Redefined evangelism favors gentler approach of nonbelievers
The Dallas Morning News

"The term evangelism conjures up images of sales pitches, manipulation, arguments – all the things we don't want people to do to us," said Jim Henderson, a former self-professed faith healer in Seattle who organizes conferences to train evangelicals. "When you answer the phone at 6 p.m., and it's a telemarketer, the discomfort you feel is the same feeling most people get when they have to witness or when they're witnessed to."

Mr. Henderson is co-founder of Off the Map, a ministry established to help Christians connect with nonbelievers (or, as they're described on Off the Map's Web site, "the people formerly known as lost"). He advises evangelicals to focus not on closing the sale for God, but on the needs of the unconverted.

"There is something hopeful about knowing that God likes you, that God cares about you," he said. "That's the message we are called to preach. And we do it by having coffee with people, asking them how they're doing, focusing our attention on them."

Defining success

A measure of the method's success, he and others said, is whether evangelism helps the believer and the nonbeliever become better human beings.