Question:

Dear Pastor Lance— It’s so hard to share my faith with other people. I don’t know why I’m afraid to do it, I just am. How do you share your faith with your friends?

ANSWER:

Dear Friend – I completely understand what you’re saying.  And yes, I agree with you that sometimes we shy away from sharing our faith out of fear that we are going to do something wrong, or that we won’t know the answers, or we will offend someone. Sometimes, we are fearful that we will be seen as 'uncool.'

My approach to evangelism (sharing my faith with people) has been very simple: Make it natural. What that means is to establish a relationship with someone you want to evangelize so that you have the right to speak into their life.

First of all, make it known up front that you are a Christian, so there are expectations already set.

Secondly, drop hints along the way in conversation that is natural but blatant, i.e., "I was praying the other day and..." or "What can I pray for you about?" Or, "At church, we were talking about...". Those are all hints that set up the conversation.

At that point one of three things can happen: 

1.) Chaos can hit their life, and they reach out to you and your faith.

2.) They can take the hints and start asking questions of you.

3.) You can start a conversation with simple questions like: Did you grow up in church? What's your God story? Whatever is natural to you.

I think we get freaked out that we are going to need to be ready to preach a crusade sermon to our friends and feel inadequate when, in fact, it's nothing like that. We are merely sharing real life on our terms.

Hope that helps.