Sharing

Do you think, pray, talk (not eat, pray, love) about sharing your faith or sharing the gospel?

Or something else? Or neither?

For myself and in encouraging and equipping others in evangelism, I have realised recently that I tend to think, pray and talk about sharing our faith.

Is there a difference between sharing our faith and sharing the gospel?

Sharing our faith comes from being a witness (Acts 1 v 8), sharing our experiences of what we have seen and heard (Acts 4 v 20), our story of life with faith in Jesus.  It is biblical and valid in our ‘all stories are equal’ world.

Sharing the gospel sounds less ‘preachy’ than proclaiming or preaching the gospel and more user friendly even than telling someone the gospel.  It is biblical (2 Tim 4 v 2) and valid in a world that has such need (Romans 3 v 23).

It is important to think about the language we use: “Language is the road map of a culture” (Rita Ma Brown).  We might think something, believe something but how we talk about it is likely to reveal what we are actually going to do in everyday life with it (which is where our culture comes in).

So, what do you think saying sharing your faith or sharing the gospel says about you?

It is as with so many things not as clear cut as either / or.

I think, pray, talk about sharing my faith in some way first in most situations (telling my story) but always aim to go onto sharing the gospel (telling God’s story) at some point in the conversation or in the future as part of an ongoing relationship.

So, what should we talk about – sharing faith or sharing the gospel?

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