Overcoming The Five Biggest Challenges in Evangelizing

1.   Not knowing what to focus on if not Christ

If you’d told me then that I was focused on the wrong thing, I’d have been shocked. Wasn’t the point to bring them to Christ?

The answer to this can be found in the Gospel of John Chapter 2 at the Wedding Feast at Cana. Watch as Mary effectively evangelizes the servants. She didn’t do this by focusing on Christ, but by focusing on the servant’s problems. She understood that those problems could be leveraged to lead them to Christ.

2.   Not knowing how to steer the conversation to Christ

I’m sorry to say that in the beginning of my efforts to evangelize, I was so eager to share Christ with them that I shoehorned him in to every conversation I had because I didn’t know a better way to steer the conversation to Him.

Again, Mary provides us the example to use. After listening to the servant’s problems, she assures them that Christ can help them solve that problem. And then she leads the way.

3.   Not knowing how to listen effectively to prospects.

As much as I thought I was focusing my efforts on Christ, when I look back at what I did, I realize that I approached evangelization too often with my own agenda firmly in mind. I knew what I wanted to achieve and I wasn’t listening to what they wanted or needed.

In 2016, when God first asked me to begin this ministry of teaching people to evangelize through entrepreneurship training, I threw a fit because it felt like God didn’t care about what I wanted. He wanted me to toss aside all my dreams to focus on His.

That afternoon, I went home and prayed the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary as I struggled to follow Christ’s example and surrender my will to the will of the Father. When it came to the fifth Sorrowful Mystery, I put myself in the shoes of St. Peter.

He’d given up everything to follow Christ and now was forced to watch as every dream he’d sacrificed to attain was dying on that cross. But, without that Good Friday agony of witnessing His dreams dying on the cross, he would never have gotten to experience the glory and the joy of the Resurrection three days later on that Sunday morning.

I knew the Lord was giving me an important lesson. Until I was ready to put my dreams to death in the service of other people’s dreams, I was going to be too focused on what I wanted to actually achieve it. People don’t want to be used. They need to know that you care about what they want and are committed to helping them achieve it to the point of being willing to put their dreams ahead of your own.

Mary put the dreams of those servants and the hopes of that young married couple ahead of her own. She made those dreams and those hopes as precious to her as if they were her own, and did for them what she would have wanted someone to do for her own.

That’s why, when Christ challenged her by saying, “it is not yet my time” and asking, “Woman, what is this to us?” – effectively letting her know that if He did this for her, it was going to change the time table of the crucifixion and move it up – she stood her ground for them. She was willing to sacrifice the extra time with her son on Earth in order to help them.

That’s the kind of heart that got them willing to open up to her and trust in her in the first place. They knew she truly cared.

4.   Being worried about losing credibility if I admitted I didn’t have all the answers.

Another thing that held me back during my early years of trying to evangelize was my concern that people would be less likely to listen to me if I admitted I didn’t have all the answers. I hesitated to admit to my messes because I was ashamed of them and the person I’d been before Christ came into my life.

Again, we can look to Mary for the example on this. She didn’t pretend to have all the answers or to be able to help them on her own power. She admitted that she had nothing she could do for them except to lead them to Christ.

Her willingness to be open and honest with them about her limitations didn’t stop them from trusting her. It showed them that she was just like them and so, when she said Christ could help them, they believed her and followed her to Christ.

She allowed them to see how Christ worked in her life which gave them hope He could work in theirs no matter how big their mess or how impossible their problem seemed to be.

5.   Not knowing how to L.E.A.D. the conversation

I was trying to lead people to Christ, but I didn’t know how to L.E.A.D. the conversation. Nobody’d taught me the strategies required to get people to open up and listen.

Over time, God taught me that effective leadership begins with taking the L.E.A.D. in every conversation:

Listening to understand what people’s dreams, desires, hopes, problems, concerns, worries, and fears happen to be.

Empathizing with their situation and taking these things to heart as if they were your own.

Asking relevant questions to be sure that you fully understand their circumstances, their challenges, and so you can assess what you have to offer that will help them most.

Discipling your prospects by showing them the way forward.

That’s the exact strategy Mary employed to get the servants to open up to her so she could show them the way to Christ. She became a trusted mentor for them, helping them achieve their dreams, relieve their fears, and solve their problems.

She won those souls for Christ without coming across as judgmental or preachy. That reduced the friction and the frustration involved in evangelizing for both parties.

Learn to Turn Problems into Prophets

Get more help with effective evangelization strategies by enrolling in our free, self-paced online course, Turning Problems into Prophets. You’ll be empowered to tap into the power of your problems – and your story – to win souls for Christ.

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