EDITOR'S NOTE: I published this story last year. It is so telling, I may publish it each year. This story transformed my evangelism. I hope it blesses you and compels you, as it did me, to reevaluate our thoughts on and commitment to evangelism. Enjoy.
How Rosaria Champagne Butterfield met Jesus is an incredible story. This radical unbeliever despised Christians and didn’t believe Jesus was real, according to her story published on the Christianity TodayÂą website in their February 7 issue. She calls her story My Train Wreck Conversion. “Stupid. Pointless. Menacing,” she said. “That’s what I thought of Christians and their god Jesus.”
Her story, despite being an amazing work of God in her life, is not what grabbed my attention. Ken Smith, a pastor at the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church, wrote Dr. Butterfield a letter. The lesbian radical wrote a vehement assault on Christianity in a local Syracuse, New York paper in 1997 after Promise Keepers came to town.
The story drew both fan mail and hate mail, but Ken Smith’s letter, Butterfield said, was engaging, not condemning, not judgmental. “And he didn’t invite me to church,” she said.
THAT’S what caught my attention.
He didn’t invite her to church.
In a few words, Butterfield and Smith and his wife, Floy, became friends.
“They entered my world,” she said in her story. “They met my friends. We did book exchanges. We talked openly about sexuality and politics. They did not act as if such conversations were polluting them. They did not treat me like a blank slate. When we ate together, Ken prayed in a way I had never heard before. His prayers were intimate. Vulnerable. He repented of his sin in front of me. He thanked God for all things. Ken’s God was holy and firm, yet full of mercy. And because Ken and Floy did not invite me to church, I knew it was safe to be friends.”
When I first moved to Alabama and met new people the first thing many of them asked me was, “Do you have a church home?” Regardless of my answer, they’d invite me to church.
Ken Smith, in my opinion, employed the best and most effective evangelism tool–friendship. Ken and Floy knew what Jesus meant when He taught His disciples to “Love One Another.” As a result of their friendship, Dr. Butterfield made a conscious and independent decision to go to church, where she met and accepted Jesus Christ.
She calls her story, “My Train Wreck Conversion”. I urge you to read her full story on the Christianity Today website. Or watch the video version below.
She has written a book about her life and her conversion experience, “The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert.”
We truly serve an Awesome God, and we never know when, how or who He will draw someone unto Himself.
¹The Christianity Today website story © 2013 by Christianity Today, My Train Wreck Conversion, was the inspiration for this blog post. Direct quotes from her story appear in quotation marks in the post.
From time to time I share some of your posts with my pastor. This one definitely qualified. One of the best yet!
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Thank you, Ronn. God bless
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Great story, and a hearty AMEN. Real friendship evangelism. When you show them that you really want to love them as friends, with no hidden agenda to change them or fix them, the evangelism will happen naturally, as it did with her.
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As your report indicates, a ministry of friendship can make a difference. For a statement regarding the eternal benefits of friendship go here: http://www.christianityetc.org/friendship.php .
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Thank you, Bob. Loved the friendship story. Particularly liked, and agree with, your thoughts, “GOOD friendships are not bought or sold. Although they can’t be bought or sold, they can be given away. That is usually how they are received and experienced. The attraction may start with a friendly word or gesture or deed. It may be strengthened by some common shared experiences of fellowship, social fun, or even personal suffering. In a short while it may be recognized by both individuals that they are becoming good friends.” Looked like lots of other interesting topics on your navigation bar at the left. I hope to get back there soon to soak up some more good writing. Thank you so much for sharing. God bless.
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