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Jerry Coleman writes on the topic of Verbal and Lifestyle Proclamation of Christ in my online Spiritual Formation class. I'm starting with this specific selection, but there has been a couple of weeks worth of posts before this post and my responses. Jerry Coleman writes: Come on ........ To say that lifstyle evangelism fulfilles the great commision is a cop out. Just my opionion, but not without reason. I say that being very guilty, because I use to say this myself, to avoid conflict, and to avoid facing my fears. Jesus showed us the way.....3 ways not 1. lifestyle 2.discipleship/relationship 3.verbal evangelism..........we need to do all 3 Of the 3, rank the 3 in order of importance or productivity. When was the last time you had some one come up to you and say, Eli, I see that you have what I want, how can I get saved too. Now it this happenes to you all the time, then by all means continue on ..... How will this apply to witnessing to a total stranger? Or are we to exclude strangers? Jesus did not exclude strangers. Should we? How can we disciple or do relationship evangelism without verbaly communicating at least my own personal testamony? It says to "Teach" it does not say to show. When I look at the great commision, and then at the church as a whole.....its a sad day......and if lifestyle evangelism were the only eveangelism the church today was showing, then my friend we would have a dead church in one generation. I am not saying that lifestyle evangelism is not important, It is. But the 3 fold areas are important together, and to say you are fulfilling the commision with 1 or even 2, is a mistake. We need more people willing to do all three......and I say this kowing that this is a command not a request ....T he main thing I want to make very plain here, is that most people think that JUST lifestyle evangelism is all they need to do.....And I say HOGWASH.......... My response is broken up into 3 different posts. Post 1: I don't think Eli has ever said that "JUST lifestyle evangelism is all they need to do." I haven't seen that in these posts. And I hope that you're not implying by ranking your 3 views of evangelism, that one is more important than the other. Because you keep saying that they are one and the same only to make the comment that we should "rank the 3 in order of importance or productivity." To me, when you make that statement, you disqualify you other statement of "But the 3 fold areas are important together". Maybe I'm just misinterpretating your comments, but it seems as if you're switching back and forth by saying that one is more important than the other and that they are not more important than each other, but are to be taken together. I only see 1 type of evangelism (with 2 different methods - lifestyle and verbal. i see relationship/discipleship as fitting into lifestyle). But if I were to break it down into 3 categories and I was going to give them a rank as you asked us to do. I'm not sure that verbal would be number one. You asked Eli, "When was the last time you had some one come up to you and say, Eli, I see that you have what I want, how can I get saved too?" That question should be asked to all of us. And the answer is that sadly many people don't come to us like this. Now that shouldn't mean we should VERBALIZE all the more. Maybe it should make us wonder why our lives aren't the salt and light that they should be. If people don't come asking us whats different about us, that doesn't mean that we should say "verbal evangelism" is more important. It should mean that our "lifestyle evangelism" stinks. So when nobody comes up to us, as I'm sure it is the case for the majority of us, that doesn't mean we scream the gospel louder. I would think that it would make us reexamine our lifestyle. Because when you look at Christ's lifestyle, a lot of the time, he would not initate the "verbal". Instead, people would come up to him wondering and begging "what made him different". He then responded to their questions, their engagements, their hunger for what He possessed. They were also many times that He did initiate the crowds verbally. But there were many times that His life was so obvious that the crowd initiated the engagment. I think we are treading on dangerous ground when we start asking people to RANK the best style of evangelism. Because I could easily make the arguement that the reason why people aren't coming to Christ today is not because of the verbal. In fact the verbal proclamation of Christ today may be higher than it ever has been with the tools that media have to offer. The gospel is practically proclaimed from the radio, tv, and internet 24/7. So if people aren't coming to Christ through all of this massive, packaged, commercialized verbal proclamation, then maybe our "lifestyle evangelism" is what is weak. Maybe if we would quit being bigoted, close-minded, arrogant, rude, salesmen of the gospel, and start practicing what we preach, then maybe people would be drawn to this gospel that we have obviously mastered the verbal proclamation of. Post 2: "if lifestyle evangelism were the only eveangelism the church today was showing, then my friend we would have a dead church in one generation." I hate to break it to you. But I think we may already have a dead church. And I think it is because of all the "preaching" from the Christians and not enough "living" from the Christians. Post 3: "How will this apply to witnessing to a total stranger? Or are we to exclude strangers? Jesus did not exclude strangers. Should we?" So we include strangers by being verbal with them? Or do we include them in our life? I would think it would be much more effective if we included them in our life than if we just "preached" at them? Its both/and. Look at the life of Jesus. How did He include the strangers? He didn't just preach at them. He said come follow me. Take on my lifestyle. Come eat with me. Lets feast together. Lets do life together. Lets minister together. Lets be together. Yes he verbalized with them. But his platform was his lifestyle. He didn't have one without the other. There are very very very few instances in the four gospels where you see Jesus walking up to someone and just start verbalizing. Instead, he engages them in relationship, then he begins proclaiming his kingdom. But there were many many many instances where he first began with his living, engaging, involving those around Him in his life. Then He verbally proclaimed. Let me ask you this. In a perfect world, what is the best scenario for evangelism? 1) Would it work better if we were building relationships with people, hanging out with them, eating dinner with them, going to the movies with them, entering into their world and leaving ours, and building a bridge of friendship from Christ to US to THEM, then proclaiming the gospel? 2) OR would it be better to hang out with Christians everyday, shop from Christians, live in Christianville everyday, and then whenever we have a waitress for 45 minutes, or a clerk at the store, or a family sitting down to eat dinner on Tuesday night during our Visitation, and not have any type of lasting relationship, honest, caring, deep relationship with these people, to just verbally proclaim? The first one would obviously work better. But because Christ has CALLED us to do both. Because there are obvious times that the Spirit of God prompts us to share with our waitress or our sales clerk, we are to do both. But we would rather just do the second type and not to do the first. Because alot of us fear if we start involving our lives on an intimate level with the "lost" that we might get dirty, contaminated, messy. So we'd rather stay at an arms distance from a real relationship with the lost and whine and complain that they're not listening to our deafening screams of the proclamation of the gospel. Maybe we should all shut up for a year, turn off every Christian radio preacher, every tv evangelist, close down every pulpit, turn off all of the Christian printing presses, and simply show one tangible expression of God's love to the world. We might actually be better if would simply shut up for a while and start living our sacred "advice to the lost".