How to Share Your Faith

In their Book Good Faith, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons present statistics that demonstrate that Christians in the U.S. feel very hesitant to share their faith. This fits with my own experience. People are less likely to talk about their faith than ever before. But this does not need to be the case. Here’s why.

Why are people hesitant about sharing their faith? People are hesitant about pushy salespeople, whether they are selling Mormonism or a new car. We’ve all had experiences of salespeople that made us uncomfortable or got us to purchase things we don’t want. We don’t like those experiences, and we don’t want to be that person. It’s easy to think of sharing your faith like that.

Another reason is that we lack examples of good engagement on controversial issues. Most of our experience of engagement on these issues is from Twitter or Facebook. These venues do not encourage us with examples of productive engagement on any issue, let alone religion or politics.

Finally, people lack positive examples. People in the church can experience those who are obnoxious about theological issues or who accept everything in the name of loving people. They may not have experienced someone who can engage with love and respect and yet hold to their convictions with clarity and grace.

I am no expert on this topic, and I am often afraid of talking to people about anything, let alone my faith. I have an aversion to being pushy or high pressure. At the same time, I want to share my faith. My relationship with God is central to my life. I believe that my views on these matters are true, important, and helpful.

So, how do I do it? How do I deal with that tension? For me, the key is “honor and respect.”

This begins by valuing people because they are people. God values people, and I believe that I should, too. If I don’t value people enough to connect with them, then I will have no opportunity to share my faith. On the other side, if I only care about people if they agree with me, then I will not communicate love the way God wants me to.

To me, this means being a good listener. We should take an interest in what people think about life and faith. We can ask them questions: how does God fit into your life? What do you think of religion? How do you make sense of life? How do you find the resources to go forward? Then, we need to listen, really listen, to the answers.

Once someone has shared with us, then we can ask them if we can share our answers to these questions. If they say, “yes” (which they will probably do, if they feel listened to), then we can share the substance of our faith. If they say, “no,” then that’s OK. We have heard someone’s perspective and hopefully learned something.

Miroslav Volf in his book Flourishing noted that the Golden Rule applies to sharing our faith. If we want to share our faith with others, then we should let them share their faith with us.

If we begin this way, then we will find many doors open up for us. The key is to honor and love others and to be ready to listen.

I have had the opportunity to do this over the past couple of years with foreign students who have come to our area to work. I have a natural curiosity about these folks coming to our country. I love to hear about their country. I have also felt free to ask them about their religion and what it means to them. Whenever I have had occasion to share my faith, I have always told them that I would be interested in hearing about theirs. The result has been good. They have ended up asking me many questions about Christianity. I have had some wonderful times of discussion and ample opportunity to share my faith. It always begins with my curiosity and interest in them as human beings and their unique experiences.

We do need to speak to share our faith. However, as the Apostle James admonished us: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” (James 1:19). This is a way of sharing our faith that honors our faith and the relationship.