Sharing your faith with loved ones isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do sometimes, but it’s something we all are called to do. Recently, I mentioned that the small groups in our church have been going through a witnessing workshop intended to give us practical guidance and a biblical foundation for personal evangelism.

While I know there’s some folks reading this who might find the idea of a “witnessing workshop” silly, we should recognize that we need the help. According to LIfeWay Research, while the majority of us agree that sharing our faith is important, few of us do so on a regular basis (if at all).

This despite the majority of people surveyed saying they felt comfortable sharing their faith effectively. 

So what’s the deal? What’s with the disconnect here?

I think it’s because we’ve forgotten something really important:

If you want to grow in your faith, you’ve got to share it.

That’s something we’ve been reminded of as we continue down the road to completing our witnessing workshop and encouraging our small group members to engage with the course’s assignments. And I’ll be honest, we were kind of terrified of doing a lot of it.

But doing it has been a real opportunity to see how God’s been at work through the program so far, both in our role as facilitators and as participants. Here are a couple of quick examples:

One of our first assignments was to ask three people we know what they believe about the afterlife.

Not counter it, not correct it—just ask and listen.

We received some impressive feedback from almost everyone we asked (only one had an answer that amounted to “I dunno”). One of our family members actually provided a two page email in response to the question—giving not only his opinion of the afterlife, but outlining his entire worldview!

And although there was so much that he said that would make you want to cry if I shared it, there was much that we could affirm as true—truths that we would be able to redirect to Jesus.

Another way we’ve seen God at work through it is in our small group members, who, after an initial rough patch with getting started, have started to realize that engaging people in spiritual conversations isn’t terribly difficult. Most people are quite happy to tell you what they believe about practically anything—and by listening, we gain an opportunity to be heard as well.

But none of this would happen if we weren’t all striving to be intentional about sharing our faith.

Our church leaders want to see relational evangelism normalized in the lifestyle of the congregation. All of us still have a long way to go, but those who are embracing the opportunities God provides are seeing their own faith grow.

What are some of the obstacles preventing you from sharing your faith?

Sharing the gospel is never easy, regardless of how much experience you have. I’m not a terribly gifted evangelist; it doesn’t come naturally—but it’s still something I’m required to do. Because it doesn’t come naturally, though, there’s a problem: It’s really tempting to rely solely on facts; more specifically, it can be really tempting to rely on a particular style of presenting the facts of the gospel.

Now, it’s not that facts are wrong—evangelism necessarily requires the transmission of truth claims. And it’s not that there is a particular style of evangelism that’s wrong. Some find relational evangelism very effective; others are equally so with street witnessing, and so forth. Our challenge really comes in when our preference for how we proclaim the truth gets in the way of why we proclaim the truth.

J.I. Packer explains this well in Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God:

Love made Paul warm-hearted and affectionate in his evangelism. “We were gentle among you,” he reminded the Thessalonians; “being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thess 2:7-8). Love also made Paul considerate and adaptable in his evangelism; though he peremptorily refused to change his message to please men (cf. Gal 1:10; 2 Cor 2:17; 1 Thess 2:4), he would go to any lengths in his presentation of it to avoid giving offense and putting needless difficulties in the way of men’s accepting and responding to it. . . . Paul sought to save men; and because he sought to save them, he was not content merely to throw truth at them; but he went out of his way to get alongside them, and to start thinking with them from where they were, and to speak to them in terms that they could understand, and above all, to avoid everything that would prejudice them against the gospel and put stumbling blocks in their path. In his zeal to maintain truth, he never lost sight of the needs and claims of people. His aim and object in all his handling of the gospel, even in the heat of the polemics which contrary views evoked, was never less than to win souls, by converting those whom he saw as his neighbors, to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, Kindle location 440)