Not a custard shop. Though I do like custard, too. But I digress.

Back to the matter at hand. I’m certainly not saying that we shouldn’t engage strangers with the Gospel, if the opportunity naturally presents itself. And I’m also not talking about people—like you say, Keith—who engage the Gospel of their own volition.

Maybe I’m just defining “cold-contact evangelism” more narrowly, in a way that does not include the two examples above. But I don’t want to say that it’s finally just a matter of, “Whatever you do, do it well.” Because I think there’s a whole class of very common evangelistic practices out there that simply cannot be done well. And the sad irony is, those are the very practices that many Christians feel guilty for not doing.

We could discuss for a long time which practices fall into that class, because, again, I don’t think there’s a hard line between appropriate and inappropriate. I just think it’s better to shy away from that line altogether (wherever it finally is), and do evangelism in the context of genuine relationship—whether that genuine relationship is formed over three minutes or three years.

One more quote from Packer. I think he gets it spot-on. If you read only one thing I’ve posted in this whole conversation, this should be it:

Personal evangelism needs normally to be founded on friendship. You are not usually justified in choosing the subject of conversation with another till you have already begun to give yourself to him in friendship and established a relationship with him in which he feels that you respect him, and are interested in him, and are treating him as a human being, and not just as some kind of ‘case’.

With some people, you may establish such a relationship in five minutes, whereas with others it may take months. But the principle remains the same. The right to talk intimately to another person about the Lord Jesus Christ has to be earned, and you earn it by convincing him that you are his friend, and really care about him.

And therefore the indiscriminate buttonholing, the intrusive barging in to the privacy of other people’s souls, the thick-skinned insistence on expounding the things of God to reluctant strangers who are longing to get away—these modes of behaviour, in which strong and loquacious personalities have sometimes indulged in the name of personal evangelism, should be written off as a travesty of personal evangelism. Impersonal evangelism would be a better name for them!

In fact, rudeness of this sort dishonours God; moreover, it creates resentment, prejudices people against the Christ whose professed believers act so objectionably. The truth is that real personal evangelism is very costly, just because it demands of us a really personal relationship with the other man. We have to give ourselves in honest friendship to people, if ever our relationship with them is to reach the point at which we are justified in choosing to talk to them about Christ, and can speak to them about their own spiritual needs without being either discourteous or offensive.

If you wish to do personal evangelism, then—and I hope you do; you ought to—pray for the gift of friendship. A genuine friendliness is in any case a prime mark of the man who is learning to love his neighbour as himself. (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, 81-82)

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