Teenagers can be a tough audience and sharing the gospel a tough subject. So how do you inspire a tough audience to engage in the tough stuff of evangelism?
As the leader of a ministry called Dare 2 Share, an organization that annually equips tens of thousands of teens to evangelize, I am in the motivation business. I have to be. If a clinical approach to evangelism were enough to motivate teenagers, we could just do a video-based training series for youth groups and leave it at that. But it takes way more to motivate teens to actually go beyond talking about evangelism to actually doing it.
Here are the five essentials I have discovered about motivating teenagers to share the gospel:
1. Reposition evangelism from being just another Christian duty to being the ultimate cause.
Jesus rebuked the religious grumblers and mumblers of his day with a crystal clear comeback: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” Luke 19:10. The driving mission of Jesus was a hands-on search and rescue mission for the lost, disenfranchised, too-evil-to-rescue sinners. Specifically in this passage, he was referring to Zacchaeus, the tax collector who was despised by the Jews and used by the Romans. But once this tree climbing traitor put his faith in Jesus, he gave half of his possessions to the poor and quadrupled payback for any social injustices he had committed.
Help your teens see Luke 19:1-10 as the key to eradicating poverty, stopping human trafficking and advancing social justice. The more we can lead people to Jesus, the more they can create change in their circle of influence. Stop separating social justice from evangelism (like I did for years) and view it as the real key to multiplying change makers across the planet.
2. Share a lot of stories.
The more stories of changed lives your teens hear, the more motivated they will be to evangelize. Stories can capture the hearts of teenagers in a way that mere lecture cannot. Maybe that’s why Jesus was such a prolific storyteller. He bypassed intellectual objections and went straight to the hearts of his hearers. But Jesus wasn’t the only storyteller in the New Testament.
When Paul and Barnabas were headed back to Jerusalem, they told stories of changed lives along the way: “The church sent them on their way, and as they traveled through Phoenicia and Samaria, they told how the Gentiles had been converted. This news made all the believers very glad. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them” (Acts 15:3,4).
Have teenagers share stories of those they are engaging with the gospel. Tie stories into your weekly talks. The more stories you share, the more inspired your teens will be to share their faith.
