Evangelism Friendship
Friendship Evangelism (FE) is the idea that before you can share the gospel with someone you need to establish a ‘meaningful’ friendship with them1. It’s worth taking a careful look at this definition, because notice it is not the same as Friendly Evangelism, nor in fact is it about evangelising your friends, or becoming friends with people as you evangelise them. No - it’s actually a negative statement about the fact that you can’t or shouldn’t evangelise people who aren’t your friends. Proponents of FE will say things like,
“You must ‘earn the right’ to share the gospel with people.”
Or, “Friendship evangelism is learning to build trustful relationships with unchurched persons in the context of secular life, and then listening and watching with patience and caring for situations in which they show openness for God.”2
Or, “Everything begins with coffee—including evangelism... And if we are good at listening and earn enough trust while talking about interests, eventually we’ll be ready to move the conversation to the next layer.”3
At first these statements might sound very intuitive and natural and good, but in the end we must reject FE for various reasons. Let me outline four.
First, FE flies in the face of the evangelistic methods used by Jesus and his apostles. For the most part they evangelised strangers – whether in private conversation (John 4) or in large crowds (John 6). There is not a single instance in the bible where we read of anyone holding off on evangelism until they have established a friendship. Paul did not arrive in Athens, settle down, take a couple of Athenians out for coffee to talk about the football, before attempting to breach the next layer of conversation. Moreover, the apostles don’t seem to have spent any time praying for specific people to be saved, instead they pray for boldness to share the gospel with everyone (Acts 4:29).
Secondly, it downplays the supernatural realities involved in evangelism – both the blindness of our unbelieving friends and the power of the gospel to enlighten strangers. Jesus expects family members to turn on those who believe his gospel (Matthew 10:34-39) rather than to respect them and find their new beliefs ‘more plausible’ because of their close relationship. Jesus’ own family certainly didn’t (Mark 3:21, John 7:5). In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul explains how and why evangelism is effective (or not), and it has nothing to do with the level of friendship established by the evangelist. It comes down to the fact that “the god of this world (aka the Devil) has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” but that in the case of his elect, God does a work of new creation in their hearts akin to when he said “Let light shine out of darkness” in the beginning!
Thirdly, FE disincentivises evangelism. After all, how many meaningful relationships can one really expect to establish and maintain – 3, maybe 4? If all your friends become Christians, you’ll either have to stop evangelising, or cut a friend to make space for more!
And finally, FE is not real friendship. Reflecting on church, Broughton Knox writes, “Personal fellowship is an end in itself, not merely a means to some other objective, and is a good thing in its own right. In fact, it is very distasteful when people, under cover of friendship and fellowship, have some other ulterior objective which they are driving at and hope to attain, so that for this purpose they cultivate a friendship or fellowship. We instinctively recognize the obnoxiousness of this use of fellowship.”4 This is no less the case when the goal we are driving at is evangelism. We ought to be upfront and honest about our motives and methods.
To summarise then, the problem with FE is that in the end it destroys both Friendship and Evangelism. Because it gets Friendship and Evangelism the wrong way around. True friendship does not aim at evangelism; evangelism aims at friendship – friendship with God and with his people. Instead of FE then, perhaps what we really need is EF - Evangelism Friendship! Evangelism that is friendly of course – because we long for people to become our friends. Evangelism that adorns the message we preach with loving and kind behaviour – like taking people out for coffee or inviting them over for dinner. Evangelism that is earnest and sincere from the very beginning. Evangelism that is hopeful – that recognises that any of our relationships - with our classmates, teammates, neighbours, could become true and eternal friendships by the power of the gospel.
1 https://www.gotquestions.org/friendship-evangelism.html
2 Sahlin, Monte. Ministry: International Journal for Pastors. September 1993.
3 Chan, Sam. How to Talk about Jesus (Without Being That Guy) (p. 37). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
4 Knox, D. Broughton. Selected Works Volume II, Church and Ministry. Ed. Kirsten Birkett. 247.