Modern Ekklesia: Resources for Leaders on Church and Culture

Tim Keller On Evangelism in The 21st Century

Here’s an interesting video with tips on how to share your faith in the 21st century:

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To begin with, he mentions that Christians should be mindful to do “word” ministry and “deed” ministry together. He defines “word” ministry as the things that you say and “deed” ministry as the things that you do.

He says:

If you strictly do evangelism, but don’t look at the needs of the city, people are going to look at that and say, ‘all they care about is increasing their tribe.’ Evangelism will be seen as recruitment.

He also describes certain levels of sharing that anyone could implement.

The first level is that of letting people know that you go to church. You might do this through referencing an event at your church, for example. This gives someone an opportunity to follow up further if they want to.

The second level is to let people know you’re a Christian and that it means something to you.

He says:

Let’s just say you’re a woman, you’ve been angry at your husband, you’re sharing with another woman who’s been angry at her husband, and you say, “my christian faith has really helped me here.” Just saying that in passing. That’s it. Let it go. They might not say anything, which is fine, but they might…You should do the simplest behaviors first.

There’s a lot more in the video. Be sure to check it out.

So what about you? What else would you add to the video? What have you learned about ministering in your context? To leave a comment click here.

About Rodlie Ortiz, D.Min.

On the pastoral team at Pioneer Memorial Church on the campus of Andrews University. Tech geek.

Comments

  1. MangroveMission says

    This is great, thanks for sharing it! I’ve never heard contextualization put the way he put it: it’s about 1) Order of presentation and 2) emphasis. As Christians (and SDA) we believe all our doctrines are rooted in Christ, so the order of presentation can be adjusted to match the situation of the group/person you’re interacting with. This is powerful.

    The point he made about “needs” and “word” was also interesting. Leadership writer John Maxwell has repeated this phrase for years: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. The same can be said in evangelism. People with in-your-face desperate needs might not care about “truth”–they’re too busy with reality. But if you can extend a hand to care for them, relieve some of that fear, stress, pain… then they’ll be much more willing to listen to what you have to say.

    Thanks again for posting this! I’m going to save this video for reference.