My most uncomfortable sales experience comes from my early teens, and an evangelism seminar that came to my church. The lessons taught an aggressive approach that was meant to quickly engage an individual and dive into almost an elevator pitch of the gospel. Methods such as the Roman Road were recommended, and a large portion of time was spent on spiritual conversation starters with complete strangers. There is no doubt that God uses methods like this at times, as affirmed by Isaiah 55:11
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
Despite knowing this, such an aggressive form of outreach bothered me. But I went along with the seminar, and went “out into the city” with another member of my church to use what we had learned. We had varied success when we stuck together, but there was one point where we split to talk with two people at once, and I completely froze when I approached my target. I tried a couple times to spit out one of the opening questions, but only succeeded in gaining the inquisitive stare of the man I had approached. I eventually left, completely embarrassed, and have fretted about that moment ever since.
Since that point, I’ve had the opportunity to have many spiritual discussions with a wide variety of people, and have been able to share the gospel with a few. I’ve never returned to those techniques though, and have attempted to simply listen to the conversation and be willing to discuss both my faith and any theological question that may arise. Looking back at that seminar, it strikes me as a vary old form of sales, one that places the burden of the sale on the salesman, not on meeting a need for the “consumer,” or in this case, the sinner.
BoweryJE22
I don’t feel comfortable with evangelism at all, I am not a fan of the aggressive gospel approach.
I see evangelism as the ultimate form of cold calling. Not only is it salesy but its also on top of that a personal and sometimes uncomfortable issue that people can be turned off too. Door to door evangelism can sometimes be the hardest sell that there is in my opinion.
I totally agree that this method of evangelism is not the best way to reach people. Like you said, God can use any method of evangelism to spread his kingdom but I don’t think that means we should just utilize the first one that comes around the corner. I think the saying, “People don’t care what you know until they know that you care,” rings pretty true for evangelism and sales. Until you are willing to sit down with a person and hear their pain, they most likely won’t be interested in your solution.