GLORIETA, N.M. (BP) — Seeing a life changed because of Jesus will draw people to faith, says Dennis Pethers, a British evangelist who closely observes dynamics in the United Kingdom’s increasingly post-Christian society. A former atheist, he credits C.S. Lewis for his own changed life.
“I suspect your university campuses are becoming much like the U.K. — they don’t want all that religion stuff,” Pethers told collegiate ministry leaders recently at a Baptist retreat center near Santa Fe, N.M.
Pethers is the author of “More to Life,” a simple four-story approach to believers more easily share their faith and an understanding of the gospel.
“It just struck me that it took less faith to believe there was a God than to believe there wasn’t,” says Dennis Pethers, who seeks ways to make the gospel relevant in post-Christian societies. (Photo by Baptist Press)
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“People will come to faith in Christ when they see that knowing him will make their lives better. And they will see that when they see that your life is better because of knowing him,” Pethers said.
Pethers defines evangelism as “leaving the people that I’ve met with a better understanding of God than they would have had had they never met me.”
Having grown up in London as an atheist, Pethers understands the perspective of the post-Christian culture of his own country.
“I was an atheist because I didn’t believe in God,” he said. “I didn’t dislike God. I didn’t know any Christians, so I didn’t dislike them. I’d never been to church, so I didn’t dislike it. No one I knew went to church. I just didn’t have any idea that God existed. I didn’t know — and didn’t know that I didn’t know.”
Pethers said he suspects many people are just like he was: They don’t know that they don’t know. Christian students on college campuses have a “wonderful opportunity” every day to meet people who don’t know God, he said.
For many students, removing the pressure of having to hand out a tract or force someone into a decision on the spot will make talking about God something they can incorporate into their lifestyles, Pethers said.
“ ‘More to Life’ is a really simple way to introduce Christ to someone in your dorm room, on your laptop, wherever,” Pethers said. “It’s a DVD with the stories of people whose lives have been changed by Christ. And that’s really the best way to share Christ, isn’t it? To show how your life is better for knowing him? Of course it is.”
As an unbeliever becomes interested in knowing more about how Christ has made a difference in a believer’s life, that same unbeliever may begin to wonder if Christ could make a difference in his or her own life, leading to an opportunity for discipleship, Pethers said.
“You know, we Christians can talk all day about Jesus and go to church every day of the week,” he said, “but that won’t really draw people to him. Changed lives authenticate the message of Jesus.”
John Moore, a national Baptist collegiate ministry leader, told the New Mexico gathering that what has happened in the U.K and across Europe is happening in the United States: Fewer people go to church, fewer people claim to believe in God at all and fewer choose to receive Christ.
“By telling where he has been, Dennis can tell us where we are headed,” Moore said. “Dennis sees in the rearview mirror what we see through the windshield.”
Pethers is a popular speaker throughout North America and Europe. Most recently he was keynote speaker at Virginia Baptists’ Rooftop Evangelism Summit at Eagle Eyrie Baptist Conference Center and he has been featured at 21-C, an annual evangelism conference sponsored by Virginia Baptists.
Pethers grew up in London’s East End. He says he discovered Christianity while reading C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity in a train outside the city’s Liverpool Street Station.
“Slowly, I came to the point where … it just struck me that it took less faith to believe there was a God than to believe there wasn’t,” he said in a recent podcast produced by LifeWay Christian Resources. “You can’t prove there is a God, and you can’t prove there isn’t a God. Everything’s built upon faith and how we understand faith, but it just struck me it took less faith to believe there was one than that there wasn’t.
“And then I read about Jesus.”
In 1993, Pethers founded Viz-a-Viz Ministries, which coordinates the “More to Life,” based on the principle that “changed lives authenticate the message of Jesus.” More than 100,000 of the program DVDs have been sold in the United Kingdom.
“So often we think of lost people as ‘them,’ those people out there, whereas in fact they are people that are precious to God,” he said in the podcast. “The motivation for evangelism, for me, is this missionary God, who sent his son to die for us, loves these people. And he wants me to love them as well.”
Polly House is a writer for LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.