It can be tough for us to reach out to others. Especially when it comes to sharing the Gospel. The culprit for this fear is often said to be a sense of political correctness, it is assumed that sharing about one's faith will be seen as aggressive or pushy and therefore rude. I think though it is really a matter of not knowing enough about our faith to be comfortable sharing it. It is risky to put our faith and ourselves out there to be vulnerable to critique. It can be scary to think someone might ask you a question for which you have no answer. It can be terrifying to imagine our ineptitude might turn someone away from the faith forever.
This makes the assumption that we have to be experts to have an impact. The real question is experts in what? Do we all need to be experts in Biblical Studies, Theology, Psychology, and Public Speaking? No. Not at all, you can be terrible at all those and still reach out to people effectively. While I will certainly advocate that we learn more about our faith all the time, and that will make sharing about it more comfortable with more confidence in your own knowledge. Biblically though, that has never been a necessity. Moses stuttered, David had an affair, and Paul initially persecuted the church. To reach out to others we should be experts, of our own faith. You wouldn't recommend a book you never read, you wouldn't try to coach a sport you've never played, you wouldn't lead a discussion on a television show you've never watched. So to share our faith, we first have to live it out in love.
This makes the assumption that we have to be experts to have an impact. The real question is experts in what? Do we all need to be experts in Biblical Studies, Theology, Psychology, and Public Speaking? No. Not at all, you can be terrible at all those and still reach out to people effectively. While I will certainly advocate that we learn more about our faith all the time, and that will make sharing about it more comfortable with more confidence in your own knowledge. Biblically though, that has never been a necessity. Moses stuttered, David had an affair, and Paul initially persecuted the church. To reach out to others we should be experts, of our own faith. You wouldn't recommend a book you never read, you wouldn't try to coach a sport you've never played, you wouldn't lead a discussion on a television show you've never watched. So to share our faith, we first have to live it out in love.
"Granules many hands" by Tatiana Gorilovskaya - Lobkovs (the uploader). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Granules_many_hands.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Granules_many_hands.jpg
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