judge you for your failures). Still, though, it was a formula, a contrived conversation. They wanted us to stick close to the script to gain converts and bring them into the church.
In my early years working in ministry, I soon abandoned that formula and the idea that the goal was to gain converts for our church. More and more, ministry seemed to be about listening to people, understanding their hopes, their hurts, their needs, their questions, and responding with grace and concern in Christ. The Lord does not send us out into the world to build our own fiefdoms; he sends us as ambassadors of his kingdom. I started talking with people in more open-ended ways, not trying to force an outcome. The goal wasn’t about me succeeding in outreach, or about our local congregation gaining more members, or about hurrying people to some moment of conversion.
When Jesus tells us, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14) and “let your light shine before others” (Matthew 5:16), that does not mean we are to blind others by confronting them as if we’re shining a high-beam flashlight in their face. Yes, I know Paul was blinded along the Damascus Road by Jesus himself, and Elijah called down fire from heaven over against the prophets of Baal. But in those instances, someone was so vehemently going against the will of God that something drastic had to be done. More generally, in our day-to-day lives with neighbors in our communities, we are not called to be confrontational—to put up billboards or ask someone sitting next to you on an airplane, “If you were to die today, where would you be?” (In my schooldays, that was the scenario used in the evangelism training video: a conversation with a stranger on an airplane. That’s perhaps the worst place and time to ask someone such a question!)
What we are called to do as gospel witnesses is to glow warmly with the love of Christ, to be a beacon of hope—showing others the way to the safety and confidence that we’ve found in Jesus.
Our lives as witnesses are like what Jesus told a man he had just healed, who had been possessed by many demons. Ever so grateful for the miracle Jesus had performed in his life, the man wanted nothing more than to follow Jesus and be with Jesus 24/7. But Jesus said to him: “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you” (Luke 8:39). His mission in life was to share with those around him his joy in Jesus, what God has done and can do. This is our mission in life, too.
We may yearn just to sit in Jesus’ presence and bask in his teaching, whereas talking with others about Jesus seems too much of a challenge for us. We’re content sitting in our church pews, listening. We may be uncomfortable sitting across a kitchen table or coffee shop table, talking spiritual realities with others. When I came to a congregation I once served, I learned that the evangelism committee had been meeting regularly, but had not ventured out beyond their meetings. They kept training and training on how to do evangelism, but hesitated to go out and have spiritual conversations. They never felt ready, never felt like they knew enough. I think they were too stuck on that formula or template approach that I had been taught (and they were being taught). The formula seemed simple, but also made them feel they needed a pre-scripted answer for every question or objection that might come up in a conversation.
Jesus obviously doesn’t think we need to be experts before we speak in his name to others. The man Jesus had cleansed of demons had, up until then, been deeply distressed. “For a long time he had not worn any clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs” (Luke 8:27). Yet immediately after restoring that man to health and wholeness, Jesus told him to talk in his hometown about how much God had done for him. That’s a good model for each of us. Being a witness for the faith is personal and relational. It’s us talking with others about our hurts, our needs, and the help we have in Jesus—and their hurts, their needs, and the help they may find in Jesus. As we approach conversations with others, we can admit that we are broken people, that we’ve had our own demons and problems. We’re not going to be perfect. We’re not going to have some foolproof strategy or guaranteed results. We’re not marketers trying to sell Jesus or the church. We’re just people; we just need to be real and genuine and human and hurting and be WITH one another as we share the love we have found in Jesus. The apostle Paul said, “If those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves” (Galatians 6:2), urging us, in our frailty, in our shared humanity, to “bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:1).
In the midst of his ministry, when Jesus sent 72 of his disciples in pairs to go ahead of him to towns where he was planning to go (Luke 10:1), the instructions he gave them were not complicated. The mission focused on creating relationships. He told his teams, “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person …. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; …cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you’” (Luke 10:1-9). I suppose when we read something like that, we get hung up on the idea of “curing the sick.” We think, “Doing outreach must have been easy if Jesus gave them the ability to do miracles to cure the sick!” But did that actually make things easier? Was Jesus’ own ministry easier because he could exorcise demons and heal diseases? In the region of the Gerasenes, where Jesus had cast a legion of demons out of that one man, the people of the region asked Jesus to leave because they were afraid of him (Luke 8:37). In other places, Jesus was met with suspicion and hostility by religious authorities on account of his teaching and the miracles he did. Ultimately, they crucified him.
We may not have powers to provide miracle cures for people’s illnesses, but we do always have something powerful in Jesus. We have comfort in Jesus’ cross, knowing what he suffered for us, and in his resurrection, securing our hope. We cling to one another and to Christ when we face sicknesses and death and all sorts of troubles. As Dr. Andrew Root of Luther Seminary has said, evangelism is not about some sort of strategy, it is an “embodied way of participating with people where Jesus Christ is present. It is a way God moves concretely in our lives and is a companion during the joys and sorrows in human life”—particularly in times of sorrow.*** Being an evangelist is simply being a person believing in Jesus, anchored in faith, who is willing to be with others in their struggles and search with others in their questions, and call on the Lord together in prayer with others when they desire hope and healing.
* See The Oregonian, March 12, 2025.
** See Forward, May 15, 2023.
*** “Reframing Evangelism: Following Jesus into Sorrow,” Pivot Podcast, 2025.
Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
In my years in ministry, I came to serve a church that was badly in debt. (Something I found out after I got there.) They were perpetually behind on payments on their church building. They had not been paying anything on the principal of the loan, and many months weren’t even paying the full interest amount owed. The loan was from the national church body, not a bank, or they’d have been foreclosed on. We decided it was time we talked about faith and finances (including our obligations to Christian brothers and sisters from whom funds were borrowed). We started with a Sunday workshop. We followed with cottage meetings organized in member homes. As we were in the midst of our stewardship efforts, one of our members, a man named Richard, called to tell me he just won a sizable prize on a state lottery ticket. That wasn’t the miracle. Lotteries are the luck of the draw. Richard’s attitude and response was the miracle. He wanted to discuss how he could use the funds he was receiving for various charitable causes. He intended to use some in regard to our congregation’s debt, but didn’t want to become the “sugar daddy” of the congregation. We were making good progress in faith building with the membership as a whole, and Richard did not want to impede those overall efforts. He wanted recommendations of other places of need, beyond our own congregation, where he could send support. In a world where money drives the mindset of so many people, this gentleman was focused not simply on himself or ourselves, but on how he could benefit many others. That was a miracle of faith. Faith is always the most powerful miracle, wherever God is turning hearts to his way, his truth, his life.
Jesus commissioned us: “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). Did he mean that to apply in the bleachers at hometown sports events, in the aisles at the grocery store, on the assembly line in the factory? Respectfully, we don’t force faith conversations in public places. At the same time, we don’t want our faith to be hidden from view in our day-to-day lives. People don’t “light a lamp and put it under a basket.” Jesus said, “Let your light shine” (Matthew 5:15,16). Often we think of evangelism and outreach as activities of the church, done with planned and programmed methods. But God urges us to see gospel-proclaiming as an everyday believer’s way of life. 
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Coming into church on Easter morning, we hear, “Christ is risen!” and respond, “He is risen indeed!” This message brings a special peace to our hearts, because Christ has promised he will raise us from the dead just as he raised himself. The power of Jesus’ cross and resurrection proves that he has the power to raise us also. The enduring hope of the resurrection gives us confidence in the face of death. When Christ was about to die, he looked forward to his own resurrection. On the cross, Jesus’ last words were, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). He was confident that death could not hold him. Christ defeated death, and his victory was shown unmistakably when he rose from the tomb. Because of this, you and I can commend ourselves to God without fear. Christ’s resurrection has given us this confidence. We commit ourselves into the Father‘s hands, trusting in God‘s promise of a blessed life, and looking forward to the glory of life in heaven.
One such student, Mariah, had dated someone who was controlling and overbearing. He maintained that male dominance in relationships was the biblically-commanded way. Mariah had a different perspective. She wrote about how this man had made her feel worthless and her gifts and talents unappreciated. When I sent Mariah’s article to be considered for publication by the national magazine, the assistant editors (both of them women) greatly appreciated her words. They put the article onto their schedule for an upcoming month’s issue. When it came time for the article to proceed to publication, I received communication from the magazine’s lead editor (a man). He had decided Mariah’s personal story needed editing. He provided his heavily altered rewrite of the article. He said that if the author agreed to the rewritten version, he would allow it in the magazine in that form. If she did not consent to the edited version, then the article would not be published. His version robbed Mariah’s original writing of her unique voice. It now sounded like it was composed by a staid, formal, traditional, clergy-trained man. It had become very much his writing, not hers—coming from his frame of reference, not hers. Mariah was hurt. She would 
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There is a saying (stemming from a 1989 animated film): All dogs go to heaven. Or, all pets go to heaven (from a popular author’s 2009 book). Martin Luther once wrote a letter to his young son in which he described heaven as a “
Zazu taught me much about life as the ailments of age caught up with him. He needed more attention, more care, more patience and love. We all have those needs as we get older and more frail. An ethicist once said, “
It doesn’t happen often that a president is inaugurated on the day dedicated to honoring civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. The only two previous occasions were 1997 and 2013. The next time the inauguration and King’s birthday observance coincide will be 2053. 
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However, many of God’s miraculous dealings with us are in and under and through things we tend to see as normal occurrences. We apply water to a person in God’s name, by Christ’s instruction, and that person is connected to Christ and made a child of God. We receive bread and wine by Christ’s instruction, and we are connected to his sufferings and death and filled with God’s grace. God’s most profound miracles often are hidden under things that seem ordinary. What the wise men saw may have been viewed by others as something natural, as no big deal. A modern astronomer who gives credence to the Bible’s story suggested that the bright object in the sky could have been a special alignment between planets and stars—a conjunction occurring when celestial bodies appear to meet in the night sky from our vantage point on earth. Astronomer Michael Molnar pointed to an alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, the moon and the sun in the constellation of Aries that occurred around the time when Jesus was born. “This conjunction happened in the early morning hours, which aligns with the Gospel’s description of the Star of Bethlehem as a rising morning star” (
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