My experience of trying to evangelize people has had varying levels of success. I remember centuries ago when I was being trained as a COBOL programmer. It was lunch break, and I was in the training room alone with my trainer. I was telling him that God still works miracles even today. The conversation went something like this: “So,” he said, “I have this long-standing football injury in my knee and you’re telling me that Jesus will heal it through the laying on of hands? OK. Go ahead.” I replied, “Eh … OK.” I tentatively laid a hand on his knee and prayed like crazy … that nobody else would walk into the room at that moment. Needless to say, the healing I predicted didn’t happen (and, for the record, I have since toned down my fanatical approach!).

However, because of that incident, word got around that I was some kind of religious nut. Soon afterwards, it reached the ears of a departmental manager who had recently been to Medjugorje and had had a spiritual experience which challenged the way he was leading his life. He introduced himself and I began to share with him my own experience. He was very interested. Some years later, he left the teeming cauldron of technology, joined the Augustinian Order and is now pastor of a parish in England.

To me, this is an interesting lesson in how evangelization actually works. It has been said that a person needs seven different evangelization encounters before they will become a Christian. In the above case, I may well have been the sixth or seventh encounter in that manager’s life. This, of course, is humbling, but it’s also liberating. 

When we speak about Jesus to someone else, the whole weight of converting someone doesn’t rest on our shoulders. We may be number one, three, five, or seven, but, more importantly, it is the Holy Spirit who changes people’s hearts and has already been working in them to lead them to conversion. We simply have the privilege of collaborating with him. Even if the person we’re talking to seems antagonistic, there is always something that makes them interested. Who knows? They may go on to share your seemingly preposterous story with someone else, who then becomes intrigued.

The key element is to have enough courage to step out in faith and fess up to being a Christian. And if we find that we still don’t possess enough bravado to start witnessing to our faith, we can pray for it and ask God to take away our timidity. We don’t have to make extraordinary claims the way I, somewhat rashly, did. All we need to do is show, by word and deed, that we have found in God the true path to lasting happiness and fulfillment.

The truth is that most people, deep down, are desperate for a message of good news. Let’s not keep it to ourselves. Let’s share it.