When the Fish Don't Bite: Discouragements In Evangelism

GORDON LUK

The Mark 13 Syndrome

As we left our New Testament 1 class, my mate asked me, “What would you do when you read Mark 13 with a non- Christian?” (My head was still spinning after two hours in this chapter.)

“I don’t know,” I joked, “it’s not something I’ve ever had to worry about; the non-Christians I read Mark with never last til Chapter 13!”

Evangelism can be discouraging. It can be discouraging that people aren’t interested. It can be discouraging when you lose friends because of it. It can be discouraging when years of hard work don’t seem to pay off – meeting up with someone every week, showing them the gospel repeatedly, explaining why they should accept Jesus, praying for them again and again, only for them to say “no”.

You could be doing everything you’ve been taught but the fish are just not biting. You could be doing the exact same thing as someone else – using the exact same lures, rod and hooks; and they’re bringing in fish after fish, but you’re getting nothing.

What do you do when evangelism is discouraging?

Who do you turn to for advice and support?

What is helpful and unhelpful?

The english premier league answer

I’ve been watching the English Premier League for over 20 years and a never-ending debate is which of the three English midfield superstars was the best – Steven Gerrard (Liverpool), Frank Lampard (Chelsea), or Paul Scholes (Manchester United).

This debate has taught me something interesting about how we evaluate performance.

If you asked neutral fans, most would say that Gerrard pips the other two. However, if you looked at the stats (goals and assists), Lampard is on top. Yet, if you asked ex-players who had played with or against all three (ie. the experts of the game), the majority would say that Scholes was undoubtedly the best.

And here is a snapshot of how the world evaluates performance. We listen to three different voices: the Fans, the Stats, and the Experts.

Thumbs-up thumbsdown temptations

Don’t we do the same when we evaluate our evangelistic performance?

Our ‘experts’ (spiritual mentors and leaders whose gospel ministry we look up to) can give us a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Our ‘fans’ (those who fill the church seats every week whom we minister to) can support or criticise us. And our ‘stats’ – how easy is it to use membership or conversion numbers to measure success in evangelism?!

Of course, we’d be wise to consult all three voices. There might even be a temptation to listen to one voice over the others. But could there be an even bigger temptation?

When we’re evaluating our evangelism, could we be in danger of ignoring God’s voice – the voice we need to hear the most?

Three Biblically-based don’ts

Thankfully, God’s Word has lots to say to us when we are discouraged in gospel ministry. Here are three ‘don’ts’ that have encouraged me to keep going.

1. Don’t give up

When evangelism is discouraging, the easiest thing to do is to give up, to even take a break or focus on something else.

Instead, let’s be encouraged by Acts 4. Here, Peter and John are given an official warning not to preach the gospel (Acts 4:18). Yet despite this blatant violation of religious rights and freedom of speech, they didn’t stop preaching the gospel. They didn’t just keep their faith to themselves. They didn’t even take a break from evangelism to focus on some other good ministry work.

Being bold is hard and unnatural, so we must pray for boldness as the disciples did (Acts 4:29).

And we must remember that ultimately Jesus was unstoppable (Acts 4:25-28), so His gospel will ultimately be unstoppable too.

2. Don’t change the message

When I was working for an engineering consultancy, the directors ran monthly all-staff meetings to update everyone on how business was going – lots of graphs and numbers. One director just hated giving bad news and completely avoided it. Even when we all knew business wasn’t going well and redundancies were happening, she would only give us half the truth. Now you could say that she was just playing the “managerial game”.

But isn’t it so easy for us to change the message we preach, so that people might be more inclined to hear?

When people are disinterested or likely to be offended by the gospel, isn’t it easy to leave out the uncomfortable bits? As someone once told me, the best way to increase conversions is to do some peddling (2 Cor 2:17).

Paul’s not saying that we can’t be creative in how we proclaim Christ. But he is saying that whoever preaches the gospel can guarantee that they will either be a fragrance of death, or a fragance of life (2 Cor 2:15-16).

Many will hate the Christian message. But the messenger can’t tamper with the message they’ve been given.

3. Don’t boast in yourself

The one who saves is not you – so don’t boast in yourself. Boast in Christ. Don’t blame yourself either. God is the one who saves and we are called to be faithful. Our natural instinct is to think that we’re evangelising as individuals. But we proclaim the gospel together – one plants, another waters, but God gives the growth (1 Cor 3:6-7).

We all play our roles, but God is the one who saves. And to testify to this, I want to revisit the opening Mark 13 story.

In 2016, some girls at Campus Bible Study UNSW, where I was serving, shared the gospel with a guy sitting in the quad. He was interested in finding out more about Jesus so they set him up with me and we started meeting together to read through Mark’s Gospel.

We never made it to Chapter 13.

After chapter 7, he said he wasn’t interested. He actually understood quite well what Jesus was on about, but he didn’t want Jesus in his life. I pleaded with him, but he didn’t want to read on. He avoided me for the next year and a half.

At the end of last year I found out that his Christian friends had invited him to see the Mark Drama, he watched the whole thing (including Chapter 13), and afterwards gave his life to Christ!

No way is salvation ever down to us! God is the one who saves.

Evangelism can be discouraging. But don’t give up. Let’s keep preaching the unstoppable gospel of Jesus Christ and let God decide which fish bite.