It's who you know

We've heard the saying, "It's not what you know, but who you know." This may refer to the opportunity to land a new job or to exert some influence. But in terms of sharing Christian faith, it's also a matter of "who you know." Many long-time church folks are reticent about evangelism because they have the impression that this entails "cold calling" on strangers. More often, opportunities for sharing faith arise not with strangers, but with friends, neighbors, co-workers. In other words, people we already know! When this is pointed out, again the response of many church members may be that they really don't know very many people who don't attend church or believe in God. And it's true that frequently our associations tend to be limited to church friends. But even so, it is quite likely there are numbers of folks in our acquaintance who do not have a life-giving relationship with Christ.

There's another sense in which evangelism is a matter of who you know. And this is even more basic. When we know Christ as our Lord and Savior, the love and joy that comes from that relationship just naturally overflows into other relationships. You could even say that evangelism itself is little more than the overflow of our own experience with Jesus Christ.