Behind the Book: “Learning Evangelism from Jesus”

A Word from Jerram Barrs

As we mentioned yesterday, we’re thrilled here at Crossway about the announcement of Jerram Barrs’ Outreach Magazine Evangelism Book of the Year Award for Learning Evangelism from Jesus!

We recently had the opportunity to ask Barrs about his heart behind the book. (We look forward to pointing to the full interview when it’s available in Outreach Magazine).

What or who inspired you to write Learning Evangelism from Jesus?
Several years ago I was teaching a Bible Study series for a Women’s Ministry in a local church here in St. Louis on ‘Conversations with Jesus’ from the Gospels. As I was preparing I realized that many of the conversations between Jesus and individuals and also those between Jesus and groups of people are with men and women who are not yet believers. I also discovered that in most of the commentaries this ‘evangelistic aspect’ of these conversations was not discussed. Instead, the commentator usually moved to the application of these encounters for our lives as believers.

All of us have heard many sermons that have done precisely this. The sermon text is, for example, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, or the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and while there may be an invitation to unbelievers at the end of the sermon, the sermon is primarily about lessons for us as Christian believers that we can learn from these passages, but the context of the original setting of these parables is often completely disregarded in the exposition and application. I don’t think I have ever heard a sermon on one of these ‘conversations with Jesus’ in which the application was lessons we can learn in our communication of the Gospel to unbelievers.

In addition, I was intrigued by these conversations because I found Jesus ignoring most approaches to evangelism that are taught today! Jesus had no set formula, no particular method, no one technique that he applied in every situation. I did not discover Jesus manipulating conversations to ‘close the deal’ as quickly as possible. On the contrary I found several situations where Jesus avoided answering direct questions about how to inherit eternal life. I also saw that many of these encounters ended without the person or group being converted on the spot (though it is evident that many became believers later). I found the studies very encouraging in all kinds of ways both for me as a teacher and for those who were learning with me.

I also preached on several of these passages at many different churches in diverse denominational settings. The reaction was invariably interest, surprise, encouragement and liberation. In my experience most Christians feel both inadequate and incompetent when it comes to evangelism – indeed, I have often been told that instruction on evangelism commonly has the impact of making people feel even more guilty than they already felt before the series or seminar began. Another way to put this was that being led to examine the example of Jesus was an experience of grace rather than of judgment. Jesus sets us free to be ourselves, rather than to have to change our personality to become an ‘evangelist’ type. He encourages us to speak to people where they are at, in the strengths, weaknesses, joys and sorrows of their lives. He teaches us to be gracious, vulnerable and respectful and calls us to be discerning about the deep idols of the heart.

It was the encouragement of students in class and of believers in the churches where I preached on these passages in the Gospels that led me to turn these studies into a book.