×

One thing that strikes me about some pockets of conservative Christian writing on the internet is how little attention is given toward the art of persuasion. It’s one thing to be right; it’s another thing to present true doctrine in a compelling way that adorns our doctrine (Titus 2:10). We are sometimes satisfied merely to proclaim instead of following the apostle Paul who sought to “persuade Jews and Greeks” and who said that the “knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others” (2 Cor. 5:11).

Several years ago, David Powlison was invited to answer some questions for a secular journal, Psychology Today, seeking to introduce a wide range of religious therapies. (Also answering the questions were advocates for counseling from within the worldviews of Judaism, Native American Spirituality, Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, African Spirituality, Secular Humanism, Twelve Step Spirituality, Christian Psychology, and Buddhism).

In seeking to provide compelling answers to genuine questions from those outside the faith, Powlison studied the biblical model for effective, redemptive persuasion. He notes that “Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman in John 4 and Paul’s speech at the Areopagus in Acts 17 provide rich examples of what these communication tasks look like in action.” [For a whole book analyzing one of these interactions, see Paul Copan and Kenneth Litwak’s The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas: Paul’s Mars Hill Experience for Our Pluralistic World (IVP Academic, 2014).

Below is an outline of what he saw in Scripture. I find these to be helpful reminders for evangelism and for all of our discourse as we seek to win the world to Christ.

1. Know those with whom we wish to speak.

What do my readers believe, do, assume? What are their intellectual and professional habits? What is their reality map? What are their goals and expectations? . . .

2. Genuinely seek the welfare of those you are speaking to.

I must care. I must love. I must treat with respect. . . . It has been life and joy for me to come to Christian understandings—I want my readers to share the same, to know the goodness and wisdom of the same Savior who mercifully found me.

3. Enter the hearers’ frame of reference.

I’ve been asked to enter a conversation that they initiated. To do so, I must be willing to speak a foreign language, as it were, to talk in their terms, to answer the questions they are asking. I am willing to speak the language that expresses the experience of people who are outsiders to Christian faith . . . And I am willing to get personal, disclosing who I am as a person. In each answer, in attempting to explain what I believe and do, I start in their world and seek to stay connected to that world—even as I explain the world that I think all of us actually inhabit. I take their questions seriously. I hope that every answer stays on point and answers the question asked—rather than ignoring their questions in order to assert my own predetermined talking points.

4. Shake readers’ habitual frame of reference.

I want to take what is familiar and portray it in a different light. The very things that readers know best actually mean something quite different from what they assume. So, though I take their questions seriously, I reshape the meaning of those questions. I redefine terms. I overturn implicit assumptions. I seek to retell their version of reality to demonstrate how they miss very important things. Not only do they have significant blind spots, but they misconstrue things they take as givens. The things they see most clearly and care about most deeply don’t actually mean what they imagine. I want to arouse dissonance, to rattle the cage, to create a dilemma. So even while speaking in their terms, I am retelling their story in a way that brings fatal flaws, inner contradictions, illusions, and blind spots to light.

5. Portray Christian faith in a fresh, relevant way.

I want them to understand “religion” in ways they’ve never heard or understood before. . . . I assume that they do not know how true Christianity pointedly illumines their questions, explains the people and problems they deal with, and reframes everything they do in trying to be helpful. I want to show and tell better ways of making sense of people. I want to show and tell better and more significant solutions. I want to show and tell better, truer, and more enduring hope. I want to surprise readers with how the gospel of Jesus Christ intercepts who they are and intervenes in what they do.

6. Woo, invite, and open a door for readers and hearers to change their minds.

So I include the reader in almost every paragraph—“This is for you. This is about all of us.” I want a reader to know, “You live in the same world I do. . . .” We live in God’s world—wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or unwillingly. Awaken. Understand yourself within this new, better reality that I am portraying. Understand who you are and what you do in a bright new light. Come to the Lamb of God. . . .

Powlison writes:

A redemptive communication strategy not only engages people winsomely, but also serves a larger purpose. It opens the door to the three stages of a living, lifechanging faith: knowledge, assent, and trust (notitia, assensus, fiducia).

  • Real faith starts with coming to know something.
  • Then I must come to agree that it is true.
  • Finally I must shift the weight of my life onto that truth.

This correlates to three aspects of pastoral communication:

  • informing,
  • convincing, and
  • persuading.

Writers and speakers make a judgment call about the necessary balance between these activities in any piece of communication.

You can read the whole thing here and also see how he actually answers the questions Psychology Today posed to him: David Powlison, “Giving Reasoned Answers to Reasonable Questions,” JBC 28:3 (2014): 2-14.

LOAD MORE
Loading