Sharing Christ at Gatherings with Family and Friends posted by Yuen Woh Voon on Dec 16, 2011

Gatherings are great opportunities to share your faith.  Depending on the group, you have a ready-made audience. When you share in this manner, your hearers do not feel threatened like you’re pressuring them.  They can enjoy safety in numbers. The problem is that you may be too frightened to speak to so many people!  It’s quite daunting but quite interesting as well.

Many years ago, when I resigned from secular work, my former colleagues gave me a farewell dinner. Inevitably, I was asked to make a speech. I started off by saying, “Thank you so much for honoring me with this dinner. You have been a great bunch of guys to work with.  Many of you have asked me why I am making this change of vocation.  For many years I did not know that anyone can know for certain that they could have eternal life. But now I do and I am sure of going to heaven when I die!  I am now going full-time to share with people how they can know for sure they can have eternal life. Let me share with you how I came to know I have eternal life and how you can know it too …”

After a speech like that, everybody is stunned!  

What follows is that some will try to change the subject and pretend those short moments never happened!  In our culture, people are polite so no one will stop your speech. But some will be affected .. and they will ask you privately to tell them more whether at that time or on another occasion.

Sometimes when I am asked what I do for a living, I just say that I help people find the way to Heaven.  This often provokes more questions and I can get into the gospel.   On other occasions I may just say that I’m an “Eternal Life Assurance Consultant.” All these type of responses open up interesting conversations.

I am prepared for these type of conversations to be merely sowing events. Often there is not enough relationship with all your hearers so they might just move on.  They say people need to hear the gospel on the average of seven times before they make a commitment. I’m glad to be able to contribute to one of those seven times.

Try this the next time you are with a group of people. You don’t have to be a pastor to set this off!  The “eternal life assurance consultant” line works well, whatever your occupation. In Malaysia, we have many people selling life insurance on a part-time basis and they often use a simliar angle to solicit clients.  “Happy Fishing!”