We were at a student conference getting “trained” on how to witness to people.

I sat and listened with my youth group. There were more than 600 students in the room. The guy up front was walking through a pamphlet I’d read at least a thousand times.

“Do you know that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life?”

I hate that question. It sounds eerily familiar to a former friend of mine who tried to sell me Amway.

My students were bored. I looked down the row, and three of my small group leaders were nodding off. One of my adult volunteers nudged me while pointing at the slumbering trio.

“Should we wake them up?” she asked with a smirk. “They’re student leaders, you know... set an example?” Sarcasm can be a wonderful thing.

After the training ended, we got our packets and headed to the bus to save the world. The only problem was that we weren’t going to “the world.” We were going to Pearl Street—where hippies, pseudo-intellectuals, druggies, homeless, college students, and liberals hang out in Boulder, Colorado.

I gathered my students around in an alley, took the pamphlet in my hand and said, “I’m going to give you the best advice for reaching people in Boulder.”

Then I threw the pamphlet over my shoulder.

Amid the laughter and high-fives, I then realized I had about two minutes to communicate what had been brewing in my heart and mind for years—it was a collision of culture and theology.

Cultural Collisions
Most of our evangelism methods are filled with assumptions about our culture that are no longer true.

Further exacerbating the problem is the manner in which these dated assumptions are trotted out. Often we’re either surprised or offended or both when someone doesn’t agree with us—and therefore a central concept to the Christian faith such as “God is love” is undermined by the very way we present God’s story: God loves you, and so do I! Now shut up so I can shove this piece of literature down your throat.

Of course unpacking all of these concepts takes time. More time than it takes to walk through a well-meaning tract. It takes relational time. Time for those to whom we’re relating to ask questions such as, “Is this person legit? Is he telling me the truth? Can we talk about this without getting combative?”

Plus, our culture is no longer simply asking, “Is it true?” It’s also asking, “Does it work?” In other words, “What does following Jesus look like in the real world? Can God forgive what I’ve done? Can God really heal these hurts? What has this relationship with Jesus done for you?”

Can any of those questions be answered sufficiently through the kind of hit-and-run evangelism we’ve so often touted as “the” way for students to share their faith?

Theological Collisions
I figured that studying Scripture would make Jesus easier to follow, easier to accept, and easier to explain. I seriously thought the more I knew about Jesus, the better I’d be able to explain the unexplainable and live the ultimate Christian life. I figured there’s no way my life wouldn’t get better and clearer.

I wish I knew who was responsible for filling my head with those assumptions—I’d have a few choice words for that individual.

Disturbing Reality #1
Jesus’ conversations with people in the Bible were disturbing. He talked in code with Nicodemus. He argued with the religious elites. He comforted the woman caught in adultery. He confronted personal issues with the rich young ruler and woman at the well. He told stories to the fishing communities and laborers and seekers.

In short, Jesus used no “method” when he evangelized. Rather, everywhere he went, he simply engaged people relationally—and on their level, with language they could understand. He never started out with set lines or a memorized pitch. If they needed healing, Jesus healed them. If they needed a listening ear, he listened. If they needed some strong rebuke or encouragement, he provided that, too.

Disturbing Reality #2
Grace trumps everything. To those who thought they had it all together, Jesus pointed out that they didn’t—not to hurt them, but to show them that they, too, needed grace. And to those who “knew” they were beyond redemption, Jesus showed them otherwise. Whenever Jesus engaged people, he led them from where they were to his grace.

Disturbing Reality #3
Jesus wasn’t in a hurry. He didn’t press people for commitments of faith. In fact, he was really comfortable letting them walk away. (Can you imagine that encouraged at an evangelism conference?) The terms Jesus used to invite people to “believe in him”—e.g., “follow me,” “pick up your cross,” “walk with me,” “put my yoke on,”—all pointed to the idea of a process or journey. Even in the Great Commission the command was to “make disciples”—i.e., learners and apprentices—not super-Christians-one-rung-from-perfection.

I believe part of the reason Jesus wasn’t in a hurry was because he knew that people didn’t need another system or method or “secret” to live life well. He knew they needed him.

In spite of all the academic, theological, and political questions and problems people faced, Jesus knew they needed more than answers to those questions.

Just him.

They needed him for the moment...and for eternity.

Disturbing Reality #4
Lastly, for those who chose to follow Jesus, life often got harder, not easier. Does Jesus redeem our messes? Yes. Does he heal? Absolutely. But none of those processes are necessarily pleasant or even easy.

To be fair, those who’ve gone through redemption and healing are typically happy when they come out the other side in better shape—but you’ve got to wonder if they had that same perspective in the middle of the process.

Too Much Energy, Risk, and Time?
I’d spent a majority of my life in training students to be sound-bite believers—who knew how to deliver cherry-picked goodies from God’s massive story and sell Jesus like Amway.

I did that, in part, because that was how I was trained. I also did that because doing the hard, relational work took too much time and too much energy, was way too risky, and didn’t produce results quickly enough.

Along the way our culture changed (doesn’t it always?). And not only have the ground rules changed, but non-Christians have been seeing through our self-serving style of evangelism for years. They crave real, honest answers to their hurt and loneliness, but we’re too often content to sell them a plastic Jesus—a tin god that could never deal with any of that.

Non-Christians need the real Jesus—the one who’s more beautiful, more difficult, and more complicated than even his followers can hope to know this side of Heaven. They need the Jesus who can deal with all their pain and hurt and loneliness—and indeed the Jesus who will probably make their lives harder and more complicated, not easier or pain free.

Meanwhile, Back on Pearl Street...
I would unpack all of this later with my students. We’d learn how to listen to others. We’d learn how to be great friends with people who didn’t know Jesus—making sure our only agenda is loving them. We’d learn how to communicate our story of what Jesus is doing in our lives—not just communicate what Jesus did in the Bible.

But what could I tell them in this moment that would help jumpstart that realization in their hearts, souls, and minds? What could I tell them after playfully tossing aside the cookie-cutter tract—which was also a handy safety net—that they could use as we turned them loose in one of the most hostile places in America to the gospel? Was there anything useful I could utter?

Then I did.

Your mission today is NOT to witness to anybody. Your mission is to make as many friends as you can. Listen to their spiritual journeys, their stories. Find out what God’s doing with them, where God’s already working in their lives. Just listen. Listen to the Spirit as well. If given a chance, tell what Jesus is doing with you right now, too. But first just listen to them, love on them a bit, and see what happens.

Then I unleashed them.

And I’ve never regretted it.