Sharing the Gospel with Friends and Family

On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses how to share the gospel with the people closest to you—your friends and family—without becoming “that” annoying Christian voice they avoid. Jeff unpacks how to be fully engaged, patient over the long haul, sensitive to timing, and joyfully contagious so that ongoing relationships become natural avenues for meaningful gospel conversations.

Creators and Guests

Host

Jeff Iorg

President, SBC Executive Committee

What is Lead On Podcast?

Ready to hone your leadership skills and unlock your full potential? Tune in to the Lead On Podcast, where Jeff Iorg dives deep into Biblical leadership.

Hosted by SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg, this dynamic podcast provides insight for seasoned executives, aspiring leaders, or those in ministry who are simply passionate about personal growth. The Lead On Podcast offers actionable, practical tips to help you navigate the complexities of ministry leadership in today's ever-changing world.

From effective communication and team building to strategic decision-making and fostering innovation, each episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspiring stories to empower you on your leadership journey.

Put these principles into practice and Lead On!

Jeff Iorg: 00:55

Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, continuing our conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Today, I wanna talk with you about sharing the gospel with your friends and family members. Now, know that we often talk about gospel sharing in terms of, being a part of an evangelism program or an evangelism project, or we talk about sharing the gospel with people that we might meet on airplanes or in our communities. People even that we might go out and visit as a part of a church visitation program.

Jeff Iorg: 01:31

And all of that is important and all of it has its place. But today, I want to focus on sharing the gospel with family and friends, meaning that you share the gospel with people that you know, people that you're around all the time, people that you're going to see frequently, people that you work with, go to school with, people that maybe even live in your house. How do you share the gospel with them? Let's be blunt, without becoming the annoying person who's always talking about Jesus in ways that are perhaps more offensive than they are helpful? It does require spiritual wisdom and discernment along with some practical skill to know how to carry on gospel conversations in the context of continuing relationships, particularly in the context of continuing relationships when people may not be responsive to the gospel immediately, but the relationship you have with them is going

Jeff Iorg: 02:34

to go on for quite some time. I'm talking,

Jeff Iorg: 02:38

of course, about things like I went through when I was living and sharing the gospel with my mom. I became a Christian when I was about 12, 13 years old, just at that month when I was having my birthday and becoming 13. And, for the next twenty five years, I I was a Christian and had a really warm and meaningful relationship with my mother. But during that time, she never really identified as a Christian and did not participate in church or anything like that. Of course, then my mother did become a Christian, was baptized, joined a Baptist church, and, the last years of our lives were very different in that way.

Jeff Iorg: 03:16

But during those many years when she wasn't a Christian, I had a responsibility to live the gospel before her, to share the gospel with her in appropriate ways, and to carry on sort of a prolonged, meaningful gospel witness over really what was me for me longer than two decades.

Jeff Iorg: 03:34

So that's what I'm talking about today. How do

Jeff Iorg: 03:36

you share the gospel in those contexts when you're sharing the gospel with family and friends, people you have an ongoing relationship with, people you may have a relationship with over a long period of time, and you're in relationship in such a way that you really can't talk about the gospel every time you see them because you're going to see them every day or every few days, you want to be a good gospel witness, not an annoying person who's more focused on proselytizing someone than you are on the relationship.

Jeff Iorg: 04:06

So today I want to talk about those kinds of witnessing relationships. In these relationships, it's really about the relationship, about

Jeff Iorg: 04:18

recognizing that that's sort of the centerpiece of what has to be managed as, as a part of sharing the gospel. And so we'll keep that in mind as we move along. Now foundational to this kind of missional lifestyle, this kind of missional sharing is the perspective that you are a deployed Christian, not just dispersed in your community or in your family. You know, when some Christians are away from church or Christian community, they find they feel dispersed. They they feel like they've been scattered out among lost people, and they they wanna keep those relationships casual.

Jeff Iorg: 05:00

They wanna avoid any contamination with worldly behavior, worldly people. And and these Christians are are overly concerned really about being tainted by worldly behavior or worldliness, and they're too insecure to maintain their convictions while interfacing with unbelievers, particularly in close relationships with family and friends. They really want to try to to keep a distance, if you will, in those contexts, but

Jeff Iorg: 05:25

that's really not what I'm talking about today. I'm not talking about considering yourself dispersed. I'm talking about considering yourself deployed, meaning that in your family and in your circle of influence and among your friends, you've been sent on mission by God, and you're sent there for the purpose of modeling and sharing the gospel in meaningful ways. Now, this means that as a missional Christian, you're on mission all the time.

Jeff Iorg: 06:02

Now you may still recognize your your Christian friends and your church as your home base and and you're certainly very comfortable when you're with them, but you also recognize that when you're with your family and unbelieving friends that you are deployed there, that you're sent there on mission. You know, when a military unit is sent into combat, they don't wander around looking for something interesting to see or to do. No, they're on mission. They're usually on a narrowly defined mission and they're there to get specific results. They're deployed, they're not dispersed, they're sent on a mission, they're

Jeff Iorg: 06:34

not scattered to the winds. When they ship out,

Jeff Iorg: 06:37

so to speak, they go there to accomplish a purpose and they return home only when that purpose has been accomplished. So as a deployed Christian, I want you to have a similar mindset. I want you to see that when you are away from the safety and comfort of your Christian community, when you're among your unsaved community of family and friends, people that you live and work among, that you're responsible to be there with the gospel and to find ways and to create ways to share the gospel in those contexts. Now, sometimes Christians think of their daily life as being separated from their Christian life or their spiritual life. But when you're deployed, you see all of life as an opportunity for mission and all the people around you as persons that you can share the gospel with

Jeff Iorg: 07:26

as a possible result of your missional living. Now, there aren't two separate spheres of life. There's not your Christian world or your Christian life and your real world or your real life. There's just one.

Jeff Iorg: 07:43

And here here's what I mean. Consider this scenario. You you you go to a church and and you accept a visitation assignment from your church. The pastor says, there's been some families visiting our church and I need someone to go and make a follow-up visit with them, and you agree to do that. You go to the home of this family who, has, been to your church or who's had someone come by your church and connect with you them in some way.

Jeff Iorg: 08:07

You enter the house, you greet the man, and then you meet the wife and you realize she works in a cubicle three down from yours. And she says something like, well, I didn't didn't even know you were a Christian or went to a church

Jeff Iorg: 08:18

in our area. That's what I'm talking about. That

Jeff Iorg: 08:22

you think of yourself as being a witness for the gospel while you're out sharing the gospel in some kind of church assignment when you really have neglected, even letting it be known that the person three cubes down from you, that you're a Christian and that you wanna have a opportunity to talk about the gospel with them in that context. So being deployed, not dispersed, means that you're thinking about being on mission with the gospel all the time, particularly among your family and friends and particularly among people that you're around on a continuing and ongoing basis, not just people that you, so to speak, go out to visit or go out

Jeff Iorg: 09:03

to connect with in a missional moment. So what are some practical things you can remember when it comes to being deployed?

Jeff Iorg: 09:14

Well, first of all, think about the model of Jesus. You know, He left heaven to come and live among people. Now that's what I call being deployed. He he left home base in a pretty real way to come and live among us. He talked with, prayed for, laughed, cried, and touched countless individuals.

Jeff Iorg: 09:33

Jesus showed up and was fully present in all kinds of places. He was in synagogues and went to water wells. He was in private homes and out on fishing boats. Jesus went to weddings and funerals and dinner parties and other gatherings of family and friends. He taught how to become his disciple as a natural part of daily life interacting with people.

Jeff Iorg: 09:57

Now, we want to be more like Jesus in this regard. We want to be willing to leave home base, the safety of our Christian community and our church family, and we want to plunge into the world we're living in, really connecting with people. We have family and friends, but we're not just dispersed among them, we're deployed to them. And all these kinds of things that Jesus did, we want to do as well so that as we are with people, we're really with them, focused on them, focused on their needs, and connecting with them about the gospel.

Jeff Iorg: 10:30

Now, here are some practical things that have helped me over the years to do this effectively. Number one, when you're among family and friends, be fully engaged with them.

Jeff Iorg: 10:47

Be really with them. People around you in those contexts are not just part of the wallpaper, they're not just a comfortable a comfortable glove that you that you wear, they're not just people that are a part of the backdrop of your life. They're people that really do matter. Now, I was teaching on this once, on reaching friends and family with the gospel, and I was talking about some of my outreach experiences through youth sports. As I've told you before on the podcast and as some of you know from my background, I spent many years involved with my children in youth sports, coached many teams, and of course, ultimately got involved in umpiring and spent a significant amount of my time umpiring over the years.

Jeff Iorg: 11:29

So while all that was going on, we were building relationships with these friend circles that were also a part of the youth sports community. You know, if your children are involved in really any kind of activity, you're going to run across those same parents in various kinds of places because the kids are doing the same kind of activities over and over

Jeff Iorg: 11:46

and over again. Seemed like we were always on our way to or

Jeff Iorg: 11:50

from some practice or game year round. And because our children, as young athletes, tended to play multiple sports with the same kids in different sports, we were frequently with the same parents at different practices and games, team parties, fundraisers, you get the idea. So we didn't need a visitation program to spend a lot of our time around people who needed to hear the gospel. And these people became our friends, and we were with them regularly. And because of that, we had to think of ways to get the gospel into their lives and into the conversations with them.

Jeff Iorg: 12:22

And over the years, we were very intentional about doing so. So I told my story and some of the ways I did that and some examples of what that looked like. And, one fellow told me, man, that really that really sounds intriguing. I wanna live more that way. I wanna be a deployed Christian.

Jeff Iorg: 12:39

And he told me, I'm I'm also involved in youth sports. I I wanna try to follow some of the things you're you're doing, so let's talk about it. So we did. We talked about his situation and and what was happening and and then why he was having such a hard time ever talking with people or engaging them at a level that the gospel conversations could occur. Well, I talked with him and tried to help him, but didn't really have any clarity about what was holding him back.

Jeff Iorg: 13:05

But a few weeks later, we happened to be at a place where we were at a similar game and our children were playing against each other. And during the game, I did what I do. I was talking to parents and friends. I was catching up on their families, talking about problems at work and and families, laughing at funny things that happened on the field, following up on some past conversations, reminding people of opportunities that I'd had in the past for prayer or for ministry or conversation, and catching up with them about the gospel as we could. I noticed my friend who had talked with me about trying to do

Jeff Iorg: 13:37

the same thing spent the entire game on his cell phone. He was either making calls or checking texts or surfing the Internet, but he was not really engaging anyone there, he was lost in his phone. His problem was simple, he was at the game, but he was not really at the game.

Jeff Iorg: 14:03

He was with his friends,

Jeff Iorg: 14:06

but he wasn't really with his friends. His thoughts and focus and energy were someplace else

Jeff Iorg: 14:17

besides engaging the people there in meaningful relationship that could lead to gospel conversation. Look, when you're deployed with the gospel, you remind yourself before you get out of the car, I'm about to enter my mission field. I'm about to be with my friends or family. I gotta be at my best. I have to engage these people fully.

Jeff Iorg: 14:41

I'm here for a purpose and my purpose in being here is the gospel. Yes, I'm making friends. Yes, I'm spending time with my children. Yes, I'm investing in my community, but most of all, I'm here showing the love of Jesus and sharing the gospel or at least some part of the gospel or at least as much

Jeff Iorg: 14:58

as the gospel as I can in these random and continuing conversation. So the first step to being more deployed than dispersed is to be engaged. When you are with people, be really with them, and be alert to and focused on the responsibility you have

Jeff Iorg: 15:21

to get the gospel to them even in these ongoing moments and ongoing relationships. Alright. A second suggestion is to be persistent. Now I've heard so many stories, and I know you have too, of people who talk about sharing the gospel this way. Well, I was on an airplane and a person sat down beside me and, pretty soon I opened my Bible and they asked questions about why I was reading it and I was able to share the gospel with them and lead them to faith in Jesus, and that's how easy it is to win the lost of faith in Jesus Christ.

Jeff Iorg: 15:53

Well, I have no problem with that story.

Jeff Iorg: 15:55

That's a great story. But most people,

Jeff Iorg: 15:59

that's not the experience they have in sharing the gospel. It's more likely that we share the gospel with a friend, they listen to part of it or listen politely to us, then they have questions about it, maybe some argument about some of it. They express some lack of interest in aspects of what we're talking about. It puts them on some tangent where they want to talk about something else that comes into their mind because of us bringing up the gospel. You get the idea.

Jeff Iorg: 16:28

So when I say be persistent, what I mean is you're going to have to recognize that some of these gospel sharing opportunities in the context of family and friends are going to take place over an extended period of time, even slowly building to the place where you're going to be able to share the gospel appropriately. And even then, it's not always embraced the first time you share it with someone. Some of these witnessing relationships that I've had lasted for years with only intermittent conversations about the gospel that came up for different reasons and in different ways. Look, we we have some friends, to be sure, who were open to the gospel from almost the first time that we met them, But that's not been the rule, it's been more the exception. We have many more friends that we've prayed for and cared for without really much response, sometimes for months or even years.

Jeff Iorg: 17:21

And then finally, an opening or an interest about the gospel as life circumstances created that kind of an awareness. You know, one of the striking stories of this was when we first moved to Oregon, We met a family through t ball. And as a result of that experience, having a good experience really through that, time together, the coach said to us at the end of the year, hey, why don't you guys come over? We'll have a cookout in our backyard, simple food, let the kids swim in the pool. And, this was no big fancy house, by the way.

Jeff Iorg: 17:57

This was an above ground, you know, three foot pool in the backyard, that kind of thing. So I said, we'd love to come. I mean, here was an opportunity. I've been befriending these people for a few months, looking for an opportunity to get better acquainted with them, trying to think of ways to introduce the gospel into the conversation even while we're at T ball and so far being unsuccessful. They're inviting me to their house, man.

Jeff Iorg: 18:19

So we went. After we got there and, you know, grilled some hot dogs or some other snack or some other foods, the woman said to me, you're like some kind of a pastor, right? And I said, yeah, I am. And she said, I heard that you came here to like start a new church. And I said, yeah, we did.

Jeff Iorg: 18:41

And then she said, why would you do something like that?

Jeff Iorg: 18:44

Well, I thought, man, I've

Jeff Iorg: 18:46

got the answer to that. Here's the door I've been waiting for. I

Jeff Iorg: 18:50

can't wait to talk about the gospel now. And so I told her the whole story of why we had come to Oregon to plant

Jeff Iorg: 18:57

the church. When I finished,

Jeff Iorg: 19:00

she said, and I've maybe told you this before on the podcast, but it stuck with me all these years, she said, so you came out here to Oregon to save all us stupid pagans.

Jeff Iorg: 19:15

Man, that cut me to the core. I thought, that's how she perceives what I'm

Jeff Iorg: 19:21

saying? I quickly backtracked. I said, no, listen. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that.

Jeff Iorg: 19:28

She goes, oh, I'm just teasing. She said, I know you didn't mean it that way, but that's how it feels sometimes when you Christians start talking to us about what you believe.

Jeff Iorg: 19:36

I said, Well, I'm sorry. I don't want to be like that. What I believe matters a great deal to me, but I don't want to make it sound like I'm judging you or putting you down. She said, well,

Jeff Iorg: 19:50

I understand that, and and, I am interested in some of what you're saying. So we had a little bit more of a conversation about the gospel, but quite frankly, it it it didn't really go that far

Jeff Iorg: 20:02

that day. I remember leaving that cookout and thinking, just blew a relationship and an opportunity because I said something that in my zeal sounded judgmental or difficult. I thought the relationship was over, but it wasn't. In fact, that was in T ball. Our relationship continued.

Jeff Iorg: 20:30

We wound up coaching baseball together the following year, and that relationship continued and really continued on for years. And after a couple of years, one Sunday, they visited our church, which opened up

Jeff Iorg: 20:44

a whole new set of opportunities for conversation. We continue that relationship all the way until our children were in high school. All the way along sharing the gospel, them of they attend occasionally attending our church, we being visiting in their homes, spending time together on various baseball and football fields over the years, sharing the gospel, communicating the gospel. One of the most interesting conversations was after several years of this, one day the woman came to church and she had a Bible. And she said, you know, I've been thinking a lot about what you've talked with me about, about Jesus and all of that.

Jeff Iorg: 21:24

And I found this Bible. I wanna ask you about it. She opened the Bible and written in the flyleaf was a message that she had written in in children's writing that said, on such and such date, I committed my life to Jesus Christ, and it had been signed. It was her. And she said, you know, the more you've talked about this, the more I remember this experience from my childhood.

Jeff Iorg: 21:43

And I went digging around and I found this Bible because I thought I remembered this. I think there was a time when I was really open to Jesus and Him coming into my life, and apparently I actually even committed myself to Him at one point. Man, that opened up a whole another series of conversations for us. What I'm trying to tell you is this, you have to be persistent in these relationships. That relationship went on for years, gospel sharing with her husband, gospel sharing with this woman and with their children, and quite frankly, I've never really been sure of their spiritual commitments.

Jeff Iorg: 22:19

They've they've made some, they've made significant progress, but I've always had some concerns still about them coming to a place of full faith and obedience to Jesus. That's what it means to be persistent though, to maintain relationships, maintain friendships, keep the conversation going, let it continue to unfold as it as it needs to, and to continue to maintain that kind of witnessing presence in a person's life. Well, be engaged, be persistent, and then third, be sensitive. Man, this is really challenging because we all wanna introduce the gospel at the earliest possible moment in every conversation, but we also recognize that some relationships or conversations take a while before we're really ready or able, to do that. You know, I think about this when I was umpiring for all those years.

Jeff Iorg: 23:12

I had a reputation among the umpires in Oregon particularly, of being the pastor umpire or the Christian umpire, and so it wasn't hard for me to talk with umpires about the gospel or about their relationship with God because quite frankly, they would sometimes bring it up to me by saying, Hey, aren't you a preacher? Is that right? Yes, I am a preacher. And then we'd just talk about that a little bit and then that would give me the opportunity to say, you know, that's kind of who I am. What kind of a religious background do you have?

Jeff Iorg: 23:39

Or what are some of the spiritual commitments that you've made in your life that matter? Are you part of any church or anything like that? So the fact that I was a bit unusual as a preacher umpire opened conversations for me, but past those superficial kinds of initial conversations, sometimes it was hard to know how to go to that next place,

Jeff Iorg: 24:02

how to be sensitive enough to know when to and how to engage those umpires in a next level conversation. And one of

Jeff Iorg: 24:12

the things about umpires is, you know, they're willing to to take responsibility, they're willing to do what they do in public, but just like anyone else, they

Jeff Iorg: 24:19

don't like to be embarrassed. They just don't.

Jeff Iorg: 24:23

And so I would be careful not to put a guy on the spot, like, right after a game or right before a game or in any context where he felt like that he might be, made any kind of a public spectacle more than he even was while he was umpiring. I found it was really helpful, for example, to say to guys after games, hey. You got time for a go get something to eat or you you got time for a coffee or something for a few minutes to actually get away from the ballpark, sit down in a different context, and to say, you know, I, man, appreciate the time we've been working together, but I just wanted to ask you a question if I could about some things you believe personally, or I wanna share with you about something that I wanna follow-up with you on that conversation we had when we first met about my being a pastor. You know, I am a pastor and because of that, I I really care about people and their relationship with God. I just wonder if you'd like to talk about that for a few minutes.

Jeff Iorg: 25:17

Trying to have a sensitive way to engage these men enabled me to do that, not at the ballpark, not while we were in uniform, not while we were out to step on a field or maybe just stepping off of one, but to say, hey, let's step out of those identities and back into our regular selves. Let's go get a hamburger. Let's go get a cup of coffee. Let's let's go have a sit down and just talk for a minute. And as we did that, I discovered that in those, what I will call sensitive moments or being sensitive to the moment, I was able to have some very meaningful conversations with, with these men.

Jeff Iorg: 25:52

I think of one particular umpire. He was a younger guy, military bearing, really fit, very good guy to

Jeff Iorg: 26:01

be around and very good umpire. He looked up

Jeff Iorg: 26:04

to me a bit. I had been umpiring a few more years than he had, and I gave him some pointers along the way, helped to introduce him to some higher levels of umpiring, got him some training. Because of that, we had a a pretty a pretty meaningful relationship. But I also knew that I wanted to go beyond that to a conversation with him. So, one day after working a pretty high level tournament game, I said, hey, listen, man.

Jeff Iorg: 26:26

You got a few minutes. You're going to go get something to eat? He said, yeah, I

Jeff Iorg: 26:29

do actually. So we went out and

Jeff Iorg: 26:30

sat down together and I said, hey, listen. I I really enjoyed working with you as an umpire and helping you along the way. And the and he said, man, I appreciate that. You've really get you know, given me some opportunity and really helped me with some training. And so we had a good connection at that point.

Jeff Iorg: 26:43

Then I said, but you know, something matters a whole lot more to me and I think you know that. You know, I'm a pastor and, my relationship with God and helping people with their relationships with God, really matters a great deal to me. And I just wonder if you and I could talk about that. If you could tell me some of what you believe and what you think about your relationship with God and how I can help you with that. He kinda looked at me for

Jeff Iorg: 27:08

a minute and he said, you know, I haven't thought about any of this for a long time, but I actually had a Christian grandmother who cared a

Jeff Iorg: 27:17

lot about me, and now the conversation is on. We've found a connection point because in a moment of sensitivity, I stepped away from the ballpark, took him to a place, said, hey, listen, here's who I am and here's what I'd really like to talk to you about. And he, after that those months really of relationship building, was willing to say, yeah, you know, there is something about that in my life. And that opened the conversation about the gospel that day. You know, is what I'm talking about when I say be sensitive.

Jeff Iorg: 27:46

We're going to be engaged and be persistent, but also sensitive, recognizing that there's a time and a place and a way to approach people. And then the last thing I'll say is be contagious. When you're around your family and friends and people like I'm describing right now that you have an ongoing relationship with, find something that you enjoy and be yourself in it. In other words, contagious. I wanna give you maybe the most unusual story about that that I've ever encountered.

Jeff Iorg: 28:12

I have a friend who's a civil war enactment person. She is into this, in remarkable ways. These people that are into civil war reenactments, they they got the uniforms, they've got the costumes, they get together and they put on these almost like remarkable, almost like plays where they're acting out the whole battle scene and everything like that. My friend plays a surgeon in the civil war enactment troop that she's in. She has all kinds of civil war medical equipment that she carries with her, cases of it that they undo and put out for props.

Jeff Iorg: 28:54

She's got the uniforms and they've got just all the stuff that goes along with creating this sort of a moment of civil war medicine in this reenactment that they do of the civil war battle. You can't even believe it until you see it, but it's really amazing. Well, in the context of that, as she did this for years, she developed meaningful friendships with a lot of people and she really wanted them to hear the gospel. She thought, how am I going to do this? And she came to this idea.

Jeff Iorg: 29:25

She did research and she found diaries of civil war soldiers in which they wrote about their faith, questions about God, stories of their conversion, prayer concerns back home, these kinds of things. She made it a research project, and she found a number of these and collected them. And then she developed some devotionals based on these civil war diaries of these stories of people in relationship with God. And as part of the reenactments, she arranged that they would start having chapel services on the Sundays when they

Jeff Iorg: 30:00

do this, and she would say, let

Jeff Iorg: 30:02

me read you some stories from the diaries of some civil war veterans and talk with you about what they write. And she would read the story, read the conversion story, read the prayer request story, read the story of scripture and testimony, whichever one she would choose, and then she would give the gospel as a part of that. And she said, by connecting what we were contagious about civil war reenactment with these true stories recorded in these civil war diaries, I was able to, by that means, share the gospel with people in a way that was natural and beautiful, and they were receptive because of the context in which we were working. That's what I'm talking about today. Well, today I've talked on the podcast about sharing the gospel with your family and friends, people you're around all the time.

Jeff Iorg: 30:49

People you work with, you're engaged with socially, you're involved with in clubs like I've just described, or even as I did for years through umpiring. How do you do it? Well, first of all, remember you're deployed, not dispersed. You're not just scattered out there among people waiting till you get back to the safety of your Christian friends or your church. No, you're deployed.

Jeff Iorg: 31:11

You're sent on mission. You're out there on purpose. So while you're there, be engaged, be persistent, be sensitive, and be contagious. In doing these things, you can more effectively share the gospel with family and friends that you have a continuing ongoing, in some cases, prolonged relationship. And in the context of that, you can share the gospel as you lead on.