Want to know what many Christians think of evangelism? Come visit our church around 8:15 on a Sunday morning. Listen to the preacher stress the need to share the gospel message. Look around you and watch the shoulders stiffen, the eyes turn away, the hands fidget. (And that’s just me.)  

Why does the word evangelism strike terror in our hearts? I’ve heard priests and pastors chalk it up to fear, or laziness, or lack of zeal for Christ. But perhaps the problem is less with us and more with our traditional idea of evangelism.  

Maybe, just maybe, it’s obsolete.

As Jesse Lava implied in his recent Next-Wave article, the word evangelism evokes all kinds of popular images—from preaching on a street corner with a Bible and a megaphone to sharing the message with new friends in their living room. Whatever the details, the direction is the same: one-way. One person communicates information with the goal of inspiring interest or conviction in the other.  

Does that sound familiar? It should. This one-way communication involves the same direction and dynamic as a sales pitch. And people in our culture—including we Christians—not only loathe sales pitches, but tune them out. 

This happens for three reasons. First, as consumers, we’re exposed to hundreds of sales messages every day. To function in that kind of frenzy, we develop an ability to sort and (mostly) reject messages at the blink of an eye. Is it relevant to me, right here, right now? Is it easy to grasp quickly? If the answer is no, the message gets the cold shoulder, because I have to get on to the next thing. 

This quick-sorting ability goes hand in hand with our second reason: skepticism. People who have grown up with the Internet, especially, excel at sniffing out sales messages and the vested interests behind them. The first false note turns them right off. This is one reason why ads and TV commercials often have little to say about the products they’re selling: their objective is to engage the audience (through humor, poignancy, or whatever emotion makes sense) and thus get past the instant objection to the sales pitch.   

Finally, when you throw in the prevailing attitude toward religion in a free, individualistic society—everyone’s entitled to their beliefs, and all beliefs are equally valid—the one-way pitch of traditional evangelism cannot help but fall short. 

So maybe we don’t make the pitch anymore. Maybe, instead, we join the conversation.  

This approach is so simple in concept—we listen as well as talk—but the implications are profound. By joining the conversation, we foster relationships, not to create opportunities to share the gospel, but to share the lives and hopes and fears and disappointments of those we befriend. In doing so, we show the respect and love we profess with our words. If and when we do share the message verbally, we share with a beloved friend who trusts us and values what we have to say.  

The upshot is that we share the gospel as much by living it as by communicating it. To quote no less an expert than St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary use words.” 

There is a risk here. When we listen, we automatically come into the presence of new perspectives that have something—good or bad, true or false—to say to our faith. As a result, we might have to reexamine our own beliefs. How does our faith respond to this new information? Does it need adjustment? Is there another way to think about this doctrine or that perspective? Am I carrying faith baggage that should be jettisoned entirely?  

I’ve had the privilege of dialoguing with people from all sorts of belief systems: liberals and conservatives, monks and evangelicals, atheists and Hindus. These dialogues often bear fruit in two ways. People who think that all Christians fit a narrow stereotype—particularly a stereotype of uncompromising rigidity—come away realizing that it ain’t necessarily so. Maybe, as a result, they become just a little more receptive to Christianity. Meanwhile, by hearing their perspectives, I learn to appreciate the thought behind them and see how they might illumine unexplored aspects of my own faith.  

Just as important, each of us comes face to face with the human being behind the “opposing” belief system. That cannot help but foster compassion and peace: it is more difficult for me to label, say, Islam as an “evil religion” if I know good, compassionate, and thoughtful Muslims personally.  

To reach postmodern culture is to engage postmodern culture—not to lose our faith therein (because the message of Christ has so much to offer the world), but to build bridges and, in the exchange of dialogue, actually go deeper into our own faith tradition. I can get excited about that kind of evangelism. How about you? 

As a 20-year veteran of marketing communications and an associate of an Episcopal monastery, John Backman is currently writing a book on spirituality and a new approach to dialogue. His website can be found at www.dialogueventure.com.