I was at a banquet last night where several pastors were there to pray for the evening. One of the pastors gave the invocation for the meal and blessed the evening. As he got up to pray, before he began, he took a minute to share the Gospel. However, his sharing of the Gospel was more about telling people they had to accept Christ to allow the Holy Spirit to be present rather than walking people through the reasoning why they should accept Christ’s sacrifice.
While I am a strong proponent of sharing the Gospel all the time, I am becoming more and more sensitive to the way we present the Gospel message. Last night for instance, I spoke with another person who was there about his comments and she mentioned that it made her feel alienated and uncomfortable. I can understand the uncomfortable feeling being the Holy Spirit tugging at her, but don’t like the fact that she felt alienated.
I pose 3 questions for discussion.
Should we be sensitive to how unbelievers receive the Gospel message?
What can we do as Christians to present the Gospel in a way that doesn’t alienate unbelievers?
How can we present the message in a way that shows we are unashamed of the message, yet show that we are sensitive to how it is received by unbelievers?
