Soul Whisperer

Why the Church Must Change the Way It Views Evangelism

Comer

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781621895442
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

What if we changed the face of evangelism?In a time when so many have a negative perception of evangelism, what if a new model was entirely biblical, loaded with skills, and more effective? Soul Whisperer shifts the emphasis from telling to a drawing paradigm. It develops biblically the pattern of Jesus, who did not give static presentations but rather customized his words to each hearer. By learning his ways, our words, too, can have pinpointed impact! Christians will discover how to draw out first, in order to read their friends and discern the relevant appeal of the gospel. In this way, the style is far more dynamic. It adapts! Understanding the non-believer's unique starting point will determine a distinct path. By creating a conversation about spiritual influence and what is involved in faith formation, this book charts ways for Christians to go deeper in evangelistic relationships. Most importantly, Soul Whisperer infuses skills that will shape a more Christ-likened missional disciple.

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Soul Whisperer

When one has finished building one’s house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way before one began.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

I am not one to throw around the word “prophetic” gratuitously. Rarely do I ever use it. If I do, it is a high compliment. I greatly value the person who can speak with corrective clarity to a current course, or offer predictive words of our future. Oddly then, recently I found myself stumbling upon a prophetic utterance from an unlikely conduit—a woman from long ago. Impoverished by our standards. Thirsty. Known to be immoral. Could prophetic words really come from such a source? Having perused this text innumerable times, like a laser guided missile, a simple phrase jumped out in a new way, locked on, and would not let me go! The line referred only to a routine matter. Yet I found it inferring something highly relevant. Perhaps you recall in John 4 the Samaritan woman’s words to Jesus. She is baffled by his predicament of being at a well but lacking necessary equipment. If you paid me to synthesize where church influence and world culture have collided in the twenty-first century, I could not say it better than her, “You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep” (John 4:11).

Within this chapter, you will make your own assessment on whether her words nail it for our time—even two thousand years later! You may not be able to tell at first. Yet if you are willing to test and observe honestly, I believe you will come to the place of seeing what I see. If you do, it may just change your whole way of thinking on what it will take to reach a post-Christian world. I hope for nothing less.

What is intriguing was how her statement managed to be both true and false at the same time. As to drawing water it was entirely true. But in the larger spiritual sense, ironically, what she said could not have been more false. No one knew how to draw the heart like Jesus! The Samaritan woman would soon comprehend his deep, deft touch, which would transform her world. This same kind of influence ability is desperately needed in Christians today. At the threshold of a global culture, never has there been a time when we needed to look so closely at Jesus—than now.

In history’s greatest epoch a man walked the earth with the capacity to draw souls. Our New Testament is jam-packed with accounts of Jesus’s soul whispering. Though many have written of these encounters, few have focused on what made his manner so out-of-the-box. Have you ever asked why he spoke as he did? We are going to see what gave his words pinpointed power. Has God’s voice ever come to you, as with the Samaritan woman, in a way that had your name on it? His signature voice directed to your signature life! Was that not a powerful experience? How Jesus handled people is a lost art that I believe we can dig out and recapture in a way that will revolutionize our reach. Put on your miner’s hardhat and switch on the light!

Several driving principles surface from a study of Jesus in terms of how he related to and reached those in his midst. Consider his interactions with two polar opposite people in chapters 3 and 4 of John: a high-standing, moralistic Pharisee pursing the basic need of spiritual understanding, and a common, unreputable Samaritan woman pursuing the basic need of water. Notice the disparateness. Each of these individuals had different starting points: ethnicities, religious backgrounds, viewpoints and lifestyles. How odd if Jesus had given them the same message. How dishonoring it would have been to their personhoods! Of course he did not! The fact is Jesus did not make the same presentation to anyone. His exchanges with people were unique and dynamic. He practiced the most foundational principle of evangelism: We start where people are. It is only when we understand their starting point that we can actually begin the evangelistic process (which is helping them through the necessary progressions to faith).

For the Pharisee, his starting point was his high religious standing. Jesus knew who came secretly in the night. Nicodemus belonged to Israel’s elite elders. What did someone like him need to hear? Simply, he needed to start over in a radically new way. All the works of his religious devotion meant nothing! Nicodemus sensed it, and he sought out Jesus for answers. Spiritual life came through God’s Spirit. For the Samaritan woman, the starting point was her deep needs, symbolized by the well she had journeyed to that day. Her inner thirst was never satisfied, not by water, nor by men. She needed to realize Jesus could meet the perpetual yearnings of her heart. He was the “man” who could provide “living water.” Can you see the powerful soul whispering abilities of Jesus? In these very personal encounters, we observe this book’s three permeating principles:

•Start where they are

•Read what they need

•Know where to take them

Both Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman heard the voice of God. Literally. They received divine words that penetrated their souls. Those kinds of words do not return void. The Pharisee left deeply troubled and enlightened in the most important of ways. The Samaritan woman left with a heart bursting to tell a whole town! When you learn the soul whispering skills of Jesus, you, too, will have conversations where people will hear God’s voice. Your words. God’s voice. How incredibly awesome is that?

What you have likely picked up so far is that I am proposing a change of course with our gospel messaging. How can an ancient water-seeking woman’s words shed light on a necessary shift?

Developing a New MQ

Imagine having an IQ that is so high that you would never anticipate meeting another person . . . like you! Imagine, however, being that brilliant and then having an opportunity to meet with a master mathematician, but not even knowing to mention that you are exceptionally gifted at math.1 Imagine having world-class ideas percolating in your head everyday, yet without any sort of guiding direction. Imagine possessing a mind equally comparable to Einstein’s,2 but at life’s midpoint, not being helped to achieve anything tangible with it. This is the story of Chris Langan, as told by Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, Outliers.

Gladwell contrasts Langan’s journey to another man named Robert Oppenheimer. Also brilliant, Oppenheimer conspired to poison his tutor while in college.3 Being found out, he somehow pulled off an appeal to his academic supervisor, coming across so impressively that therapy became the extent of his punishment. Years later, despite the known background, he landed one of this century’s most prestigious jobs (the Manhattan Project). Get this. All it took was hearing Oppenhiemer talk in a single informal interview.4 The comparison between the two men is stunning. The one guilty of attempted murder is given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; the other equally brilliant man, Langan, remains in obscurity. The question Gladwell asks in his book is, “Why?”

Developed with detail in Outliers, the distinction between these men relates to knowledge. Both were intellectually endowed. Yet Oppenheimer had learned how to speak to his superiors. As the author puts it, “that’s not because he was smarter than Chris Langan. It’s because he possessed the kind of savvy that allowed him to get what he wanted from the world.”5 Here is how Gladwell describes this type of knowledge:

The particular skill that allows you to talk your way out of a murder rap, or convince your professor to move you from the morning to the afternoon section is what Psychologist Robert Sternberg calls practical intelligence. To Sternberg, practical intelligence includes things like: Knowing what to say to whom. Knowing when to say it. Knowing how to say it for maximum affect . . . It is knowledge that helps you to read situations correctly and get what you want. Critically, it is a kind of intelligence separate from the sort of analytical ability measured by IQ . . . IQ is a measure to some degree of innate ability. But social savvy is knowledge. It is a set of skills that has to be learned. It has to come from somewhere.6

In telling the stories of success, or lack thereof, Gladwell makes a compelling case for the importance of acquired “know how.” Bereft of those skills, the voice of a genius like Chris Langan could not be released to the world. He needed a different kind of ability altogether. If only he had learned how to navigate life. If only he had received practical help from others around him. But he did not. And according to the premise of Outliers, no one makes it alone.7

A New York Times Staff writer, Gladwell has become a prolific author due to exceptional analysis. Those of us privileged enough to have read his array of books have gained from his craft of explaining the world we live in, and even more importantly, aspects of our lives. Though this sociological study is not espousing anything particularly religious, does not his conclusion stir up something provocative for Christians to consider?

Simply stated, intellectual prowess is not what we lack. Sure, we could be smarter! It would be great to have more C.S. Lewis-like intellectuals in our families, associates and fellowships. Though I would agree with many pastors that believers could know more and be better equipped with information about the Bible and their faith, the fact is most believers know the Christian gospel, but influence few with it. Faint mission statistics loudly testify to this fact. This suggests a different kind of knowledge is missing. To this we should ask, “How significant is that vacuum?” In my admittedly biased view, the answer to this question trumps even a stellar analysis on success, like Outliers. This is because the church lacks practical intelligence (PI) of the most critical kind. We lack PI in the area of mission. God has intended the evangelistic “making new disciples” mission to be the central hub of all activity—the vital heartbeat of his movement. It is what he left us commissioned to do (Matt 28:18–20). In recent years a rising awareness of mission primacy has begun. Allow me, with greater specificity, to sharpen my point by clarifying that we are deficient in the know-how-agility of “spiritual influence.” This is precisely what Jesus possessed! It is what made him so dynamically effective with every individual he encountered.

To gain a better feel for our current state, consider a sampling of recent conversations with church leaders. Sitting down with a past...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword by Gary L. McIntosh, PhD
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Soul Whisperer
• 2. Soul to Soul
• 3. Signs of the Times
• Part I - Pattern: Developing Spiritual Influence
• Part II - Process: Creating Lighted Journeys
• Part III - Paths: Insights to Faith’s Pathways
• Addendum
• Bibliography
• Also by Gary S. Comer