How Can We Start Spiritual Conversations?

Starting spiritual conversations is something that comes mainly with practice, but there are a few basic principles that I tried to get across in a short talk at our church.

First, admit and reject your excuses not to! Most of my Christian life was spent coming up with excuses why I shouldn’t initiate spiritual conversations, and once I decided to make it a priority, I had to deal with the arsenal of excuses that constantly played like loop tapes in my head.

A main excuse I talked about was that I didn’t want to misrepresent God and turn people off to the Gospel by being pushy, having a “spiel”, or being dishonest with “bait and switch” tactics. Instead, we can have positive, real conversations by being open about it upfront, asking good questions, being good listeners and responding accordingly.

Another excuse I talked about was that I just didn’t know how to start spiritual conversations. While this may be true in the moment, if we use our creativity and access available resources, we can learn and practice it like any other skill. So it’s not a matter of lack of knowledge but rather a lack of motivation.

A second principle I talked about was that reaching out with the Gospel won’t come naturally for most of us and needs to be treated as a spiritual discipline like any other area of our Christian growth. This means we need to purposely make it a priority and set goals that we ask God to help us with. Don’t make a vow or promise to God that you try to keep by your own efforts, because you will only set yourself up to fail. It needs to be God working in us and through us for it to truly be a “spiritual” conversation.

I also talked about how prayer-walking can naturally lead to initiating gospel conversations, and how I often do this very inconspicuously while pushing a shopping cart at the grocery or home improvement store. Gospel tracts can be helpful as conversation starters and usually lead to shorter conversations, while asking open-ended questions and active listening are better for longer conversations when we have more time to talk.

I prefer the longer conversations because most people really love to talk about their own beliefs when someone cares enough to ask and is truly willing to listen to their answers. For many people, it’s the first time they have ever put their own beliefs into words and reflected on their implications, and it can truly be an eye-opening experience for them.

I often preface my outreach conversations by saying “I have a crazy question for you that I try to ask someone new every day”. This acknowledges that I realize my question is indeed unusual, but reassures people that I do this all the time and am not targeting them in particular.

The question that I usually ask, after thousands of outreach conversations over the last ten years, is “What do you think happens after this life, if anything?” It’s clearly a spiritual question, but not so specific that it would short-circuit a good conversation about their beliefs. If I asked something like, say, “Do you know for sure that you will go to heaven?”, I’m implying that I expect them to already believe in heaven, and the conversation won’t be as honest.

At the end of my talk, I passed out a sheet I wrote explaining the ideas behind “Law and Grace” evangelism, which is what convinced me that outreach conversations can indeed be biblical, sincere, and worth pursuing. A PDF of that essay, which I titled “Using God’s Law to Share God’s Amazing Grace” is available at this link – https://tinyurl.com/3px28szj

That paper also includes some resources I highly recommend. If you've read this far, you must care about reaching out to the lost, but do you care enough to do something about it? It may sound scary and overwhelming but after setting a goal of witnessing every day I can say this; it does get much easier and you will definitely improve with practice! Here are two excellent "law and grace" evangelistic resources to get you started:
· "One Thing You Can't Do In Heaven" by Mark Cahill
· "Way of the Master" by Ray Comfort

I also highly recommend Ray Comfort’s evangelism training website at LivingWaters.com Start with the audio “Hell’s Best-Kept Secret” (I know, it has a scary and negative title, but it is well-worth listening to!) The rest of the website offers valuable resources for evangelism training.

For examples of how an introverted, socially awkward person (myself) might possibly go about sharing the Gospel and gospel truths on the streets and in the marketplace, I offer my YouTube channel and blog:
YouTube.com/c/jeffreiman Everydayclub.blogspot.com