Does Email Evangelism Work?

DEAR LARRY:

I would love your feedback in regards to how I reach out to people. I share the truth about the Bible through emails. I often receive emails along with additional addresses, and this is how I reach out to others. I love serving Him!

May you please take the time to read over my message, and please feel free to point out anything that might be a turn off to someone that just has never heard of Jesus before. I want the message to be as effective as possible. I just hope that the message is an eye opener, God will take care of the rest.

Thank you in advance, and may God bless you richly!!!  Nancy

Here is the message (from Nancy):

Dear Sir/Madam, I have received your address on my computer, and I would love to take this opportunity to share the most important message of the Bible with you. This is not about any kind of religion, or joining a church…. It is about having a relationship with God. I hope you will be interested, and I apologize for disturbing you in any way. God loves you very much! He has given you His Son Jesus, so that you can have a personal relationship with Him.

Please keep in mind, that we are all separated from God now and eternally, because of our sinful nature. But Jesus came and paid the price for us by dying on the cross for our sins. Without Jesus, we are all lost in sin, which separates us from God. When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we become a child of God, and we are no longer lost and separated from Him.

Salvation is a free gift from God, we are not saved by our own works.  Once we accept Jesus as our Savior, we are forgiven of our past, present and future sins, as we are not perfect. Salvation is about what Jesus has already done on the cross for all of us in the whole world.

If you do not know the Bible, here are a few Scriptures for you:

John 1:9 “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

John 14:6 “Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.'”

Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Romans 10:9-109 “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; 10 for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”

If you have never accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and wish to invite Him into your life, here is a very simple prayer that you may pray: ( Or in your own words of course.) “Lord Jesus, I believe You are God’s Son, and that You died on the cross for the sins of the whole world.  Please forgive me for all of my sins. Come into my life, and be my Lord and Savior.  I receive You as my Lord and Savior.  Thank you Jesus, I put my faith and trust in You.  In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.”

If you have any questions, or you need prayer, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely, Nancy

DEAR NANCY:

The Bible makes many references to the seeking of “wise counsel” — which simply means seeking the advice and perspective of those who are at least as spiritually mature as you are (and hopefully more so).  Some Scriptures that come to mind in that regard include Proverbs 12:15, 15:22, 19:20-21, 24:6, and 28:26 — to name a few.  God’s people are to seek the wisdom of each other.  So it’s good that you’ve written and asked us to look over what you’re doing.

For the sake of clarification, the question you’ve asked specifically is, “… please … read over my message, and please … point out anything that might be a turn off to someone that just has never heard of Jesus before … I want the message to be as effective as possible.”  I wanted to state that up front to keep myself from going off on any tangents.

I’m afraid your whole approach is a turn off.  How you identify evangelism prospects is ineffective at best.  At worst it’s offensive.  And what you’re saying isn’t any better.  It’s overly religious and not likely to have any real impact on anyone in North America.  Let me go deeper on these issues, and then I’ll finish with some suggested changes to your approach.

You said that you identify the recipients of these messages by capturing email addresses from emails you receive.  I’m going to guess that those emails fall into one of two possible categories.  The first would be people who know you and are including you in an audience of others they know.  Perhaps they’re sending a picture of their new granddaughter to their friends and co-workers.  I imagine they’d be pretty embarrassed to find you then sending your religious messages to their co-workers.  More than that, I imagine they and the recipients in their email feel as if you somehow violated them — crossed an imaginary line of respect and decency.  To put this in perspective, imagine going to the wedding of friends and trying to sell Amway or Avon products at the reception.  I’d put what you’re doing in the same category.

The second category of emails you receive is most likely what I would call SPAM.  It’s junk mail that proliferates on the Internet these days.  The senders are not likely to feel violated or offended by your using their names to develop your own mailing list.  But I have to say that they are also very unlikely to even read your message.  In most cases, their own mailing activities are handled by computers – so when you send an email back, no human is actually reading it.  Your message isn’t falling on deaf ears — it’s not even falling on human ears.  So it’s a waste of your time.

So what should you do?  For starters you should understand that nowhere in Scripture does it tell us to evangelize the world.  Said differently, God doesn’t need our help to save His people.  In John 6:44, Jesus told us that, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him …”  So no matter what you say or how much you care, you’re not going to convert someone to Christianity or help them find Jesus … unless God is already at work in their hearts.

  One of the great problems of Christianity today is that the Christians run around doing what we want to do instead of doing what God tells us to do.And what has God told us to do?  Let’s take a look at some specific things Jesus has told us to do.

1. Feed my sheep.  (John 21:15-17)

What do the sheep need?  You’ll notice, for example, that ministries to the homeless don’t start with a church service or a Bible study.  They start with a hot meal, a hot shower, some clean clothes and maybe a safe place to sleep.  It’s a model for “feeding sheep.”

2. Go into all the world and preach the good news.  (John 16:15)

Notice that this doesn’t say “send the good news.”  God expects us to get out of our comfort zone and physically be the good news in other people’s lives.

3. Go and make disciples of all nations …  (Matthew 28:19)

What does it mean to make disciples?  This isn’t about getting them saved.  It’s way bigger than that.  It means to lead them to spiritual maturity — so that they in turn can lead others.

4. (Women) teach the younger women … (Titus 2:3-5)

This passage is often overlooked in today’s churches.  Spiritually mature Christian women are specifically instructed to teach certain things to certain people.  (Read this passage for the details.)

Do you see the pattern here?  The thing is that God wants our ministry to others to be very relational.  In fact, our ministry efforts are not effective without the relationship.  My dear sister in Christ, you cannot randomly email strangers – whom you’ve never met or even talked to – and expect the seed to fall on fertile ground.  But you can get into relationship with those whose hearts God is already turning — who desperately need God — and allow God to use you to reveal Himself to those people.

Frankly, I think your ministry endeavor is very typical of those who are growing in Christ.  We become very zealous about serving Him.  We are growing spiritually and excited about it.  We want others to get what we have.  But part of that spiritual maturity process in us is learning to follow God and do things His way.  In my own spiritual life, as I’ve felt compelled to minister to others, God has had to teach me a thing or two.  (That’s often been humbling.)  God has taught me two important truths about my effectiveness that you might be able to relate to here.

First, the sheep want to know that they matter to the shepherd.  It’s often said in American culture that “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”  This is never truer than in preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We must get into relationship with people who need God, and allow Him to use us to meet their physical, emotional, social or other needs.  And when we do that, we “earn the right to be heard.”  You can send emails, you can drop leaflets from a plane, and you can stand in Times Square with a bullhorn.  But if you haven’t loved on the sheep, they won’t hear a word of what you’re saying.  Perhaps that’s why Jesus said if we love Him, we are to feed His sheep.  (John 21:15-17)

Second, the message that we preach must come from our heart — and not our heads.  (Ezekiel 3:10-11)  It seems that God’s messages must sink deep into our own hearts … and show in our own lives before we can effectively help others understand and apply those truths in their own lives.  One way to think about this is to realize that we are not to just be conduits for information.  Rather we are to be vessels that have digested the message and allowed it to mature in our hearts.

In closing, let me say that I absolutely love your heart for God.  It’s clear that you love the Lord and are committed to serving Him.  I’m also very proud of you for having sought out the “wise counsel” that the Bible tells us is so valuable.  I know what I’ve had to say here was probably not easy to hear.  But I pray that you can take what I’ve said to heart and use it to be even more effective feeding His sheep, making disciples, and glorifying God with everything that you do!

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