Evangelism Should Be Personalized And Spatially Aware

The gospel is stable, but not much else is. People, places, and situations change moment to moment. This means Christians need to be very cautious whenever engaging with an evangelistic “program.” We all  have an innate craving for programs by which we can live. We need habits or rituals (programs) that allow our brains to shift into auto-pilot. But even as we run along these programmed pathways, we remain conscious that, no matter how rote the task, programs can fail, situations can change, and we need to adjust accordingly. We live large chunks of our day by stringing together these miniature programs and adjusting along the way.

Take for example the habit (program) of tying your shoe. Usually after age nine, you’ree not intensely focused on the shoelace. Yet even with something so simple, you can’t totally tune out. You may need to adjust or loosen laces, make one side longer, remove a pebble from the shoe, or maybe you stop mid-task because you remember you really need a cup of coffee for the road. Your shoe-tying program is simple, but still requires flexibility. The more complex the program, the more flexible you need to be.

What should this teach us about evangelism—a task which combines two of the most complex and mysteriously powerful things in the world? You’re applying the mysterious power of the gospel to the Gordian Knot of a human soul. Think of evangelism as a thousand times more complex than shoe-tying. We know how the final product should look and feel. We know the general steps that build on each other to bring the shoe-tying to completion. But evangelism introduces a thousand times more variables.

This is why, though evangelistic programs can provide a useful template, we have to be ready to course correct. From what I’ve observed, engaging evangelists know three things: the basic tenets of the gospel, how to personalize, and a cultural awareness of spaces.

Paul’s example of personalized evangelism

Paul preaches two vastly different sermons when addressing a primarily Jewish audience in Antioch (Acts 13) versus the sermon he delivers at the Areopagus in Athens to pagan philosophers (Acts 17). These differ still from his conversations with the Philippian jailer (Acts 16) and Roman civil authorities, Agrippa and Felix (Acts 24, 26). The audiences in these contexts have different interests and assumptions. Accordingly, Paul starts at different places and emphasizes different aspects of the gospel.

We could sum up this personalizing as “contextualization.” The call to contextualize carries even more weight for those of us who don’t have regular, large-audience speaking opportunities. In other words, if your “context” is a single person, you should seek to really know that one person. That person may genuinely be helped by thinking about the question: “If you die tonight, where would you go?” or “Why should God let you into heaven?” But they may have a much more genuine and pressing spiritual need: to discuss the conflict in their mind between science and faith, or their personal struggle with abuse or the tragic loss of a loved one.

We should not necessarily treat unplanned questions as red herrings—obstacles to be brushed aside so that we can get back to the tractor beam of sin, justification, and faith. These other questions are the conversation, or at least where it should start, in order to move toward considering Jesus. In order to evangelize effectively in an increasingly transient and fragmented world, we need to personalize. We do not know where someone is coming from spiritually. We should invest in the slow, relational work of listening.

Spatial Awareness

An effective evangelist also understands the power of space. We can break down social spaces into three categories as they pertain to spiritual conversations with strangers: open, closed, and neutral.

• Open spaces would include: a church service, small group, church-sponsored or nonprofit event, a discussion of philosophy and religion, or any classes and conversations within a Christian school or institution. These are places where people come expecting, and often for the purpose of engaging with Christian ideas, or at least spiritual dialogue. 
  
  
• Closed spaces would include the obvious—a mosque or a synagogue, but would also include sporting events, concerts, a classroom lecture on engineering, a movie theater, or a political rally. I define these other spaces as “closed” in the sense that, although they may afford opportunities for conversation, everyone attending has come to that specific place at that specific time for an understood and agreed upon purpose.
  
  The parameters of that closed space are well-defined. There’s a specific intent for gathering in the minds of host and participants. As a participant, a direct attempt to initiate an evangelistic conversation will likely be viewed as rude, coercive, and irritating by other person. It would feel similar to a stranger engaging you at that event to ask whether you’re happy with your current cell phone plan.
  
  
• Neutral spaces include everywhere else. A neutral space would include your home, someone else’s home, the street, parks, libraries, and the marketplace—meaning commercial spaces. At first, the marketplace might seem like a closed space, since in theory people are coming to the mall to shop, a restaurant to eat, and a bar to drink. But the actual activities, motivations, and social allowances of these spaces are much more fluid. Each particular space at a particular time will come with a softer set of implicit social norms.
  

One caveat: an open space could emerge within a closed or neutral space when someone invites a Christian to speak directly about his or her experience, beliefs, thoughts, and opinions.         

How to evangelize with spatial awareness

With these definitions in mind, let’s return to the case study of Paul, someone we’d be hard-pressed to criticize for a lack of evangelistic zeal. Where do we see Paul doing his evangelistic work? It’s almost exclusively in open spaces (usually synagogues), or occasionally in neutral spaces where he is offered an opening, as described in the caveat above.

It’s safe to assume that Paul, like the rest of us, lived most of his life in neutral spaces, and perhaps occasionally in closed spaces. I would presume that in those spaces, Paul doesn’t take off his “Christian hat” or pretend to be a different person. Likely, he shifts to a different mode—what we might call “conversing to care,” rather than proselytizing. He knows that mode will be the most effective way of winning that person to Christ.

That is only conjecture, but we don’t see Paul doing any of his work in closed or neutral spaces. The closest we see him get is when he takes advantage of open space opportunities in the neutral space of prison (Philippian 1:14; Acts 16:25-26). What we do see is Paul focusing his evangelism on open spaces. Surely this is not because he believed God was hindered from working in neutral or closed spaces. He focused on open spaces because he was an effective evangelist.

Paul worked under a common sense principle we should remember today: not every setting finds equally open and receptive hearers of the gospel. This is why when Christians receive an opportunity to engage in a personal spiritual conversation within a closed or neutral space, the end goal of that conversation is often an invitation to move toward an open space, where the dialogue would feel less cramped. Paul is not disregarding God’s sovereignty and supernatural power; rather he’s exercising keen awareness of how God moves in human hearts through different spaces.

One closing caution: we should be aware of spaces, but not overanalyze in such a way that we “turn off” and miss opportunities. It’s easy to fall into the trap of rationalizing away chances to speak about and honor God due to a fear of man. We often have miniature “open space moments” within closed or neutral spaces which require boldness and conviction. But whether you lean on a evangelism program or not, Christians should be personalized and spatially aware.

An earlier version of this article was initially published on Reformation21