How To Share the Gospel: The Art of Asking Questions
To effectively share the Gospel with someone, we need to find out where the person is on their spiritual journey. We discover this by asking intentional questions and listening carefully to the answers.
Additionally, this communicates love and builds trust.
Don't have a relationship with the individual? Then, it may not work that great to dive straight into a discussion about Jesus and the afterlife.
Imagine striking up a conversation with a casual acquaintance and immediately asking them about their weight or mental health. We wouldn’t do that, right?
Like some other subjects, a person's beliefs about what will happen to them after they die is often a private matter. So, it’s helpful to build some rapport before going there.
In John chapter 4, Jesus engages the woman at the well in a discussion about physical water, relating it to "spiritual water." Next, He brings up her marital situation, drawing attention to her physical and emotional needs.
Only after this does He get into what it means to know and worship God!
Whenever I want to share the Gospel with someone I don’t know well, I model my witnessing efforts after those of Jesus: I start with the natural, then transition to the spiritual.
And what exactly is a "natural" topic? Any topic that isn't spiritual!
The topic could relate to a person's career, hobbies, interests, upbringing, education, family, kids, or relationship status (as with the woman at the well). Or it could pertain to something from the news or from a TV show or a movie.
The natural, non-intrusive questions you can ask to get to know someone better are practically endless!
Sometimes, you may move from the natural to the spiritual in a single conversation, as Jesus did with the woman at the well. Other times, as you continue to cross paths with the same individual and God repeatedly gives you opportunities to interact with them, you may find it appropriate to make the transition more gradually.
And take heart. Although you may struggle to introduce a faith-related topic in a way that doesn't appear stilted or forced at first, I promise you it’ll get easier with practice.
Here's an example of something you could say to segue into the spiritual: "I'm really enjoying getting to know you, but I realize I've never asked you about your religious background. I'm curious, [First name], what were you taught about God growing up?"
How hard was that?! :-)
Here are a few more examples of faith-focused questions:
Do you have a church? What type of church is it? Protestant, Catholic…?
Did you grow up in a religious home?
Did your parents take you to church as a child?
What's the main religion in [the country you grew up in]?
Do you consider yourself a spiritual person?
Where are you spiritually right now?
Do you believe in God?
Do you ever pray?
Have you ever read the Bible or any parts of it?
Who do you believe Jesus Christ is?
Once you're on a spiritual topic, you’ll be able to proceed to "The Two Heaven Questions" with ease. (Many years ago, a fellow evangelist taught me to use these two questions, and I've always found them effective for getting a feel for where a person is in their walk with God.) I use them with people all the time, and from these questions, I segue into sharing the Gospel.
Here's how I do it: After I get the individual's permission to ask them "a little bit of a personal question," I reference a piece of information they just gave me about themselves. I say,
"Since you [go to church/grew up in a Christian home/consider yourself a religious person/have read the Bible], have you come to a place in your spiritual life where you can say for sure that if you were to die today, you would go to heaven?" (Heaven Question #1)
"If you were standing before God right now and He were to ask you, '[First name], why should I let you into heaven?', what do you think you would say?" (Heaven Question #2)
As you can see, I asked two personal questions even though they only gave me permission to ask one. (Sneaky, I know. Hehe.) By the way, I've yet to have someone answer no to my request for permission to ask a question. I'm guessing that's because they're too curious to find out what the question is!
Once they've answered the two Heaven Questions, I go on to talk about sin (God requires perfection, and we all fall desperately short of His standard), salvation (Jesus lived a perfect life in our place, then took the penalty for our sins), and faith (eternal life is a gift which we receive by faith, and there's nothing we can do to earn it or deserve it).
In simple terms, this is how I move from the natural to the spiritual and share the Gospel with someone.
Again, Jesus is our role model, and He was a master at using thought-provoking questions! His questions made people reflect on life's most critical issues as He invited them to explore and discuss His teachings.
Jesus's questions helped His followers understand who He was and His mission. He also used questions to shut the mouths of the hypocritical religious leaders of His day, turning confrontations into life lessons.
Did you know the New Testament Gospels record as many as 339 questions Jesus asked? Here's a small sampling:
"Why are you so afraid?" (To the disciples, Matthew 8:26).
"Why did you doubt?" (To Peter, Matthew 14:31).
"Who do you say that I am?" (To the disciples, Matthew 16:15).
"What do you want me to do for you?" (To two blind men, Matthew 20:32).
"Do you still not see or understand?" (To the disciples, Mark 8:17).
"Why are you thinking these things in your hearts?" (To the Pharisees, Luke 5:22).
"Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?" (To His followers, Luke 6:46).
"What is written in the Law?" [...] "How do you read it?" (To the expert in the law inquiring about eternal life, Luke 10:26).
"What do you seek?" (To the disciples, John 1:38).
"Do you want to get well?" (To the invalid at the pool at Bethesda, John 5:6).
"Do you now believe?" (To the disciples, John 16:32).
"Do you love me?" (To Peter, John 21:17).
Yes, asking questions and listening attentively are essential when we want to share the Gospel. First, because we need to build rapport, and second, because we need to find out where a person is on their spiritual journey.
Ever hear the adage, "They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care"? It's more important to lend a listening ear and to come across as genuinely interested than to hit every point in our Gospel presentation.
In fact, we should look at it as a conversation more than a presentation.
What if, in that conversation, we don't get to cover everything we wanted to say? Then we’ll have to trust that God will give us another opportunity to continue sharing the Gospel with the individual or that He'll send someone else to pick up where we left off.
God is in control. He only asks that we do our best. He’ll do the rest.
L.B.
Got any questions or additional tips for effectively sharing the Gospel? Please use the comments section below.
If you got value from this post, feel free to use the social media share buttons to share it with others!
