Where Do We Best Practice Evangelism?

A Facebook status went something like this:

"why is it so easy for me to talk about Jesus in America than in Germany?"

This was not the status of a frustrated former American colleague still fighting the good fight back in Freiburg. Rather, it was a German minister who my wife knew through an American Baptist church the old country. Another German, also in ministry, commented to suggest it was philology: some of the more "spiritual" words have negative connotations auf deutsch then they do in Yankee English. This may be true. But it is a German tradition to discuss in detail every possibility (even the most ridiculous - one of the few places we Americans are more efficient than our German friends is during a meeting. I was once in a meeting where no one was late - an important German value - but we spent a good twenty minutes discussing theoretical punishments for latecomers, dialecticly analyzing every contribution with no real conclusion. I'm sharing this because I find the example funny - not being a particularly efficient person, I did not mind, but I've already digressed...). Anyway, my hypothesis is that he found spiritual conversation easier in America for the very fact that he was foreign.

I say this, because I found it easier to talk about spiritual things in Germany. Yes, it is more of a taboo theme in continental Europe, but I found this to be freeing. Yes, part of my job meant, three to four days per week, sitting with German college students I had never met before to share the Gospel with them. I would try to bring a Gospel presentation into the first conversation. But the miry post-modernism forced any part of me that wanted to treat the Gospel like a sales-pitch to wither and be cut from the branch. (which suited me just fine)

My foreignness helped. The mere curiosity of why I was there (sometimes sprinkled with surprise that an American actually knew German) was an useful ice-breaker. I took advantage of the German willingness to at least consider all possibilities (my previous joking aside, I consider this an admirable trait), and it helped me even with those who had been trained by well-meaning humanists to believe my views were the basic cause of all human suffering.

In America, meanwhile, outside of a closer circle of friends, and especially with nonbelievers, I find it difficult to get past the superficial with anyone. I can do okay with what my father calls "news, sports and weather" conversations, but beyond that, it is simply difficult for me.

I agree, then, with one of my pastors, who himself moved to a foreign country to do ministry, that our biggest barrier to evangelism is the fear of alienation. Making your beliefs plain outside of sympathetic company will do this. Perhaps in Germany, I was a bit of an alien to begin with, and this fear was diffused. This is not, I should point out, a good excuse not to practice evangelism - Perfect Love ought to drive out all fears, and evangelism is both life giving and life saving.

This may not be true for everybody. And there could be other reasons why German evangelism came easier to me - such as my own personality or the fact that I was working for a missionary organization and it was my job to tell others about Jesus.

But often, I become nostalgic for those German nonbelievers, partial-believers, atheists, agnostics and others who spoke to me. It was not, of course, East Asia - there is much soil work to do before these seeds will grow. But our conversations moved from cafeterias to warm-glowing, smoky bars between satisfactory tastes of wheat beer, where the Gospel was proclaimed, discussed, analyzed and considered.