Archive: How To Lead Someone To Christ

Timeless insights from the best-known Methodist of this century

By E. Stanley Jones

How do we help others find conversion? For the end of evangelism is to produce an evangelist. You haven’t really got a person “in” until you get him “out”—helping others to conversion.

In the Hollywood Presbyterian Church, one of the great churches in America, in the hall for youth is this motto up at the front: “To know Him, to help others to know Him.” These are the alternate beats of the Christian heart—to know Him, to help others to know Him. You cannot continue to know Him unless you are helping others to know Him.

These attitudes are necessary if you are to help others to know Him:

1. Anyone who really desires to win others to conversion can do so. When I say “anyone” I mean anyone. Only those who debar themselves are debarred. A businessman of St. Louis has set aside one day a week to call on people to win them to Christ. He and his wife won 120 the first year.

People of any age can win others. A little girl of 10 years of age won 18 other children.

A youth of 17 said to a lawyer of 80, “Which team of evangelism do you belong to?”

The lawyer replied, “Why, I don’t belong to a church.”

The boy replied, “Why don’t you do it now? You haven’t got much time to do it in.” This got the lawyer. The next Sunday, he marched down the aisle with the lad and gave himself to Christ and the church—80 and 17!

The first thing then to fix in your mind is: “Anyone can do it! Then I will do it!”

2. Everyone is made for conversion. In the very structure of one’s being he is made for conversion and needs it—and deep down wants it—for his own fulfillment. Every person feels a sense of incompleteness, of frustration, of missing his life-mark, until conversion comes. When it comes it has a sense of homecoming upon it.

A little girl away from home for the first time in a camp was seen at bedtime with tears upon her cheeks, and the camp counselor said, “Are you homesick?”

“No,” replied the little girl, “I’m not homesick, I’m heresick.” Deep down every person, whether he realizes it or not, is “heresick,”—there is a nostalgia for God, the homeland of our souls.

This is not something imposed on the soul—it is ingrained in the very structure. The watermark in paper is not stamped on it—it is a part of its very structure. So we are made by Christ, for Christ, and when we find Him we find ourselves.

“All things have been created by Him [Christ] and for Him” (Colossians 1:16). The touch of Christ is upon all creation and everything is made in its inner structure to work in His way. And when it does, it works rhythmically, harmoniously, at its best. When it works some other way it works its own ruin. We are incurably Christ-bent. We want Him even when we think we want something else.

When you go to a person to win him to conversion, remember you have an ally in his heart who will take your side. It’s two against one—always.

3. It’s three against one, really. The Holy Spirit is dealing with every living person. Through conscience, through the pressure of higher ideals, through the impact of better people upon us, and directly, the Holy Spirit is at work. He was there before you. “He shall convict the world of sin”—shall convict concerning what we have not been and done; “and of judgment to come” shall convict of God’s last word, judgment.

The Holy Spirit is your faithful ally. It’s three against one: you, the Holy Spirit, and the innate longings of the person! It’s a pushover, except in the most hardened cases, and even they are often brittle, easily broken.

4. So go to the person with a positive expectation of winning the person. Don’t go with any apologies, any hesitations, any tentativeness. Be affirmative without being rude.

I went into a store and asked for a certain type of collar, and I asked with these words: “You haven’t a certain type of collar, have you?”

The clerk replied, “Why so negative? Yes, I have it.”

Francis of Assisi used to sympathize with the thieves and robbers, saying he was sorry for them for they couldn’t give expression to the holiness within them. Did they respond!

5. Don’t be inhibited by a feeling of your own unworthiness. Of course you are unworthy, who isn’t? However, you are not asking people to follow you, but to follow Christ. We are imperfect witnesses to a perfect Savior. As C. T. Niles says, “Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.” You are not the issue—He is!

You don’t have to be a saint to do this work, but you do have to be sincere. I attempted personal work when I was a church member without conversion and was met by the reply: “You are only religious during revivals.”

It was true. I did not attempt it again until I was converted. Then the first person I spoke to was converted—my grandmother, at 82 years of age, was my first convert. She wanted what I had found. The beggar is a beggar still, but he must be able to tell where he found bread.

6. Don’t be surprised if there seems to be an initial resistance. But you must have an ultimate faith that you will win the person. We don’t easily open our lives to others. There is a tendency to close up. The fact is that there are two instincts within us. One is to close up against any intruder, and the other is to disclose ourselves if we can find someone sympathetic and understanding.

If you run into a manifestation of the operation of the first instinct, don’t give up and say that the person is impossible. Stay around until the second instinct begins to operate. For deep down, people want nothing so much as to tell some sympathetic person their inmost longings and needs.

7. When the person reveals his or her needs, don’t be misled by a marginal need—the need to straighten out this, that or the other. The real need is conversion. Often the person will try to put you off with reformation instead of going on to transformation.

A friend was counseling a woman who had certain “problems.” When we started to tell her about her problems, the friend gently stopped her and said, “Before we go into the problems, may I ask, have you surrendered yourself to Christ?”

The woman replied, “No, I don’t think I have. ”

“Then,” said the friend, “let’s settle that first. ”

They went to their knees and the woman arose a changed and happy person. “Now,” said the friend, “Tell me about your problems.”

The woman laughed. “I haven’t got any. That was it.”

The friend telling about it afterwards said, “I’ve found out how to save time in dealing with people—get them converted first and then deal with their problems. When you do this their problems have usually vanished.” That leads to the next step:

8. Aim at the surrender of the self, not the surrender of this thing, that thing, the other thing. We may surrender these things in lieu of surrendering the self. The real crux is the surrender of the self. Until that is done, nothing is done. Usually the person is glad, deep down, to get himself off his own hands, for the self on our own hands is a problem and a pain. In the hands of God it is a possibility and a power.

9. In lieu of surrendering the self the person may raise this, that, or the other religious question. He may try to get you into a discussion about points of religion and this doctrine or that doctrine. Don’t bite at that bait, for you’ll get hooked on marginal issues. The end in view is not discussion, but decision. The only real decision is a decision to surrender the self.

10. When you come to the point of decision, get the person on his or her knees. Getting on the knees signifies the fact that the issue is not now between the counselor and the counselee, but between the counselee and God.

When you get to your knees suggest that you will pray first, and then the seeker will pray. In your prayer you can pave the way to surrender and faith by telling God that you are grateful it is going to be done.

Then ask the seeker to pray. If the seeker will pray out loud, well and good, but if he or she hesitates and says, “I don’t know how to pray,” then suggest that the person pray a prayer after you—sentence by sentence. And you pray the prayer in the first person, as if the person were praying: “Dear Lord, I come to You just as I am. … ”

After you have prayed a prayer of repentance and self-surrender and faith, ending on the note of believing that acceptance has taken place, then you pray a prayer on your own, thanking God that the greater transaction has been done, that he or she belongs.

When you arise from your knees take the hand of the person in congratulation, repeating a verse like this: “All things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they shall be granted you ” (Mark 11:24). Call attention to “have received,” not “will receive.”

Then urge upon the seeker: “Don’t look in, you’ll be discouraged; don’t look around, you’ll be distracted; don’t look back, you’ll be paralyzed; look at Jesus, and you’ll have peace and assurance.”

Explain that feeling is a by-product of surrender and faith and obedience, very like the foaming waves thrown up by the ship as it goes forward. The point is to go forward with Him. The feeling will take care of itself.

11. Have him write his decision on the flyleaf of his Bible. “On this ______ day of ________ I turned from my old way of life. I surrendered myself to Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I am His forever; and by word and by life, I will witness for Him to others.” Then ask him to sign it.

12. Get the convert to straighten up his life in all his relationships. Impress on him the necessity of saying, “I am sorry.” It is a catharsis.

A pastor in Japan was in trouble in his home. His wife and his father were at loggerheads. She decided she was going to her own home. The husband said, “I can’t tell you to go or not to go, but I’m going to fast and pray to see what God’s answer is, what guidance He will give me.”

She put on her best clothes and then put them back into the drawer. At the end of the day she said, “Eat. You are not responsible. It’s between me and my father-in-law.”

The pastor called the family together and announced: “God spoke to me and said, ‘You’re the head of this home and you’re responsible for what has happened. You are the key one.’ So I repent. It’s all my fault.”

The wife spoke up: “No, it’s my fault. I never loved my father and I’ve transferred this hate to my father-in-law.”

The brother spoke up: “No, I’m to blame. I asked my brother for something and he refused. So I went to my father and he did it over the head of my brother. And my sister-in-law knew this and it further divided the two.”

The maid spoke up: “No, I’m to blame. I wanted to be loved by the father and the wife. So I would go to the father and carry tales about the wife and then go to the wife and carry tales about the father, to gain the favor of both.”

The father spoke: “No, it’s my fault. I said to myself, ‘I’m the oldest and therefore the family belongs to me and they should serve and obey me.’ But I saw this morning, ‘The greatest among you shall be the servant of all.’ I’m going to be the servant of all from this time.”

The whole thing was settled! Don’t be afraid to say “I am sorry.”

13. Get the person into the Christian church as a vital, contagious member. If he is already in, emphasize that he now become “vital and contagious.” If he is not in, then get him in. For the church is the natural home of the converted.

It is true that, often, getting the convert to go into some churches is “like putting a live chick under a dead hen.” (One pastor announced from the pulpit that the church should honor the church mouse, for she had brought four into the church, and that was more than the rest of the membership had done.)

But for the most part this isn’t true. The Christian Church with all its faults is the greatest serving institution on earth. It has many critics, but no rivals in the work of human redemption. There isn’t a spot on earth, from the frozen North to the tropical islands of the sea, where we haven’t gone with schools, hospitals, leper and orphan asylums, churches, the Gospel—everything to lift the soul, the mind, the body—the total life of the human race. No other institution has done anything like it—none whatever.

When a man said to D. L. Moody [the great evangelist] that he could live a Christian life apart from the church, Moody simply replied by pulling a live coal from the rest of the burning coals in the grate and letting it lie on the hearth, separate. It died. The man said, “I see your point. ”

The Christian life cannot be lived apart from the Christian church. So get your convert into the church as a part of a living fellowship.

14. Remember that in this whole process, from the initial approach to the final consummation of getting the person into the church and out on his own to win others, the Holy Spirit is teaching you what you shall say and do at every point of need.

A verse was given me in the beginning of my missionary work among the intellectuals of India and it has become a life verse: “When they deliver you up, do not become anxious about how or what you will speak for it shall be given you in that hour what you are to speak. For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you” (Matthew 10:19-20). That verse has literally been fulfilled. It will be fulfilled in you. Let your full weight down on it.

A friend had little or no experience in dealing with a person of another faith and yet she was Spirit-guided in dealing with a sophisticated Jewish woman. The woman told of finding that her husband was living a double life. She was furious with him. She wanted to leave him and have her revenge—to break him. The friend wisely guided the woman to her own problems of resentment and hate. Then she asked her to pray to her own Jehovah.

“But He is far off and impersonal,” the woman replied.

Then the friend told of Jesus who put a face on God and was very near and lovable. “But,” she said, “I don’t want to take away your faith and impose mine. You go and ask God if He has any objection to your accepting Christ.”

The woman promised she would. The next morning the woman bounded up the stairs and burst into her friend’s room and said: “I did it. And God said He had no objection to my accepting His Son. I’m so happy. I’ve found my Savior. And I’m not going to leave my husband and try to break him. I’m going to love him and try to make him.”

It was given this friend in that hour what she should say. It was the perfect method of dealing with a person of another faith. You will become skillful with His skill, loving with His love, and wise with His wisdom.