Evangelism is not as hard as you think, says Alpha

Evangelism is not just a job for the Bishop Robert Barrons of the world.

Alpha Canada wants to spread the word that sharing the Gospel belongs in the hands of every Christian, no matter how well-spoken they are or how many classes in theology they have taken.

“We want to ‘democratize’ evangelism again,” said director Shaila Visser ahead of the July 26 launch of Alpha’s new Life.Shared campaign. The new effort aims at encouraging all Christians to evangelize rather than leaving it up to an elite, well-spoken few.

“A culture of invitation needs to happen in a local parish to get lay people engaged in mission,” said Visser. “We’ve tried to tackle that.”

Jon Bryars, Alpha’s marketing and communications lead, said evangelism can be a particularly unpopular word in Canada’s “post-Christian” culture. “People have a preconceived idea. They believe they have tasted and seen that the Lord is bad. What that means is potential hostility when raising your faith.”

Christians, fearing negative reactions, can easily adopt a habit of leaving evangelism to preachers and theologians. But that isn’t how the Gospel was spread in the early Church, and it isn’t the only way it can be spread now, said Bryars.

“The question becomes: how do we get more people to experience the life of the Church?”

The answer, according to Alpha, is to empower Christians to get to know their neighbours at home, work, and the office, and invite those interested to a deeper encounter with Jesus.

The new campaign (which includes high-quality videos and small group discussion questions) encourages Christians to give evangelism a chance and consider small lifestyle changes to make themselves available to share life with those around them.

Bryars said that could start with getting to know the names of neighbours, and lead to inviting them over for a meal, to church on a Sunday, or to a local Bible study.

“Not all of us can articulate in a wonderful way, but all of us can invite, all of us can love, and all of us can bring them into the context of the church,” he said. That’s putting evangelism “in the hands of the majority again.”

In Canada last fall, 40,000 people who had never heard the Gospel or who had abandoned their faith participated in Alpha’s 11-week programs. The series involves offering free meals, introductory videos on faith and the meaning of life, and plenty of room for conversation.

Eighty per cent of those guests came because someone personally invited them. For Bryars, that illustrates the power of a personal invitation and the need for Christians to feel comfortable enough to share their lives and talk about faith with their co-workers, friends, and neighbours.

“We’re not setting the bar really high, like, ‘here are the 25 things you need to do,’” said Bryars.

Life.Shared is about asking: “what does it mean that God is already at work and we get to join in it? What does it mean that God wants to use you, not once you’ve got it together, but you today, and empower you by his Holy Spirit? What are some practical ways you can open up a conversation about faith and ultimately create space for invitation?”

When Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, announced in 2016 that one of his priorities for the Archdiocese of Vancouver was to help people “Get Closer to Jesus,” he singled out Alpha and Catholic Christian Outreach’s Discovery as two “proven evangelization programs” and urged Catholic parishes to use them.

Putting evangelism in the hands of all Christians is also a priority for Pope Francis: “The missionary mandate touches us personally: I am a mission, always; you are a mission, always; every baptized man and woman is a mission,” he wrote this June.

“As far as God’s love is concerned, no one is useless or insignificant. Each of us is a mission to the world, for each of us is the fruit of God’s love.”