Evangelism and Being Authentically Human

Rebecca Manley Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker & into the World

Our problem with evangelism is not that we don’t have enough information—it is that we don’t know how to be ourselves. We forget we are called to be witnesses to what we have seen and know, not to what we don’t know. The key on our part is authenticity and obedience, not a doctorate in theology. We haven’t grasped that it really is OK for us to be who we are when we are with seekers, even if we don’t have all the answers to their questions or if our knowledge of Scripture is limited.

But there is a deeper problem here. Our uneasiness with non-Christians reflects our uneasiness with our own humanity. Because we are not certain about what it means to be human (or spiritual, for that matter), we struggle in relating naturally, humanly to the world (22-23).

[T]o share the gospel we must share out life, our very selves. If we don’t grasp that Christ has freed us to be authentic, we will see evangelism as a project instead of a lifestyle. And we will tend to see non-Christians more as objects of our evangelistic efforts than as authentic persons. . . . Evangelism involves taking people seriously, getting across to their island of concerns and needs, and then sharing Christ as Lord in the context of our natural living situations (28).

In Jesus . . . we have our model for how to relate to the world, and it is a model of openness and identification. Jesus was a remarkably open man. . . . We must learn, then, to relate transparently and genuinely to other because that is God’s style of relating to us. . . . We must open our lives enough to let people see that we too laugh and hurt and cry (30).