Strange Truth (3)

And they took hold of him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?”

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We can sometimes get the impression that Paul was an aggressive, even pushy evangelist. He was always ready to speak up at a moment’s notice and to insist that his view was the right one and everybody needed to just hear him out and change their ways. Some of that picture, of course, is true. Paul was an expert at noticing open doors of opportunity, and he tried to go through them whenever he could.

But Paul’s ministry of evangelism can sometimes cause contemporary believers to be wary of taking up this calling. After all, Paul was really smart; he knew his Bible inside-out; he appears to have understood the times in which he lived and all the false worldviews circulating about in his day; and he didn’t mind taking one on the chin for the Lord from time to time. If that’s what being consistent in the work of evangelism requires, then it’s no wonder most Christians are all too ready to leave it to the experts.

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But a casual look at some of the verbs used to describe Paul at work among unbelievers should help us to see that he was a careful and tactful evangelism. Paul knew that evangelism is a process (1 Cor. 3:5-7). It takes time, requires a variety of skills, and demands great patience and persistence on the part of those who take up this calling.

Being evangelistic is not like driving a “Gospel dump truck” around the town, with the back bin filled with your testimony, in several versions, and every Scripture and objection to the Gospel you’ve ever learned. You look for someone to unload on, then you back up your truck and deliver all the contents of the bin in blitzkrieg fashion.

That’s not evangelism – not effective evangelism, anyway. For Paul, the work of evangelism was more like tending a garden. Sometimes you have to prepare the soil, other times you sow some seed – little by little. Then you have to water, fertilize, keep the weeds out, and, above all, wait on the Lord to produce the fruit. As we see Paul in Thessalonica, Athens, and Rome, he was following just this practice. The verbs used to describe his efforts suggest as much – “reasoning,” “conversing,” “teaching,” “testifying,” “trying to convince.” These are verbs that suggest a context of give-and-take, in which we ask questions, listen attentively, affirm what we can, raise what we must, and wait for others to respond.

The effect of Paul’s doing this in Athens was to provoke his hearers to curiosity about the message he was proclaiming. We can pretty well imagine that if Paul had insisted on doing all the talking, pounding people with Bible verses, and refusing to listen to their questions, views, and concerns, they would have run him out of town rather than brought him into the very heart of their most earnest discussions. We need to take seriously the views of those who regard our Gospel as strange truth, taking the time to learn, listen, talk with, and get to know others, so that they see our Gospel lived as well as hear it spoken. If we can do this, and do it consistently, we may find that others are more curious about what we believe than what we might have thought at first.

Start your own ViewPoint discussion group. This week’s series is available in a free downloadable format, suitable for personal or group study. Download the series, " Strange Truth."

For more information on this topic, get the book, How to Talk So People Will Listen, by Steve Brown, from our online store. Or read the article, "Iron Sharpening Iron," by Jeff Baldwin.