Lame evangelism

God powerfully works through even awkward attempts to reach the lost | Andrée Seu

ON A SNOWY SUNDAY MORNING IN COLCHESTER, England, 1850, a 15-year-old boy made a detour from his intended destination and stumbled into a Primitive Methodist Chapel. The usual pastor was not in attendance and had constrained a member of the congregation to preach. The uncertain pulpit-filler read the day's text (Isaiah 45:22: "Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth")—and then, having no second act, read it over and over again, with different inflections, for 10 minutes. Noticing a new face in the pew, he gazed at him and said, "Young man, you look miserable. Look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look!" The young man did. His name was Charles Hadden Spurgeon.

I am collecting lame, awkward, fumbling evangelism examples. The one above fits my criteria in some ways but not others: It at least has actual Scripture in it. I heard a lamer one recently at a Bible conference in New Jersey, where the speaker, Rick Phillips of Florida, once a hard-living cavalry tank commander, told how a woman he carried a box for from her Philadelphia apartment tossed off the following: "If you're ever looking for a good church, try Tenth Presbyterian." Lame. She must be kicking herself today. But Rev. Phillips remembered the name a few months after the encounter, made his way to 17th and Spruce, and was converted under the preaching of James Boice.