Evangelism Training

The Bible................

 

The best way to learn this is by following the example of someone else. It also does not hurt to make an in-depth survey of Jesus' and Paul's personal contacts with lost people.

'It is suprising to see what they did and did not which we don't or do too.'
- a great guy that I knew

 

There's a couple of them that I like such as "Share Jesus Without Fear".

But personally i like the old Romans Road plan. I go thru it about once a quarter on Sunday night and talk about some area of personal evangelism. Once a year, I will spend 3-4 weeks on Sunday morning talking about evangelism.

But taking people with you on an evangelistic visit and watching you talk to someone about Jesus is a great way to teach how to speak to people about the Lord Jesus.

 

Share Jesus Without Fear is good. I also like "Tell the Truth" by Will Metzger. Very good. Evangelism Explosion is not bad. I don't care for F.A.I.T.H.

The best tract you'll see is from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary called G.R.A.C.E. www.sbts.edu/documents/GRACE.pdf

 

The best one is the one you use. Most churches don't train their people to share their faith. So anything is better than nothing.

But obviously, some methods are going to stack up better because of their faithfulness to the gospel message and ability to mobilize the church to use them. I'm not a big fan of most materials because they try to package the gospel into too small of a box, and leave it up to each individual to use as they see fit (which practically equates to rarely).

I like FAITH in that it is integrated into the life of the church. Those that sign up to learn the program are actively involved in outreach. But it falls short in its presentation of the gospel, I think.

I really like Milton Vincent's little book, A Gospel Primer. Although it's not exactly an evangelism training material, it explains the whole gospel in both narrative an poetic form, referencing a ton of Scripture along the way. I've never done it yet, but perhaps a series of visits with a person genuinely interested in learning the gospel based on that material would be a good thing.

 

I am worn out on methods. How about studying and learning scripture instead of coddling lazy Christians and false converts who only want to know just enough to get by with in these methods.


If we are truly emphasizing discipleship then evangelism will be one of the outcomes of that. Be ready to give scripture as lead by the Holy Ghost rather than a script.

 

From my personal experience, the main focus of evangelism training is giving people the confidence to actually seek out and take advantage of ways to share their faith and the gospel. Sure, each one uses its own "method" of doing that, but the main goal is to give the people something so that they feel that they are "equipped" to do it. The Holy Spirit is the only equipment necessary, of course, but it does help the laity to actually go out. Evangelism by example, where one takes a learner with them to evangelize, is awesome... but I have found so very few who will do it.

I have read Evangelism Explosion and liked it, even though it needed some polishing. I have been through FAITH and really liked it. The outline is a bare minimum in my opinion, and should be used as the skeleton for the actual presentation of the gospel. Unfortunately, most that I went out with only used the outline itself, and one wouldn't even bother to go through enough chit-chat to find out anything about the person or to set them at ease. *Knock, knock* <Key question, followed by the outline>

Basically, an evangelism program is only a tool and nothing more. A person can have all the tools in the world but if they never utilize them nothing will ever be fixed.