diverse business district in Pittsburgh. I found the best tracts I could, and we set out on foot with a stack for each of us. On the way, my friend told me that he would remain quiet and simply watch me to see how I did it. I had not imagined that was part of the bargain! My heart fell. His eyes were on me to
lead something I had no experience in. But we prayed for the work of God’s Spirit, and I did my feeble best. I tried to look people in the eye and speak kind- ly. We encountered a lot of return smiles and distributed many tracts, with little opposition except for a Jewish student who offered to burn all our tracts. Lat- er when we walked down the street we rejoiced inwardly to see people reading the tracts! Dozens of people in our congregation
enthusiastically joined us over the next couple of years, and we distributed tracts in many of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. Some of us took our children along, and these enthusiastic young ones proved helpful in giving smiles, distributing candy, and making us look a lot less in- timidating. One of my biggest hopes was that my children would get past, in their childhood and youth, some of the fears of outreach that had dogged me for dec- ades. Recently my oldest son mentioned those experiences fondly as we talked about sharing the gospel. One day we were in Squirrel Hill when
something unusual happened. Patrick, one of our most zealous tract distrib- utors, spent the whole time talking to one stranger. It was common to have an occasional conversation with a stranger lasting a few minutes, but almost never in the hustle and bustle of the street did a conversation stretch past five minutes. The next time Patrick went out with us, the same thing happened. What made the difference? Patrick had attended an Evangelism
Explosion training seminar, which in- cluded four days of lectures, memori- zation of a lengthy gospel outline, and house-to-house witnessing. Seeing the resulting change in Patrick, it didn’t take a genius to realize that a big impediment
March/April 2020
to sharing the gospel had been not an un- willing heart but poor equipping. When I was a scholastic athlete I would nev- er have suited up on game day without months of arduous preparation; yet in the much more critical area of witness- ing, my preparation had been meager by comparison. Soon my pastor and I went to a Pres-
byterian church in Ohio and received the Evangelism Explosion training. Those were four of the most intense days of my life, but each of us was buoyed by two prayer partners from that church. At the end of the first day of train-
ing, their pastor led my three-person evangelism team. At the first door we knocked on, he spoke to a young moth- er of an obviously bustling household, and I was certain she would brush him off. Instead she listened carefully to the gospel. Thirty minutes later, still stand- ing at the door, tears flowing down her face, she prayed to receive Christ. The pastor connected her to his church and to women who could follow up with her. At the next house we shared testimonies with a Christian couple, and at the third house the gospel again was shared—this time for assurance of faith for a woman whose gratitude was visible in her tears. I am still awestruck when I recall that night. I had never seen a thorough gos- pel presentation made to a stranger who then made a credible and unpressured profession of faith on the spot. And to see the gospel bearing fruit with two strangers in one night—I could not re- joice enough to see that day. I went home inspired. Part of our commitment to the training was to do street or door-to-door evan- gelism 10 more times after we returned home. The leaders of New Alexandria, Pa., RP Church heard about our train- ing; they asked us to share about it with them and then knock on doors in their rural community. Still in student mode myself, I felt ill equipped and poorly qualified, but, like those who came into contact with Jesus in His earthly min- istry, I could at least tell strangers what Jesus had done for me.
The day turned out to be one of the coldest of the winter, with unrelent- ing wind. At one home a high schooler answered the door, and I, as the “expe- rienced” person on the team, was sup- posed to take the lead. I expected her to close the door after a few seconds, but she kept listening and interacting with me and so I continued. My speech was halting, my lips were half frozen, my nose was running, and my hands were numb; but I shared the gospel the best I could. To my astonishment, conviction of sin was written all over her face, and at the offer of the gospel she began to cry. I would have received a D-minus for pre- sentation, but that left no question that it was Jesus Christ and His gospel that had changed her heart. This thing I thought to be near- ly impossible—for a stranger to hear the gospel and receive it by faith in my presence—had now happened in suc- cessive outreaches. What’s more, this time, despite all my stumbling, I had had the words to say to turn a conversation toward the gospel and share a full pre- sentation of it. I would never again be that man on the bus with nothing to say to a precious soul. Soon we provided evangelism train- ing to others in our congregation, and then to visiting mission teams as well. Those teams were coming to give to us, but we wanted to give something back to them—the ability to share a full gospel presentation and the confidence of over- coming the fear of outreach. As a congre- gation we are not “stuck” on a particular evangelism program such as Evangelism Explosion or Share Jesus Without Fear. At best those are tools and need to be evaluated and taught with wisdom. There is much I don’t know on this topic. Like the man born blind, however, I do know that in some areas of sharing the gospel with people on a regular ba- sis, I was blind and now I see. Though criticisms and opposition arise, I will not go backward. To paraphrase a saying I’ve heard about evangelism, “I like the way I share the gospel now better than the way I didn’t share the gospel before.”
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