Global Outreach Day: Gospel to Be Shared in Over 200 Countries on May 21
A real danger when it comes to wrongly approaching evangelism in the Western world, Mikalatos says, is focusing on getting people to agree rather than building authentic relationships and really connecting them with Jesus.
"There also can be a feeling you are alone, and that 'no one else' is sharing Christ," Cru's city director reflected.
"That's one of the great things about Global Outreach Day — the idea that followers of Jesus are coming together on one day to say, 'Let's do this together.' You can talk about Jesus with your neighbor and know that someone is doing the same thing, the same day, on the West Coast, East Coast, and maybe even down the street. It's a great reminder of the enormity of the body of Christ," he added.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Mikalatos insisted that believers do not need a seminary degree to answer all the questions people might come up with.
"Jesus called us to be His 'witnesses'… people who share what they have seen, heard, touched and experienced. If you know Jesus, you're a witness of Him, and sharing your own experience doesn't require more learning, just more vulnerability and more boldness."
With as many as 2,400 campus ministries and 82,000 involved students in U.S. college campuses, Cru has observed big changes in evangelism over the past years and decades take place.
"When Cru was founded the idea of absolute truth was a cultural norm, and we could start 'The Four Spiritual Laws' with comments like 'Just as there are physical laws in the universe, so there are spiritual laws,' and that made a lot of sense to people," Mikalatos continued.
"What we're seeing now is a greater reliance on personal truth, as well as finding truth. Obviously the difficulty there is when Jesus says 'no one comes to the Father except through me.' But the beautiful opportunity is that people believe they can find truth, and they're open to discussing what you've discovered if you're willing to listen to them, too," he added.
He noted that that's been one of the biggest shifts in recent years, and said that evangelism needs to be more of a conversation than a presentation. He pointed to an important tool on the Cru website, found at http://cru.org/goday, which offers an app called Soularium, where Christians show people pictures on their phone or tablet and ask them questions like, "Which of these pictures best represents your relationship with God?" and "Which one would you like to represent that relationship?"
"It allows the person you're talking with to really go deep and share honestly with you," Mikalatos said.
"Obviously, the way people interact with technology has changed a lot, and now there are many ways to use that as a tool. There are apps like the Jesus Film Media, which enables you to share Christ in nearly every language in the world. That is absolutely astounding and would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. A friend of mine shared Christ with someone who spoke no English on a flight a few weeks ago. That's amazing," he said.
As for advice for how Christians who are unsure about talking with others can speak out on Global Outreach Day, Mikalatos told believers that they can talk about their own faith, and start out with something like, "My spiritual life is important to me and has really changed things in my life, would you want to get together sometime to talk about that?"
"If they say yes, you know going in that your loved one is ready for the conversation and interested. That's a more comfortable place to be for sure," he said.
"A question I like to ask myself is, 'What is good news for this person?' The Gospel is good news for everyone, but what specifically about it is good news for the person I'm talking to?" Mikalatos added.
"So, for instance, I have a friend whose father had died. She was an atheist, but she was asking a lot of questions about death and the afterlife, and she loved her dad a lot. When she asked me, 'Matt, if there's a God, what is he like?' I asked myself, 'What would be good news for my friend?' That led me to start with this: 'God is a Father God, and he loves you and wants good things for your life, just like your dad did.' It was the start of a great conversation, because our entry point to the Gospel was recognizable as good news to her."
Cru offers more advice, tips and strategies for engaging with people on its website, while the Global Outreach Day site has further resources and ways to get involved on Saturday.
