One of the common experiences of growing up in a Baptist church in the south was hearing preachers tell stories of their recent evangelistic conversations. The stories would generally begin with the preacher telling how he met someone in a restaurant or on a plane. The stories tended to have similar arcs. They would begin by describing the other person as someone the preacher was unlikely to run into in their daily activities. The conversation was begun with an intriguing question and eventually ended with the person praying to receive Christ as their savior. At their best, these stories were intended to encourage the church to take every opportunity to share Jesus wherever they went and with whomever they encountered. At their worst, these stories were thinly veiled boasts of spiritual greatness and had the effect of creating the feeling of inferiority and ineptitude in those listening in the pews. I genuinely believe the stories were true, yet I suspect the presentation was skewed. Skewed, in that, intended or not, the way these stories were told seemed to communicate that every conversation the preacher had ended in a successful conversion story. I doubt that was the reality for the preachers of my youth, and it has certainly not been true for me in my experience.

I do try to take every opportunity to share Jesus wherever I go and with whomever I encounter. This has indeed led to unexpected opportunities to share Jesus with strangers. And I have experienced great joy when these encounters have led to someone confessing in faith Jesus as their Lord. But the truth is that most of these encounters have not ended in a sermon illustration-worthy confession of faith but rather a rejection of my plea to come and know Jesus. What follows is the account of just such an encounter and how it has changed how I think about evangelism.

I have often heard it said that sheep are dumb. Generally, this assessment of the deficient intelligence of the ovine mind is used to explain the propensity of sheep to wander off from the herd and become lost. The Bible often uses sheep as a metaphor for God’s people. As such, when biblical passages are taught that deal with the imagery of sheep and their shepherds the negative assessment of being dumb and stupid is often applied both to the sheep and to Christians. This negative description of sheep is so commonly used that it gives the impression that the biblical perspective of sheep is universally negative.