Tim Keller’s Top 10 Evangelism Tips

Martin Salter:

A while ago on our elder retreat we listened to a talk Tim Keller gave at Lausanne. As part of that talk he gave 10 tips to help our lay folk in their evangelism. They were so helpful I wanted to put them down somewhere, so here they are:

• Let people around you know you are a Christian (in a natural, unforced way)
• Ask friends about their faith – and just listen!
• Listen to your friends problems – maybe offer to pray for them
• Share your problems with others – testify to how your faith helps you
• Give them a book to read
• Share your story
• Answer objections and questions
• Invite them to a church event
• Offer to read the Bible with them
• Take them to an explore course

What Keller also advises is that we (generally) start with 1-4. If people are interested and want to talk more you can move them to stages 5-7. If they’re still interested go on to stages 8-10. Sometimes people will want to go straight to 10, but often people start from way back and need some time to think and discuss things in a non-pressured way. We often think that only stages 8-10 count and invest all our energy there. TK suggests that to get people at stages 8,9,10 you have to put the work in at 1-4. Sometimes you’ll have to keep going round the loop multiple times.

TK suggests to leaders that we should aim to get 20% of our folk doing this (of course it should be 100% but let’s be realistic). If we do, we’ll see a steady stream of conversions over the long term, and sustainable church growth.

(HT:  Dashouse)