It looks like evangelical leaders have begun pushing hard on personal evangelism as the way to save their religion from irrelevance. So today, let’s explore how personal evangelism works—and how to stymie its scripts.
(This post and its audio ‘cast first went live on Patreon on 6/23/2026. They’re both available there now. Please support my work—see the end of this writeup for options, and thank you for whatever you decide to do!)
SITUATION REPORT: Flocks advised to ‘Walk Worthy’ —so their personal evangelism is more effective
This year’s theme for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Annual Meeting was “Walk Worthy.” The phrase derives from Ephesians 4:1-6, in which Paul advises his followers “to walk in a manner worthy of the calling you have received.” In announcing the theme, the Biblical Recorder quotes departing SBC president Clint Pressley:
Pressley called Southern Baptists to be a witness across the city [Orlando, host of the Annual Meeting – CC] and hopes “that the people of Orlando will know there’s been a Christian at my restaurant. Why? Because we’re walking in a manner worthy of the Lord that is displayed in how we treat one another.”
But SBC leaders don’t want the flocks to “walk worthy” just for its own sake. They view a good witness, to use the Christianese, as part of what makes personal evangelism more effective.
“Witness” describes particular Christians’ overall credibility as evangelists. So in other words, acting like a decent human being becomes just part of the sales pitch. As Pressley explained in that Baptist Recorder post:
“It is our intent as Southern Baptist that we not only preach a gospel that saves people from hell and sends them to heaven, but it’s a gospel that shows up in our very lives, that you see it, that you feel it, that you hear it.”
This theme and its purpose tells us that this huge denomination is gearing up for another big push for personal evangelism, that type of person-to-person recruitment that the flocks have collectively never wanted to do. More than ever, evangelical leaders generally view personal evangelism as the only path forward out of endless decline. In the SBC in particular, denominational leaders push hard on personal evangelism and have for years. The pandemic distracted them for a while, but it looks like they’re circling back to that push.
Knowing that, let’s look at how personal evangelism works—and learn exactly why the flocks have tacitly decided it’s just not their thing. And then, as a treat, let me show you how to completely stymie the scripts that personal evangelists use.
Personal evangelism: a quick rundown
To understand personal evangelism, let me whisk through how it is supposed to work.
In Christianity, there’s large-scale evangelism, mission events, and personal evangelism. If you’ve heard of those massive arena-rock style evangelism tours from people like Billy Graham, those are the large-scale evangelism events. They’re huge spectacles headlined by the religion’s biggest professional names, and they often draw thousands of people to each performance. Mission events might be staffed by mostly volunteers, like the SBC’s Beach Reach events, but their focus is generally wide-scale.
By contrast, personal evangelism happens person-to-person, often between people who are at least acquainted somehow, and on an impromptu basis. Moreover, the evangelist is usually an amateur with minimal training in persuasion.
Remember, though, that the flocks don’t like personal evangelism. Almost none of them will ever try it on you. If a Christian starts one of these scripts on you, chances are good it’s happening because they got shamed or pushed into doing it. There’s only a small chance of encountering one of the rare birds in the religion who likes these sorts of confrontations.
Either way, personal evangelism as a process hinges on scripted dialogues. It’s rote, mechanical, and transactional: When you say X, they say Y, and so on. Almost always, the Christians doing it are working off of some specific scripted system taught to them by their pastor.
Today, we’ll be working off of a popular script system called Evangelism Explosion. They’ve been around a while, but I’m starting to see a lot of evangelical churches mentioning using their ideas.
The power struggle in personal evangelism
First and foremost, personal evangelists must establish themselves as authority figures to their targets. They must push themselves into a superior position. Indeed, salespeople can’t effectively sell from a position of weakness. They must not only embody the best-case results of their product, but also speak persuasively and authoritatively about it. In the case of evangelism in particular, these folks are asking their targets to change their entire lives around to meet the evangelist’s demands. So they’ve got to establish credibility right out of the gate.
However, they also need their targets to be a little nervous or rattled about death, so threats of Hell are big parts of any personal evangelism system. It’s the most hard-sales mindset imaginable!
That might be why the script from Evangelism Explosion begins with questions about the afterlife:
TWO KEY INTRODUCTORY QUESTIONS:
A. “IF YOU DIED TODAY, DO YOU KNOW YOU’D GO TO HEAVEN?” – If they answer “No”, then go
straight to the gospel presentation given below. If they answer “Yes” then you need to ask them a second question:
B. “IF YOU WERE TO DIE TODAY AND STAND BEFORE GOD AND HE WAS TO ASK YOU, ‘WHY
SHOULD I LET YOU INTO MY HEAVEN?’, WHAT WOULD YOU TELL GOD?”
As you can see, they’re expecting either a “yes” or “no” answer. This particular script literally has no suggestions for someone who doesn’t answer in one of these two ways.
Let’s Play: Evangelism Explosion’s personal evangelism script
Here’s what happened when I put its first question to Mr. Captain.
Me: If you died today, do you know you’d go to Heaven?
Mr. Captain: I think you’re trying to manipulate me. I think that’s disingenuous. What you’re really saying is, you want me to think that you care – so long as I reinforce your pretendy fun time games.
I have enough faith in you that I believe you, like every other human that has ever been and will ever be, can actually figure shit out on your own, and not pay lip service to ancient mythologies. There’s no monsters under your bed. No god beating his hammer when the storms come. You’re just a person, just like everyone else who has ever been. For all the good and bad that means, you’re 100% accountable for your own actions. I hope you do something worthwhile with that.
Me: Shit.
Mr. Captain: This is why nobody argues religion with me more than once.
And here’s the awesome part: You won’t easily find suggestions about dealing with someone like this, someone who just doesn’t cooperate!
The weak rebuttal to uncooperative targets
In the official Evangelism Explosion book by James Kennedy (1996, 4th edition), though, the author offers what has to be the most bees-headed retort I can possibly imagine:
“You don’t believe the Bible, John? That’s very interesting, and it certainly is your privilege not to believe it, and I would fight for that right on your part. However, if the Bible is true, then obviously you must accept the consequences. But I would like to ask you a question. The main message of the Bible, which has been unquestionably the most important literary work in human history, is how a person may have eternal life. So what I would like to know is, what do you understand that the Bible teaches about how a person may have eternal life and go to heaven?” [p. 150]
It’s beyond cringe. Just reading it made me scream internally in second-hand shame. But it’s canon as a response, so I asked Mr. Captain that.
He didn’t even let me get past “if the Bible is true.” He immediately retorted, “It isn’t, so we can stop there.”
I pushed forward for completeness’ sake. I got interrupted again at “the most important literary work in human history.” And again at “what the Bible teaches.”
So I’m not sure how an aspiring evangelist even manages to get through that wall of embarrassing prose.
Evangelism Explosion continues to push forward
And that’s before the even more cringey explanation after the evangelist finishes with the question:
In about 98 percent of the cases, the response will be that it is by keeping the Ten Commandments or following the Golden Rule or imitating the example of Christ, etc. You may then respond, “That is just what I was afraid of, John. You have rejected the Bible without even understanding its main message, for your answer is not only incorrect, it is diametrically opposite to what the Bible teaches. Now, don’t you think that the more intellectual approach would be to let me share with you what the Scriptures teach on this subject, and then you can make an intelligent decision whether to reject or accept it?” [p. 150]
This is a power play. And the source book actually understands this and explains how it works:
Now the tables have been completely turned. Instead of being superior to the Scriptures and above even listening to them, he now finds himself ignorant of even their basic message, and he must decide whether to listen to the message of the Scriptures or be found to be not only ignorant but also an obscurantist who desires to remain in his ignorance. This is the last thing in the world his intellectual pride will allow him to be; therefore, he will almost invariably give you permission to tell him the Gospel. [p. 150]
So in this evangelism system, the evangelist, James Kennedy in this case, must establish himself as superior to the target. In this encounter, the evangelist understands the Bible, while the target definitely doesn’t. So the evangelist seeks to shame the target into allowing the evangelist to patiently teach him what the Bible teaches. And then and only then, the evangelist will concede that the target can “make an intelligent decision” about accepting or rejecting it. (Spoiler: Evangelists don’t allow for any intelligent reasons to reject their product. Intelligent decisions allow for acceptance and obedience, nothing else.)
However, you might have noticed that Mr. Captain’s responses didn’t involve any of those “98 percent” answers. He didn’t play the reindeer game at all. He refuses to accept either the evangelist or the evangelist’s mythology book as an authority source for anyone else’s life.
A response like this shuts down the power play right out of the gate.
Personal evangelism is an abuse of the social contract, so treat it as such
Mr. Captain wasn’t worried about accusations of being “an obscurantist who desires to remain in his ignorance,” either, as well he shouldn’t be.
Don’t worry about salespeople accusing you of acting “superior to the Scriptures” or “above even listening to them,” as Kennedy put it. Evangelism Explosion is just a hard-sales system meant to move product, which is active participation in the evangelist’s own church/denomination.
Look at evangelism as a sales pitch that abuses social roles and expectations. That is all that it is. Whether the salesperson is your sister, a weirdo at work, or a random dad you see at your kids’ baseball games every week, they are still just trying to sell you something. The moment the question gets asked, they have already abandoned any other relationship you have with them. Now, they have become salespeople. You are now a mark. Your value to them has become monetary, in a sense.
This is why relationships get super awkward after personal evangelism attempts—and that in turn is why the flocks don’t like doing it. Anyone who values their relationships is very reluctant to endanger them this way. And they should be.
This endangerment is their problem, not yours. You might feel beholden to family, work friends, or long-term acquaintances. But you are not obligated to humor a salesperson. The opinion of salespeople should not ever matter to a potential customer. If a salesperson accuses you of being dumb or defective in some way, that only tells you that you are correct to reject him—and his product. As we see in this lovely scene from Out of Africa, the change wasn’t initiated by us, but by the person turning our relationship into a sales situation.
See, if James Kennedy had an actual good reason to accept his claims and adopt his religion, he’d have led with that. But he doesn’t. Instead, Evangelism Explosion is all about deliberate psychological manipulation and explicitly-laid-out power plays. As such, it’s a perfect example of personal evangelism—and an even better example of exactly why Christianity is in such a marked decline in America.
NEXT UP: Why Southern Baptists can’t “walk worthy.” See you soon! <3
Please support my work!
Thanks for reading, and thanks for being part of our community! Here are some ways you can support my work:
0 Comments