Do You Get Nervous Sharing About Jesus?

I recently heard Glen Scrivener, a British pastor, talk to Matt Smethurst on the Everyday Pastor podcast about evangelism in the West. Something he said struck me as instructive on why evangelism can feel so awkward and what to do about it. I went back and listened, typing out a snippet that blessed me:

“One of the huge issues for evangelism in the West is that most of the time, my life looks indistinguishable from my non-Christian friend’s life. It’s almost identical. Maybe in the calendar, my Sunday mornings look different to his Sunday morning. Otherwise, how different am I from my neighbor? And one of the reasons why we get nervous about evangelism is because when we start to speak about Jesus, that’s the first time that difference is injected into the relationship. And all of a sudden, I start to, because I, I feel wrongly that not being weird is the goal and blending in his the goal. And so I’m, I’m desperate to blend in and so I’m going to not talk about Jesus because the moment I talk about Jesus I’m injecting an awkward kind of difference into the relationship. But I think in the New Testament, it’s the other way around. My life is supposed to be so weird, so inexplicable outside of Christ, that my friend is like “Okay, you are really, really weird. Say something. Relieve the tension for me. Why is it that you do the things that you do.” And at that point, my Christian witness actually relieves the tension, rather than introduces the tension.”

I think Scrivener is onto something. Perhaps if our lives looked more like Jesus, instead of waiting for the perfect moment to speak of him, our unbelieving friends and neighbors would speak first. They would demand an explanation. This doesn't mean that we shouldn’t speak first. In many cases, this is what God would have us to do. But what if we lived more compelling lives? How much easier would the gospel pour forth from our lips to those who have already seen Jesus reflected in our actions? Something to ponder!