I had one of our regular Jehovah’s Witness visits this morning. There must be a Kingdom Hall nearby because they’re constantly at our door. We ususally send them away with a polite ‘no thanks’.
This morning was different. The gentleman who knocked on our door stood there smiling. Not usually the case. He saw that I was dressed in my bike gear and asked if I was just about to head off to work.
I told him I was and he started telling me that he used to ride his bike to work. (He looked as if he’d been retired a few years.) He then asked if I had showering facilities at work. He asked how far I ride. He told me where he used to work and I commented on the big hill he would have had to climb to get there.
We had a short but very interesting conversation. He paid attention when I told him I wasn’t interested in him reading his Bible to me and instead told me that I should look up a certain passage when I got to work or when I returned home. (I had already told him that I read the Bible – and the BIKE FOR BIBLES emblazoned across my cycling gear probably made him believe me.) He then left it at that without being pushy. I looked up the passage. (Romans 15:4)
He would never have swayed my thinking to agree with the theology of the Jehovah’s Witnesses nor would he change my thoughts on the majority of the JW followers …. but he did change my view on just one of them.
I have no doubts that this guy would be one of their best evangelists because he was interested in what interested me. He wasn’t pushy. He was friendly. He didn’t simply try to push his own agenda.
I waved goodbye to him as I cycled down my street later and saw him returning to his car.
Who says we can’t learn anything from the JWs?
Posted by Rodney Olsen
Do you think some of your friends would enjoy reading Who said Jehovah?? Please use the buttons below to share the post. Thanks.
thanks for visiting my site.
I popped on over to see who visited me, and I read this post. Excellent point!
It got me thinking about how we come across to them… Are we interested in them as people?
Anyway, great post! Thanks again!
wow. this is one I’ve never heard of, but brings up a good point for those of us who are ‘evangelistic’ about anything else. It pays to at least look like you want to know the person… and it pays even more in the spiritual realm to actually want to know them.
This is a topic I toss back and forth with a friend of mine: do greeters and welcomers at church actually do the job we have them there for, or is it shallow and inauthentic, because they are there simply to shake your hand and let you know that you were noticed?
The church greeters thing is a difficult thing. We went to a church for about a month many years ago that had excellent greeters. The ladies would warmly shake my hand and give Pauline a welcoming kiss. (She found it a bit weird getting a kiss from someone you don’t know.)
It all fell apart at the end of the service when no one talked to us. They had their own little holy huddles and we weren’t part of them.
It was obvious that the greeters greeted us because their ‘ministry roster’ told them to do so.
Thankfully the church we’re part of now makes sure that people are spoken to before and after the service. On the way in it’s by the welcome team on roster but after the service it’s heaps of people from the congregation because they want to make sure the visitors are truly welcome.