Making a Hard Job Easier

I have a confession to make: evangelism is hard for me.

Surprising for a person in my shoes, I suspect. I have spent nearly half a century defending Christianity, making the case that the smart money is on Jesus—frequently one on one, often before university audiences, sometimes on television and radio, and regularly opposed by hostile witnesses.

Nevertheless, there it is. Evangelism is a challenge. I have friends who relish gospel engagements as the sweetest activity of their lives. I’m glad for them, but that is not me. I do a good bit of evangelism, but it still makes me uncomfortable, and I suspect I’m not alone. You may be much like me.

There are few things that cause more nagging guilt for Christians than sharing their faith. They feel guilt because they don’t witness enough. They don’t witness enough because they’re scared. And they’re scared for good reason. Sharing the gospel and defending it—apologetics—often feels like navigating a minefield these days. For most of us, engaging others on spiritual matters does not come easy, especially when people are hostile.

It’s one of the reasons we often stay off “the street,” so to speak, when it comes to spiritual matters. We avoid environments where we don’t feel safe. Most of us wouldn’t wander into the local atheist club meeting or mingle with the marchers in an LGBTQ parade. It’s too scary. We simply don’t know how to handle ourselves.

If that’s you, take comfort. Not only is there a clear path through those minefields (more on that in a moment), but I want you to know your apprehension is understandable. Would it surprise you that the great apostle Paul shared your trepidation? Listen to this: “And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, ‘Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.’”1

Would it surprise you to know that when Jesus sent his disciples out on their first short-term missions trip, he told them “Do not fear” three times inside of seven sentences?2 Why did he do this? Because Jesus understood there were reasons to be anxious. He understood the obstacles. He wasn’t chastising his followers. He was encouraging them.

Confrontations awaited them, no question, but Jesus said they shouldn’t worry about how they would respond when trapped in a tight spot. Yes, they’d face daunting obstacles, Jesus admitted, but they had a reliable ally—the Holy Spirit.3

Good advice, to be sure, but easily misunderstood since there was another detail many miss about the disciples’ situation. Jesus gave this assurance not at the beginning of his ministry but well into it. When he first called Simon and Andrew, for example, he made a different kind of promise: “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”4

Yes, the Spirit would be with them, helping them, speaking through them in the tough times. Still, there was something else the disciples needed. There was work to be done before these novices could cast their nets for the kingdom. Jesus was going to train them. He was going to instruct them, equip them, prepare them. He would put them through their paces in private so they’d be ready to face the heat when they encountered it on the street.

That is the rationale behind Street Smarts. Following Jesus’ example—and with God’s help—I want to teach you how to be more effective “fishers of men” by equipping you in a specific way to address the challenges to your Christian convictions that you face.

Where Is the Street?

In general, “the street” is anywhere you feel vulnerable, out of your element, exposed to danger. Opposition lurks in the shadows, so you stay safely in the light, keeping your distance from threats you don’t think you can handle. There is wisdom in this approach, of course, when navigating perilous physical environments.

What we sometimes forget as Christians, though, is that in the spiritual arena, we are the light that’s meant to penetrate the darkness. Yet we hesitate. Like the Hebrew spies of old encountering giants in the land of promise, we’ve become “like grasshoppers in our own sight.”5 The challenges seem bigger than they are, and we seem smaller.

A word about those giants. The giants are real, but they’re not as big as you think.

I want you to consider something that intimidates many Christians yet actually works in favor of Christianity in a way believers do not realize: when you think about it, there are many ways to show Christianity to be false.

I’m sure that’s something you did not expect me to say, but it’s true. For example, our story starts, “In the beginning God. . . .” If there is no God, though, then there is no story. End of issue.

Christians are disciples of Jesus. If Jesus never existed—or was not anything like the man we discover in the ancient historical records known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—then our project never gets off the ground.

If there is no soul that survives the death of our physical bodies, when we perish we stay in the ground. No one goes to heaven or hell, so what’s the point of the so-called good news? And if right and wrong are merely matters of personal opinion, as moral relativists suppose, there can be no real sin—nor the personal guilt that goes with it—so judgment in a place like hell makes no sense, anyway.

The resurrection is another point of exposure. Even Paul admits that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead—if we are trusting in a Christ who turned to dust in the grave—then people should feel sorry for us. “We are of all men most to be pitied,” he says bluntly.6

These challenges—and there are more like them frequently encountered on the street—are certain routes to Christianity’s demise if they succeed. They represent what might be called the “soft underbelly” of Christianity. They are convictions we hold that make us vulnerable because, at least in principle, they could be mistaken. Another way of saying this is that Christianity is falsifiable.

As daunting as that may sound, think of this. The possibility that Christianity can be debunked—disproved, discredited, and invalidated—is not a bad thing. Oddly enough, it’s a good thing. If a view is falsifiable—able to be shown to be false—then it is verifiable—able to be shown to be true.

And that’s exactly what Christians can do. Simply put, those challenges don’t destroy Christianity, for a good reason. Those challenges don’t succeed. Quite the contrary, we have the evidence and we have the answers, answers you will find in this book. Street Smarts will give you the tools you need to face and defeat those ideological strongholds raised up against the knowledge of God.7

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Order your copy of Street Smarts: Using Questions to Answer Christianity’s Toughest Challenges by Gregory Koukl