Friendship Evangelism
28/09/2007 9:00 am <>
I wonder how many of you have attended a church service where the speaker asked how many of you came to know Christ through friends, and seen a large number of hands raised. I became a Christian because my friends shared the Gospel with me.
What struck me again as I returned to Taiwan last year as a new worker was the friendliness of the Taiwanese people. This is a culture where relationships are central to everything. At our recent annual conference, as I listened to my colleagues’ stories of how Christ is working, I was reminded of the importance of building good friendships among the Taiwanese. Through friendships comes openness and willingness to listen and respond to the Gospel message.
Giving your time, your willingness to listen, care, love and accept each person are the factors that contribute to building friendships of trust where Jesus can be shared and observed in our lives. In Taiwan, religion is very practical. People want to see what difference a faith in Christ makes in our lives in good times and bad. We need to take care that our friendships are genuine, and not driven by an agenda to make every opportunity evangelistic.
While being a ‘foreigner’ here is not always easy, it also generates curiosity and often leads to questions about where are we from, and why have we come to Taiwan. The desire to build friendships with Taiwanese has certainly been a strong motivating factor in my language study. Local people are often quite happy to chat with you, but you never know how long their business will continue. One week you can be talking with a local restaurant owner and the next week he is gone, and you see a ‘for rent’ sign up.
Over the summer I participated in a Taiwanese Village Gospel Mission’s (VGM) Bilingual Summer Camp. It was a good opportunity to befriend the students and share about the Lord. Many of us were also able to visit the families of some of the students.
Another special encouragement was an opportunity the Lord gave me on a bus journey to Kaohsiung last Christmas Eve. The Taiwanese lady who sat next to me had spent a year studying for a teaching English qualification at a university in my home country! She was just returning to Kaohsiung from spending time with her family for the winter solstice. Her English was so good that we were able to discuss her time at an English university and why I had come to Taiwan. I was also able to share what Christmas means to me.
The daily challenge here is prayerfully to look for opportunities to be bold and make committed friendships. I look forward to seeing what the Lord will do in the lives of my friends this next year!
Melanie Bister – Taichung
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