Personal Evangelisation Styles

Personal Evangelisation Styles

Willow Creek, is a huge church in Illinois, which under the leadership of its senior pastor Bill Hybels, has geared the whole church life and ministry to reaching out and evangelising. In the process they have produced a huge range of resources and materials to help individuals and churches grow in their evangelising

potential. Information on these can be downloaded from their web site www.willowcreek.com. One of their particular insights is that people have different styles of evangelising according to their personalities. To help people discover what their style is they have produced a simple questionnaire of 36 questions.

Although people are of course a mixture, they identify six basic styles linking these to various biblical characters. These are the confrontational style, the intellectual style, the testimonial style, the interpersonal style, the invitational style and the serving style.

1. PETER is used as the prime example of the confrontational style. These are people who are bold and direct and who have strong opinions and convictions and bring people to faith by challenging them as Peter did in Acts 2 when he confronted people with their killing of Jesus. They responded by asking what they should do. He told them to repent and be baptised and 3000 were added to their number that day.

2. PAUL is used as the model of the intellectual style. These are people who like to debate and evangelise through rational presentation and discussion as Paul did in Acts 17 when he spoke to the Athenians about the unknown God they already worshipped.

3. THE BLIND MAN in John 9 is the biblical example of the testimonial style. These are people who are very conscious as to how God has touched them and can see how their own personal experiences of God might touch and inspire others in their journey of faith.

4. MATTHEW in Luke 5 is the example of the interpersonal style. He is the someone who once he has been evangelised invited Jesus home to meet all his friends. The interpersonal style suits someone who is very friendship oriented and they evangelise primarily through personal relationship.

5. THE WOMAN AT THE WELL in John 4 is an example of the invitational style of evangelisation. She persuades her fellow Samaritan villagers to come to hear Jesus after he has evangelised her. This style suits people who are very persuasive and hospitable and see their role as bringing others to people or events where they will hear the message of the gospel.

6. DORCAS in Acts 9 is the biblical example of the serving style. These people show love through action more than words and are very other centred, touching people through their love and service.

Whatever style is natural to you, there is a downside to be aware of: for example the debater sometimes can be more concerned to win the argument than the person while the one who serves might neglect to explain the motivation behind his or her serving. The Willow Creek teaching material highlights the difficulties each personality type might face and gives pointers to look out for.

John Vaughan-Neil, the author of Sons and Daughters of the Living God, who has a heart for equipping the Catholic Church in evangelisation, has incorporated this Willow Creek material and other teaching used by the parish cell system developed at St Boniface's in Florida and St Eustongio in Milan, together with some of his own experience and insights, to produce a highly effective teaching day on evangelisation for parishes and groups, who want to learn how they can bring the gospel to those around them.

Those wishing to find out more about the Willow Creek material should contact Willow Creek Association UK, PO Box 966, Southampton SO 15 2WT tel 0845 1300 909 or fax 02380 829765.

The material mentioned above comes from the Willow Creek Community Church's Evangelism Course by Mark Mittieberg, Lee Strobel and Bill Hybels published by Zondervan under the title "Becoming a Contagious Christian" (Leaders' manual ISBN 0-310-50081-8 and participants manual ISBN 0-310-50101-6 )