(Post by: Lilly Hobbs)
If you had thirty seconds to convince someone to become a Christian, what would you say?
Perhaps you would tell them that Jesus loves them, that God has a plan for their life, that Christianity gives us purpose and meaning, or that they don’t have to walk through life alone.
Obviously, those things are good and true. In fact, they are some of the most beautiful truths of Christianity.
However, I wonder what takes place when they become the entirety of our sales pitch.
Somewhere along the way, Christians have become very good at presenting the most attractive parts of Christianity while quietly leaving out the parts that might make someone uncomfortable.
We want people to know that Jesus loves them, but we are a lot less eager to tell them that Jesus is Lord. We want to talk about grace, but not enough about repentance. We want to talk about purpose, but forget to bring up obedience. We want to talk about God’s blessings, but never about suffering. We want to talk about belonging, but not about sacrifice. We want to talk about heaven, but not hell.
And perhaps the problem is that we have started treating Christianity like a product that needs to be marketed instead of a truth that needs to be proclaimed.
Think about the way we sell almost anything. We highlight the benefits, show you the best features, make the experience look appealing, and conveniently leave the less attractive details somewhere in the fine print. We have, at times, done something remarkably similar with Christianity. We create the highlight reel: Come find community. Come experience peace. Come discover who you were created to be.
While none of those statements are false, Christianity is not a product, and Jesus never asked His disciples to create the most marketable version of the Christian life. He told them to make disciples. There is a significant difference between selling someone on Christianity and calling someone to follow Christ.
A disciple doesn’t simply add Jesus to their life. A disciple gives their life to Jesus.
That is a much harder message to put on a billboard.
Jesus Himself never seemed particularly interested in making sure everyone liked what He had to say. He was compassionate and gracious. He welcomed sinners, ate with people others rejected, and showed incredible mercy. But He also said things that were incredibly difficult to hear. In John 6, a multitude of people were following Him until He gave them a teaching they couldn’t accept. Many of them decided to walk away.
Jesus didn’t chase after them with a revised version of His message. He didn’t say, “Wait, I didn’t mean it like that. Let me make that a little easier to swallow.” Instead, He turned to His disciples and asked if they wanted to leave too. Peter’s response is one of the most telling responses in Scripture: “Lord, to whom shall we go?”
When it comes to evangelism, I think we have confused being winsome with being palatable. Christians should absolutely be winsome. We should be kind, gracious, patient, and loving. We should speak the truth in love, and we should never go looking for opportunities to offend people. Being winsome is about how we communicate the truth, not whether the truth makes people uncomfortable.
The Gospel should make us uncomfortable before it comforts us. It reveals to us that we are sinners and that we cannot save ourselves. It tells us that we need a Savior, and that Jesus is not simply someone we can admire when His teachings fit our lives; He is Lord, and following Him requires surrender.
And somehow, in the middle of all of that uncomfortable truth, comes the most beautiful news imaginable: God made a way for sinners to be reconciled to Him.
Grace is incredible because sin is serious. The cross is beautiful because our need for it is so real. Forgiveness is good news because there is actually something we need forgiven from. If we remove the uncomfortable parts of the Gospel, we don’t make the good news better.
We actually make it meaningless.
So, what is your sales pitch?
What do you tell people Christianity is? Is it a way to make your life better? A source of encouragement? A community? A moral framework? A way to find purpose? Those things can certainly be found in the Christian life, but they aren’t the point.
Jesus is the point.
Maybe the better question isn’t whether our Christianity is attractive enough. Maybe we should ask whether we have made it honest enough.
What have we left out because we are afraid someone might walk away? Repentance? Holiness? Sacrifice? Submission? Suffering? Obedience? The authority of Scripture? The reality of sin? The Lordship of Christ?
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: Jesus never promised that everyone would accept the invitation. Our job isn’t to make the Gospel impossible to reject. Our job is to faithfully proclaim it.
We don’t need a better sales pitch. We need a more faithful and honest one.
And perhaps the most compelling thing we can offer a watching world isn’t a Christianity that has been carefully edited to fit their preferences.
Maybe it is a Christianity we are actually willing to live out when it costs us something.
The Few 