I often make the point on this blog that evangelism can be seriously carried out, albeit in personal and very direct ways, without making non-Christians angry or hostile because of the way we share our faith. There is a an offense to the gospel, I am well aware. But often the offense is more in our approach than in our message. A recent You Tube post by cable television's Penn Jillette demonstrates this point very well. Watch this five minute video and you will see how Penn Jillette describes his encounter with a “good” Christian who personally gave him a New Testament as a point of direct witness. You will also see how much this unbeliever actually respects Christians who sincerely want to convert him.
Penn Jillette (b. 1955) is an illusionist, comedian, writer and juggler. He has appeared in several movies, often makes wild allusions to sexual pleasure a part of his programming, and has had a feature on NBC-TV at one point in the past.
Jillette presently has a featured show, Penn & Teller: Bullshit, that appears on Showtime. Jillette, and his partner, Raymond Joseph Teller, analyze cultural phenomena, debunk myths and criticize people and aspects of society that he and his partner call "bullshit," thus the name of their program. Jillette is a libertarian who praises Ayn Rand's writings and is an avowed atheist. All of this only makes this video all the more instructive to us as Christians.
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John,
I don’t know if you see these in Chicago, but Southwest Airlines has a clever series of TV commercials where people find themselves in extremely embarrassing, uncomfortable, or self-inflicted foot-in-the-mouth situations. The narrator then asks, “Wanna get away?”, a vacation via Southwest taking them as far away as possible.
One ad portrays an excited couple invited over for dinner by some neighbors, only to be confronted with an easel outlining a network marketing scheme. Every time I see this ad, I can’t help but think of the multitude of evangelism techniques I’ve heard or been taught. Wanna get away? Yeah, I guess so.