Winsome Witnessing

I heard about a barber who decided to share the gospel with the first person who sat in his chair the next morning. He owned an old-fashioned barber shop where he used a straightedge razor for shaving.

And sure enough, the next morning someone walked in and sat down in his chair for a shave and a haircut. The barber, who was vigorously sharpening his razor, turned to the man and said, “Friend, are you ready to meet God?”

His customer ran out, apron and all. You see, that barber needed to use a little tact when he was sharing his faith. And we need to do the same.

Believers sometimes approach nonbelievers with strange verbiage and then conclude that some people just take offense to the gospel.

Yes, there’s offense in the gospel. But many times, people are offended because Christians are just weird and unnecessarily offensive. They don’t know how to use tact. They aren’t persecuted for the sake of righteousness; they’re persecuted because they’re obnoxious.

We should use a little tact, a little winsomeness, when we share our faith. Someone has defined tact as the intuitive knowledge of saying the right thing at the right time.

For example, when the apostle Paul saw that the people of Athens worshiped everything imaginable, he could have said, “You’re a bunch of pagan idolaters!”

Instead, he told them, “Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way, for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about” (Acts 17:22–23 NLT).

If people can be argued into the kingdom of God, they can be argued out of it as well. The idea is not to win the argument. It’s to win the soul.