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everyday evangelism

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 27 Feb 2025

After this month I’m taking a break from writing this Everyday Evangelism column. It’s partly so I can focus more energy on reaching out online. This article explains a little of why.

There are 2.5 billion monthly users on YouTube. Three billion on Facebook. If these were countries, they would be easily the biggest countries on earth. How can we be missionaries to these lands?

everyday evangelism

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 1 Nov 2024

Recently Pope Francis was fiercely critiqued for his teaching at an interfaith event in Singapore. Both Protestants and Catholics have charged him with the serious error of ‘indifferentism’.

Indifferentism is the belief that all religions are alike in their ability to bring you to God – it doesn’t matter which path you’re on, they all reach the top of the mountain. Whatever his corrections and clarifications later, his words at the Singapore conference sounded suspiciously like that teaching. ‘Every religion is a way to arrive at God’ he said. At the same time he made fun of the kind of person who says: ‘My God is more important than your God’. ‘Is that true?’ he asks the audience, expecting the answer, ‘No’.

everyday evangelism

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 1 Jul 2024

There are any number of ways the subject might crop up, but crop up it will: ‘Religion causes all wars… ’; ‘Christians are hypocrites… ’; What about the Crusades / the Inquisition / conquistadors… ?’; ‘Those Christians really hurt me… ’.

These are different kinds of statements and, as we’ll see, they should be addressed differently – especially that last one. But there’s one thing they all accomplish: they tempt the Christian to dissociate from church.

everyday evangelism

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 1 May 2024

In evangelism Christians have an incredible asset which too many think is a liability: the church.

Last month we considered the advertising campaign ‘He Gets Us’, and its tendency to pit a compassionate Jesus against His judgmental people. But it happens in personal conversations too. The failures of Christ’s people might come up, and the strong temptation can be to throw the church ‘under the bus’.

everyday evangelism

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 1 Apr 2024

‘He Gets Us’ is a US ad campaign spending hundreds of millions of dollars to prompt faith conversations in America.

It also seeks to lead interested enquirers to do Bible reading programmes and to connect with local Alpha groups. Their most prominent advertisement to date was their 60-second Superbowl commercial, ‘Foot Washing’, re-imagining John 13 with various representatives of polarised groups washing one another’s feet. It finished with the line ‘Jesus didn’t preach hate. Jesus washed feet.’

everyday evangelism

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 1 Aug 2023

For the last few columns we’ve been trying to follow Blaise Pascal’s advice about persuading the sceptical.

Before his death in 1662 he suggested that we make people of good will ‘wish it were true, then show them that it is.’ I promise we’ll move on from this Pascalian perspective next month, but allow me one last word on the subject. In this column it’s very much a case of ‘once more with feeling.’

everyday evangelism

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 1 Oct 2021

In the last decade I’ve been involved with scores of week-long or weekend missions put on by churches and Christian Unions.

Such outreaches – like those planned for the Passion for Life initiative next year – are big investments. We need some solid reasons to give of our time, money, talents and energy. Often though our reasons are poor.

everyday evangelism

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 1 Jul 2022

It used to be much more difficult to connect with our neighbour (that’s neighbour singular – we’re at the end of a terrace). He spoke no English and would furtively dart in and out of the property. When the police hauled him away we learned that he’d converted the whole house and its roof space into an indoor cannabis farm. I had no idea he was so entrepreneurial.

The new tenant, let’s call her Debs, is a mum of three and a smoker (of the tobacco variety). I mention this only because she is out smoking on our shared porch 20 times a day, which is bad for her health but, I hope, good for her soul.

everyday evangelism

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 1 May 2022

When it comes to communicating Christian truth, illustrations are often considered to be decorative. They are added extras, definitely not essential. Stories can be dismissed as a poor substitute for hard logic.

Perhaps they’re considered a concentration break, or an added dash of emotion to spice up your gospel presentation. Mostly, stories and illustrations are thought of as a sideshow while the real business is to state truths as plainly as possible. This, of course, is not the way people tick, nor the way the Scriptures present truth.

everyday evangelism

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 1 Jan 2022

‘Gosh, that was marvellous, I could never do that’ said the woman next to me at an evangelism seminar.

We had just watched an excellent evangelist run a 90-minute training session on leading others to Christ. We both agreed that the session was terrific and we both agreed that we could not do what the evangelist had just done (and I say this as someone with ‘Evangelist’ on my business card). But I think we can all recognise the sentiment.

everyday evangelism

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 1 Dec 2021

When I train people in personal evangelism there are three questions I ask which always elicit the right wrong answers.

They are the right wrong answers because they are the ones I expect people to give. But they’re also the right wrong answers because, in their own way, they are correct. It’s just that you can be correct and wrong at the same time. Let me share the three questions and the answers they usually provoke:

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 1 Aug 2021

‘If I became a Christian, I would have to spend every waking moment trying to save others.’

The words came from an extremely intelligent student considering the call of Christ – let’s call him Phil. It was the last night of a university mission and Phil told me he was terrified of the gospel being true because if it was he couldn’t imagine how he could justify anything other than a life of unceasing evangelism from that day on.

everyday evangelism

Glen Scrivener

Date posted: 1 Jun 2021

On the Speak Life Podcast, Paul Feesey and I have been discussing the various scandals rocking the evangelical world — particularly those of Ravi Zacharias and Jonathan Fletcher.

While some have questioned our focus on these topics (when we’re meant to be inspiring evangelism), one listener had the opposite observation. Writing as a Buddhist he had some blistering criticisms of the evangelical church – a critique which I think is very worth considering.