God Came Down

Understanding and sharing the divinity and humanity of Jesus are the most powerful evangelism tools the church has today, says evangelist Rebecca Manley Pippert. In this interview, she tells why looking at the person of Jesus is “one of our greatest shortcuts to evangelism.”

Interview by Lindy Lowry

In the past year, you’ve led your Salt Shaker evangelism training conferences not only in the United States, but overseas as well. What one commonality surfaces everywhere you go?

Rebecca Manley Pippert: That everyone has the same sense of inadequacy and the same fears about sharing Christ. I gave Salt Shaker (saltshaker.org) conferences last summer in America, England and Malaysia—and believers from all three countries felt the same thing. They think they’re required to answer every question, never reveal a flaw and have perfect communication skills. They fear everything is up to them.

So how do you deal with these very real fears and insecurities?

The first thing we do is look at the incarnation of Christ. By exploring how God related to us through Christ, we learn what it means to be human. I believe understanding the incarnation is foundational to effective evangelism.

The biggest reason people give for not witnessing is their sense of inadequacy. But the incarnation reveals that our inadequacy isn’t the problem. Jesus depended on His Father without embarrassment or shame. I tell people, “Facing our inadequacy is critical, because it leads us to depend on the Spirit’s power.”

The incarnation also reveals how the Church is to relate to the world. I always hear: How can I befriend someone whose life is a mess without compromising my own walk? Again, Jesus is the model. His involvement with people was radically identified in love, while being radically different in holiness.

Or how many times do we hear believers say, I would witness, but what if they ask me a question I can’t answer? Again, we look to Jesus. When Jesus was asked a question He couldn’t answer, He wasn’t embarrassed that He didn’t know the answer. Think about Matt. 24:36. When the disciples asked Jesus when He would return again, He said, “No one knows when that day or hour will come. ... Only the Father knows.” If He didn’t feel inadequate when He didn’t know the answer, neither should we.

I’ve been amazed to see how understanding the incarnation frees believers from their fears of sharing Christ. They finally understand that God doesn’t require perfection to be able to use us. In fact, His power is glorified through our weakness.

What are some of the biggest mistakes churches make when they approach evangelism training?

We’ve made methods primary.

It’s not techniques that set people free. John 8:32 says it’s the truth that sets us free. We first have to understand what we believe—then we’ll be able to explore how our beliefs impact what we say and do.

It’s our message that impacts our methodology. There’s a place for methods, but they’re secondary. That’s why in evangelism training, I focus first on understanding the nature and character of God. From there, I work on building and strengthening their spiritual communication skills.

Your strategy is to first give personal evangelism training. Then you offer small group evangelism training through seeker Bible studies. Why in that order?

Because it’s important to get people trained first in a relational, incarnational approach to evangelism. Moreover, they need to understand the process that’s involved in evangelism—how to arouse curiosity, how to share the Gospel, how to lead a person to Christ. That’s why understanding the incarnation is so important. It helps believers see that God can use them just as they are.

We hear so much about how the culture is changing. So if the views of people we’re trying to reach are changing, shouldn’t our approaches to evangelism training change also?

I like what the French philosopher Simone Weil once wrote: “To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal.” In other words, if you want to always be on the cutting edge, then depend upon God and the eternal resources He offers.

I believe our effectiveness in evangelism doesn’t come from learning new or different techniques. It comes from knowing God, being transformed by His love and having confidence that God’s Word and his Spirit are powerful, life-changing resources.

But it isn’t enough to take just one of God’s attributes and leave the rest. We can’t say, for example, “I’ll take the love of Christ and leave you to share the truth.” If our churches are going to produce effective witnesses, I really think that we have to train people to display Christ’s love, to depend on God’s Spirit, and to declare God’s truth.

A year ago, a man came up to me at one of my conferences and said, “I fix all the cars in my neighborhood, and my wife bakes cookies—that’s our witness to our neighbors.” I told him, “That’s fantastic. Demonstrating the authentic love of Christ is critical to being a witness. But have you ever expressed the source behind your love?” He said, “No, I just let my actions tell the story.”

Loving acts and compassion are foundational to our witness. But if we never share the reason for our love, we run the risk of seekers thinking we’re simply Boy Scouts! As important as love is—it’s not enough.

You’ve been known to say that looking at the life of Jesus is a “shortcut to evangelism.” What do you mean by that?

In the context of a seeker Bible study, I think looking at the life of Jesus is one of the greatest shortcuts to evangelism. The seeker studies I lead and train people to lead are what I call Jesus’ “come and see” approach.

When people who have a fragmented understanding of faith or the Bible come together with say, two Christians, to explore a Gospel passage that confronts them with the person of Jesus, they’re intrigued. Repeatedly, I’ve watched as Jesus suddenly comes alive to unbelievers as they read the Gospels in a seeker Bible study. And seekers nearly always invite more seekers to come.

The key to a seeker study is that the majority of participants must be seekers; too many Christians are intimidating. And it must take place in a non-churchy atmosphere where seekers aren’t pressured or embarrassed by their lack of biblical knowledge. People who wouldn’t darken the door of a church are willing to come to a home because they feel it’s
a safe place. 

The life of Jesus seems to be a cultural theme these days. You’ve got Kanye West posing as Christ with a crown of thorns on his head on a recent Rolling Stone magazine cover. Dan Brown’s best seller, The Da Vinci Code, is raising all sorts of questions about His life.

That’s why seeker studies are so relevant. They appeal to our postmodern world. They convey God through narrative passages in the Gospels, revealing the humanity of Jesus. The Da Vinci Code has taken Americans by storm because they’re looking for a more human Jesus. The Church tends to emphasize the deity of Christ at the expense of His humanity.

I hear all the time, “I have never thought about Jesus as a human being.” But in the Gospels, we see people drawn first to Christ’s humanity, and then they slowly become aware of His deity. It’s the same today.

Seeker studies also resonate with postmodern views because they’re so relational and foster authentic friendships. They offer the experience of community through a small group of people who have many of the same questions. They honor a seeker’s need for process and dialog.

And I always stress this to churches that are struggling with finding enough volunteers to lead Bible studies. Seeker groups don’t require the leader to be a Bible teacher or scholar. The facilitator’s job is to prepare the seeker Bible study guide and ask questions, but the text is the teacher. We have to prevent people from feeling that only powerful communicators have the ability or gift to share the Gospel. They need to feel assured that God will use them just as they are. It is important, though, to have good seeker Bible study guides with questions that are faithful to the text, while being truly seeker-friendly.

And seeker studies engage in the eternal. They depend on God’s Word, His Spirit and His love. One of the great weaknesses in evangelism today is that Christians are sitting on dynamite—the power of His Spirit—and they don’t even know it.

For pastors who are leading ingrown congregations, what can they do to ignite that fire for seeing others meet Christ and begin to make outreach part of their church’s DNA?

Begin in the pulpit. If I had just one chance to preach an evangelistic series, I’d focus on the person of Jesus. The deepest motivation for witnessing comes from understanding the heart of God—what reveals God’s heart more than looking at Jesus? I’ll say it again: Embracing our Christology and revealing the ways in which Jesus reached out to the lonely and the forgotten, the rich and the poor, the seeking and the defiant, is one of the greatest shortcuts to evangelism.

Then, make sure you’re actively engaged in personal evangelism and you’re sharing that vision from the pulpit.

Teach where the power lies. Many postmodern Christians have lost confidence in the potency and divine power of God’s resources. But there is divine power that operates through God’s Word and Spirit, and through His love. These divine resources are available to us, as we engage in the work of evangelism.

Believers need to understand the great difference between God’s role and their role in evangelism. Once they grasp that we can’t make someone become a Christian, that only God has the power to draw people to Himself, it helps them relax and motivates them to pray.

Offer training. You need to continually offer evangelism training at the personal and small group level. Most people won’t get it all in one shot; some will need to revisit the training to gain needed confidence. Have a plan that involves as many areas of church ministry as possible.

One church I worked with set the goal of helping its congregation develop confidence and competence in personal evangelism. In September, the pastor preached a series on evangelism. The church also asked all of its small groups to study Out of the Salt Shaker (InterVarsity). In November, I led a Salt Shaker conference in that church. In December, the church had the most successful Christmas outreach event ever.

Think holistically. To become an evangelizing center, evangelism needs to be happening on three levels: individual, small group and large group. You need to work with others in your church to develop a good strategic plan that is holistic—one that ministers to the needs of the community, as well as works through personal relationships.

Remember that training is helpful no matter what evangelistic venue you choose. Recently, I spoke at several large Christmas outreaches in different cities in the country. One church had recently sent people to a Salt Shaker training conference. By the time I arrived, they’d already lined up leaders to start neighborhood seeker studies throughout the city.

At the end of my talk, I gave a “double invitation”—to those ready to receive Christ and also to anyone who was interested but needed more information. I invited them to come to a weekly seeker study and learn more about Jesus.

Some 10% of the audience signed up to be in seeker studies! One believer had all eight of her neighbors sign up. Initially, she was overjoyed, but then she panicked. As a young Christian, she didn’t feel competent to lead a study. But because people had already been trained previously, someone was eager to lead it. Not only will this be excellent training in evangelism for the hostess, but also imagine what God is going to do in that neighborhood.

Why did we see such great results? I think the main reason was the tremendous prayer that undergirded this event. But it was also a result of wise planning (a strategic plan that encompassed all three levels of evangelism) and wise preparation (getting the training they needed ahead of time in personal and small group evangelism), so that when the big evangelistic event happened, they were ready.

-Outreach magazine, "Features," March/April 2006

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