From the Mailbag - Questions and Answers About Evangelism

Hello and welcome back to the Be a Berean podcast. I'm your host Michael Codland. This is a special edition of the podcast where I want to answer a question from a listener, from a friend that I met online. His name is Emmanuel. I got this email. He said, God bless you.

I noticed that you often open air preach and may God grant you the strength to keep on at it for his glory you have been a great encouragement well thank you for saying that uh that's just me talking I I will share that I very often am criticized for posting things online people and maybe I shouldn't say very often that can be subjective but historically I have been accused of pridefulness because of posting a picture of open air preaching or a video or audio or just posting hey I'm going here I'm going here sharing testimonies so to be told that it's an encouragement is very important to me. I have had more good relationships happen as a result of people saying they saw me post something online than I've had negative ones. So I want to share a story that will hopefully encourage you to encourage others and also to go ahead and be public about what you're doing if you are so led.

When I first became a Christian, I was completely on fire to evangelize. I didn't even know what it was yet. I just knew that I had something that I didn't previously had and other people needed it. I understood it at a very basic level that people needed to be told about Jesus to be saved and I cared about people. And I was going out and giving the gospel and then I joined a church where evangelism was a little more formal.

I remember one of the reasons I picked the church was they were doing a way of the master course and I would evangelize a lot on Saturday night and then on Sunday morning I would come to church and they would ask, is there anybody that has any prayer requests? And every Sunday morning, I would have a list of people who I had evangelized the night before. I didn't open or preach yet.

I mostly did one-on-ones and tracks. And I would say, pray for this person. And I'd have stories of the conversations I had. And to me, it was a very exciting thing. and then just all of the blue a man at the church was talking to me one day and he just stated pretty matter-of-factly that it was pride that caused me to announce my evangelism and i was i was devastated i was a new christian and so when this older man who i thought you know had been around the church longer said that to me my immediate response was was to think well what what am I doing wrong I don't I don't know I just wake up and I just wanted to be doing evangelism and I wanted to be doing church things and I wanted to be killing my own sin and this this person was telling me that my desire to evangelize and my reliance upon the prayers of the people of my church, for these people to get saved somehow was rooted in sin, the sin of pride.

And I was very hurt by this, and it caused me to question what I now, looking back, believe were very pure motives. And it caused me to question whether I should continue to ask for prayer for people, whether I should continue to announce that, hey, I'm going out Saturday night, please pray for me. Or I talked to this man named Jimmy, and this was his story.

Could you pray for him? And it's really, it's still a point of difficulty for me, because of the propensity for other Christians to criticize public posting of preaching and things like that. It's certainly possible that a person could do things with impure motives and so I won't say I'm immune to that but that was just my personal testimony from after I first became a Christian of how hurtful it was that people in Christianity were bothered by me posting about or asking for prayers about evangelism.

I've never seen anyone in Christianity criticized because they posted about their football team too much. I've never seen anybody criticized because they were posting about their doctor, but I've seen people criticized because of posting about preaching and and even people wanting help financially so they can continue to do that work I don't think people understand how expensive it is to buy some of these speakers that we use to amplify our voices I don't think people understand how expensive it is to have different equipment even even you know recently I had a lawyer tell me to buy a a GoPro camera and he said to put it on get it charged and he said to just run it the whole time I out doing evangelism because it an environment where you can so quickly be falsely accused And for you know I ended up getting a discounted GoPro for off because I traded in an old camera that didn work anyway which is a deal they had right now So I still paid almost $400 after taxes and memory card. card and and what I found out when I first used this GoPro that I'm looking at on my desk right now is that it only lasts about two hours and that was not even recording the whole time so now I need to get another battery or I need to come up with a solution so there's expenses involved in even a real basic ministry that that people have and so when when evangelists publicly ask for funds, I don't think that we should criticize them so much. Now, I think that there are people that may squander them, and so there's always the problem people.

There's pastors that abuse women or children, but that doesn't mean we should criticize every pastor. We need to figure out how to discern the difference between those people. But let me continue what It was supposed to be a response to the questions in this email. Emmanuel writes, I am writing to you because I feel confident that you may be able to provide some wise and personal biblical counsel.

Well, I hope so, because that is the only kind of counsel I want to give. He says, when going out to proclaim the gospel, is there somewhere we can check on how loud we can actually use the mic? Yes, I'm not a lawyer. So you can always call the Center for Religious Expression in Tennessee. Very kind people down there. and their goal is to try to help people like Emmanuel and like me by answering questions and helping us, and if at all possible, for free.

And so if you're sitting there and you're looking for some place to donate money, this law firm that has to pay for law school people, they have to pay for books, they have to pay for travel, this law firm is trying to help Christians like me and Emmanuel for free. So you could donate to the Center for Religious Expression if you'd like to. but yes you can usually contact the city and most cities will have ordinances that explain the the law for decibels you could try starting with the police department the police should know how to find and interpret the codes for you and tell you things like whether or not they they want you to have a permit or not i don't know all the arguments about whether to get a permit Some people say you shouldn't have to get a permit, so even if they want you to, don't do it. Again, that's a legal question.

My experience has been it's always very subjective on the street when somebody shuts you down for noise. One time I was using a microphone. This policeman said, it's too loud. You have to shut off the amplification. And I told him, I said, if you make me shut off the amplification, I will preach without it. and I promise you I may be louder. And he said, that's fine.

He said, I just can't let you use the speaker. And I said, okay. And then I started preaching, and people actually heard me from farther away at that time. The amplification isn't necessarily to be louder or for the voice to carry, at least in my case. It's so that I can preach longer. I can't preach with my full voice for as long as if I use amplification. he says I've heard there's a way to measure the loudness and in each state some kind of number before it comes illegal yeah that can change based on even what city you're in or what municipality so it's a good question you can ask the police he says I have a hard time finding out how to look for it online he'd be nice to know how I do it and my answer is I don't I don't worry about it.

I just show up where I want to go and I bring my speaker and I just trust that in most situations, if I'm in a violation of something, that the police who would actually approach me would at least be saying, they wouldn't just walk up and arrest me. They'd walk up and say, hey, did you know you're not allowed to do that here? And then they'd say, you have to go over there.

It has to be a little quieter. So that's generally how I do it. I don't put a lot of effort into pre-figuring that out. He says, also, when someone comes and starts to attack physically, is it appropriate, or if it is, when is it appropriate to do self-defense while being protected by the law and first and foremost obeying the Bible and not retaliating?

Well, that's an interesting question. Jesus said, if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn him the other as well, or on the left cheek. there is a sense that when we are out giving the gospel if we are following in the footsteps of our forefathers of the Christian faith and the apostles that there may come a time when you will be attacked for your faith my opinion is this if I can neutralize a situation I will try to do that so if a sinner wants to come and beat me and there's something I can do to maybe get control of him so that he can have time to calm down that there's nothing wrong with that type of self defense I would prefer to help that person sin less if somebody punches me once and I can somehow stop that, I might reduce the problems that person will face than if I let them just keep hitting me. And so there no real glory in trying to allow them to keep hitting me or as some people might try to do even egg them on There's no glory in that, and that doesn't help the sinner either.

Because I'm there to evangelize and I love the sinners, I actually want to reduce the unrighteousness. And if somebody's acting unrighteously, I will, if I had to, try to stop it. So, for example, if I could wrestle someone and pin them to a point where now they wouldn't be able to punch or hurt anyone, including myself, I could do that. Now, I would not attack back, though, and start beating a person.

That's not something that is in my style, and I know there's probably other people who would. But if a person came to where I was preaching and attacked somebody I was with, I would feel an obligation to my brother. Or, more particularly, if it was a younger person, like a child, even an older child, or a woman, I would feel a necessity to defend them.

So that's not self-defense, I realize. But so there's some context here. it's one of the reasons why I try to be careful who I take with me places I don't need somebody with what we'll call a martyr complex in my group when I'm evangelizing that can only bring trouble to me I want people in my group who actually have a desire to go home safely to not be arrested to give the gospel out and and then if at all possible use a soft word that turns away anger instead of a harsh word that stirs up strife. I would rather have people like that who can help situations become better.

Having said that, sometimes we do still preach very hard truths to people, and there are physical things that occur. My experience has always been that it's very minor. We may use words like assault in a legal sense, but most of the experiences I've had have been very minor, and we still live in a society where, in general, like publicly beating a guy because he's preaching the gospel would be frowned upon even by other pagans.

He says, where can one proclaim the gospel without getting into legitimate trouble? He says, like I have heard not to do it in private property, but sidewalks instead because it is public. I would really like to know what other spots are legally permissible. Can one just go and stand on the street corner and just open or preach and be legally okay to do it under the First Amendment?

Yes, that's the goal is to find public areas. Like I wouldn't go in. Okay, let me put it this way. I wouldn't be happy if a Muslim stood in my house and preached. I'd say, well, this is my private property. If that's how you're going to talk, I don't want you to preach your gospel here.

And so I can't go on somebody else's private property and preach with a clear conscience. There would be situations where I guess it could happen, but notwithstanding some of those situations, there's certain places where it is more permissible. Any public park, you can contact a city, a municipality, and you can find out what the public areas are, what the public sidewalks are.

Most large cities are going to have big areas where that makes sense. Places like bus stops are going to have more crowds of people. There's sidewalks around stadiums for crowds of people. I don't think I'd go stand on a sidewalk in a neighborhood and just preach. The idea being I'd preach so loud that people would hear me in their houses. I don't think I would do that kind of thing.

If people were having a party in their neighborhood on a street and they were all out in the front of the houses. I don't think I just go stand and preach in that situation in a residential area like that. I generally go to sporting events and downtowns and areas where there's big crowds of people that are outside already and they are known to be in what would be considered kind of a public area.

It's also difficult if you go to what is usually a public area that's been blocked off for private use for a period of time. You often have to follow certain rules in that situation and treat that public area as private, maybe for a specific party they're having that day. Emmanuel also asks if literature like tracts can be distributed freely without getting into legal trouble.

He says where can it be distributed? Mailboxes, public bathrooms, or simply proclaiming the gospel outside? so you know you really aren't supposed to stick stuff in people's mailboxes but you could you could go to the post office and do what's called a direct mailing where the post office actually knows everyone's address and you could say i want to mail everybody in this zip code uh this postcard so that's what you know car dealerships do and different companies to do advertising if you had the money you could make a tract that the post office would just put in every mailbox for you and you would pay them to do that. It's not cheap, but it is an effective way to get a tract into every household in a zip code or in an area.

You can pretty much hand out tracts anywhere you want. If you're in a private store, like let's say you go into a grocery store, if you just stand still and hand out tracts, they're probably going to catch on and say hey we just don't want you to do that you're if some of people complain they're gonna come to you and say look people are complaining who are supposed to be here shopping and so if but if you're walking around the grocery store and you meet other people and you just hand them a tract I don see anything wrong with that I don think it would warrant enough complaints I think people interact all the time and that kind of a normal course of interaction that could happen. If you walk by somebody and they're wearing a sweatshirt that says, you know, Ohio State Buckeyes and you say, go Buckeyes, that's not a whole lot different than if you had said something about Jesus, just striking up a conversation based on what's going on around you.

Most public places you can hand out tracts. I don't know if I'd hand them to people in the bathroom quite as much, but I have a friend who always puts a tract right on the top of urinals so that the next man that goes to use the restroom was just he's staring at the tract. People leave them on the toilet paper holders. And I'm telling you what, people pick them up and read them.

You have to be careful. You don't want to be seen as a litterer. So you don't just put so many tracks out there that they end up covering a parking lot of a private property and then they call you and say why are you basically littering or causing others to litter because you've handed out so many but usually what I found is that if I hand people a track and I'm not talking about like standing outside of a Kroger and as people walk out like just tracking them I'm talking about actually striking up a little bit of a conversation with people and being friendly and saying, here, I want you to read this.

And most people receive it with a little gratitude at the time, even if they don't read it or they throw it away. Finally, Emmanuel's asking how to get your church interested in doing evangelism. In my opinion, and he says he'd like to lead his own family for his own Christian walk and family's growth. I think that's the key is you start with your family and you do evangelism. and you do it on a regular basis as part of your life.

It's not just something you do when the Buckeyes have a home game. It's something that you're supposed to be doing all the time, and something that you're praying about. And so as you're doing family devotions, which we should be doing, and you're praying that the Lord would send your family out, you're praying that the Lord would bring the elect to you so that you might give them the gospel in various ways. ways and as your family hears you praying about that and you start to evangelize as part of your daily life as part of your regular life then other people hopefully would start to pick up on that at your church if your church is not a church that's doing enough evangelism or doing a lot of evangelism so if you are a member of a church which does not evangelize maybe one of the reasons you are there put there by God is to be the voice that is exhorting people to love the lost maybe your example of faithful biblical evangelism on a regular basis announcing at church that you need prayer, announcing at church the names of people who you desire to see saved, maybe that will be what motivates people.

And I think in some cases it would be appropriate to offer to say, hey, would you let me teach a class on evangelism or would you let me organize an event where we actually encourage people to come that one night for a training or to come that day for some training and then we'll go out and we'll do some tracks. A lot of church pastors I think understand the need and they're in a situation where their church has so many needs that they just don't prioritize getting people to do evangelism. So I think working with your leaders and setting an example is a good way to go.

There's probably very specific good advice that someone could get based on their church situation. I know when my wife and I recently joined a new church one of our motivating factors was we found a church that already did evangelism and in fact my previous church, one of the reasons I joined it as I said, they were doing Way of the Master stuff and at that time I was studying the Way of the Master online and so I knew that this was the kind of church that was already aligned with me there another thing to do with a church is to look at their missions funding a lot of churches fund missions and then they don't do evangelism themselves and so it's a worthy conversation to ask people what are we what are we paying other people to do that either we're not doing or that maybe, what are we paying them to do? Maybe you're supporting missionaries that don't do evangelism and you actually go to a church that doesn't believe in it.

I believe evangelism, when done biblically, includes presenting the gospel to people, Jesus Christ as the person who atoned for sinners fully and completely on that cross and raising three days later, and that sinners are, generally speaking, to be convinced of their sin through presenting God's law to them so that they might tremble before it. If you do not include an explanation of sin for people, they often won't understand the And they certainly can't understand why God would crush his only son on a cross, why he was pierced for our transgressions, if we don't think of ourselves as that bad. And so we must be able to be very clear on what the gospel is and why we need the gospel.

Why we are in such a desperate state that it took the murder of the son of God to forgive us. and so those are some answers for Emmanuel and for anyone else who is wanting to do evangelism ministry one final thought I have found in my experience that the the phrase from that old movie Field of Dreams, if you build it, if you build it, they will come. I did evangelism for many years with only one or two other friends who were interested, sometimes even either going alone or at least being willing to go alone before I had people joining me. After I had established myself for several years as a committed member to a local church, as a person who was loving his family, and basically just as not a heretic and as not a flash in the pan for evangelism, I started to attract more and better people to do ministry alongside me.

There's something to be said. When I meet someone and I say, hey, would you like to do evangelism? and they ask me some questions about it, for me to be able to explain more than a decade's worth of activities, of planned events, of organized ways of doing things, that gives people a little bit of confidence who they're joining with. There's a lot of people like I am who have started strong and then they don't finish well. and so to be a part of a ministry with people who have been doing it a while is an attractive thing for people and so my advice is be patient with others and keep doing the work yourselves something that i have tried to get better and better at and this is my own, I don't think you have to do this, but I have gotten to a point where I am scheduling my evangelism out almost a year in advance The big events not the regular daily kinds of things or hey it Saturday do you guys want to go to a park The big major events events that require a time commitment and travel and where you get big speakers and big amplifiers I mean not the speakers the preachers themselves and you go out and you do a group event I plan those in advance, and I schedule the timing of them, and I plan the food.

I make sure I know where people would use the restroom or if they can get lodging if they travel and I try to make it a service I do and I think I've had people ask me several times I'll say I'm going to go here on Saturday well what time are you going? and I say I don't know yet what time works for you? and then they just don't really get back to me and in my heart I'm genuinely thinking hey, if you want to go early, I'll go early. If you want to go late, I'll go whenever you want, is what I'm thinking. And I think it's giving off the wrong message.

I think it gives off a disorganization. And I think some people are just followers, and not in a bad way. Some people are leaders, more by nature. And some people are more apt to say, hey, I just want to be led. I'll just go where the general tells me I'm a soldier. And so I have tried to take the attitude that I'm the field general of when I do evangelism here, unless somebody else is organizing the event.

And so I'm going to tell you, you're going to be here at this time if you join my group. We're going to go here at this time. You're going to eat this much chicken at this time and and it's going to be organized enough that people feel like they know what's going on they know where they're supposed to be and when they're supposed to be there they know the importance of being there and then we can work together on it and I found people people generally if I tell them we're going to go from nine o'clock to twelve o'clock I've never had someone say hey I'd go but I wouldn't be able to start till 10 I've never had anyone do that.

And I think in my mind, I was trying to accommodate people, but I was actually making things harder by not just setting a schedule for people to follow. So if you're going to be someone that tries to organize events, my advice would be be organized about it in a way where people would want to follow. So think of it this way. If you were going to travel to another city and somebody else was organizing an event, how well organized would you want it to be?

Would you want to get there and the guy wasn't sure what time you were going to go yet? Or everybody was getting in the car to go but you were still waiting on one person because you weren't sure what time he was going to be there? Or you go evangelize for four hours and nobody has any idea how you're going to eat afterwards or where people could stay or nobody knows how to park a car in that particular area you say wow why did I drive all the way out there I could have drove out here myself blindly and done evangelism without following you.

And so try to be organized in a way that encourages people to feel safe, really, in your leadership and in your arms, we'll say, so that they can come and just serve the Lord freely by giving out the gospel and not being concerned. I've told my guys that go with me to Ohio State many times, like, look, I'm going to feed you afterwards, and that's something that I choose to do. And my wife and I budget money for those kinds of things, and I'm going to help you.

I'm going to get you where you need to be. And people know that. and so when they come to my events and I look at them and I say now look at me though use the bathroom now and then go stand on the street and serve the Lord the next three hours don't don't take a bathroom break don't take a break because you need to eat an apple or whatever it happens to be like work during this period of time that the work needs to get done and so that's something that and I don't necessarily say it quite so strictly as I just said it on my podcast but that's something that I've found I think helps people to tell people hey you're going to get to go to the bathroom at 1230 so if it's 1130 can you hold it or can you not drink so much water whatever it happens to be you didn't know that it was 32 degrees today don't tell me you're cold show up ready to stand in the cold and I can tell people to do those kinds of things with a bit of a firmness like that because I've created a situation where I think people are very comfortable that they want to be in my group though now about the money thing if you cannot afford to buy people meals that's that's okay too my goal has always been that I will try to treat people that come with me mostly because when I started having groups of people I had teenagers and I wanted to take the teenagers out to eat after every event just as a gift to them knowing they probably didn't have money it was probably exciting to go out and I wanted to leave them with a good taste in their mouth, no pun intended. And then as I started having more adults come with me, it just naturally became, hey, I'll just buy everybody some fried chicken.

So we don't get expensive meals. We did that once and I won't do that again. Well, I might do it again, but I got to think about it first. But I set aside money so that after I do evangelism with a group of people, I can go to what we do here in Columbus a lot is we go to a place called Raisin Cane's. It is the best fried chicken in the world And we love that place We have a great time there And I just buy a huge tray of chicken It a lot cheaper when you buy packs of 25 or 50 And we just sit and have good fellowship.

And what I found is that I do get some donations. People over the years have donated money to, we'll just say, my ministry. I have a donation form on michaelcoghlan.net and sometimes I'll get a credit card donation. I also have people who go with me to do evangelism. They eat with me and then they will give me a $20 bill or $40 here and there to try to offset the cost.

And so in some ways, because I've set aside money to supply people, but people end up contributing to help that supply. It also helps me that I have a church that's very loving who buys our tracks that we use. And so I'm not spending a lot of money on tracks right now either because of that. So there's a lot of ways you can do evangelism. There's a lot of ways you can encourage others, and it's going to depend on you. maybe you have the funds to create certain experiences for people maybe you would have to go ask people for funds to do those kinds of things or maybe you maybe you're not concerned about funds you just want people to go with you and they can pay their own way my goal has always been i don't want someone to miss out on evangelism because they can't afford it even if it's something as simple as gas money.

I try to disciple people. I try to help them. If a person seems to need help with doctrine, if a person seems to need help in general, like saving money, I can try to talk to people about saving money. So I try to make my evangelism team people that I do care about and love very much as well. So let that be an encouragement to you. pray fervently about your evangelism, about your family's evangelism, your church's evangelism.

Pray about funding for the things that need funding. And then do the work that God has put before you. And I think that it's okay to exhort people, but I think this is a very good example of when we need to do the work, sometimes for quite a while, before more people will follow our exhortations. Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin.

I am a writer at thingsabove.us, and I also have a personal website, michaelcoughlin.net. you can contact me by emailing me michael at thingsabove.us I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.