Gospel appointment: Hearing their story, telling your story, leads to God’s story

The gospel is the greatest gift we can share with the individuals God brings into our lives. As precious as this gift is, it can at times be scary and intimidating to share our faith.

Kyle Hall, who serves with Christian Challenge as a regional catalyst and campus missionary at Northern Arizona University, also leads the Challenge evangelism team, made up of campus missionaries and volunteers. This team endeavors to equip and resource students so they can share their faith and see their campuses changed.

What is a gospel appointment?

“Gospel appointments are a simple, casual and a relational way to share Jesus with anyone,” Hall said. “We train students in Christian Challenge to be prepared to share their faith with anyone they encounter through a gospel appointment. This could be a friend, roommate, classmate, family member or anyone else around them.”

For Christian Challenge, this is the main method used to share the gospel with college students throughout the state.

“Anyone — college student or not — can be trained to have gospel appointments with people they know,” Hall said. “You meet for lunch or coffee. They are effective because they are easy to plan, prepare for and grow out of existing relationships — whether a long-term friendship or someone you recently met. Once you have done your first gospel appointment and built confidence, it gets easier to do more.”

Gospel appointments are effective because both parties involved know you are meeting to talk about your religious background, and neither is surprised when the conversation moves to Jesus. Setting up a gospel appointment is as easy as asking something like, “Are you free later this week to get lunch? I would love to get to know more about you and your spiritual background and tell you more about what Jesus did in my life.”

Sharing stories

The three core elements of a gospel appointment are their story, your story and God’s story.

Their story consists of their background in anything spiritual — what they currently believe, what kind of religious teachings they grew up with, if they went to church, etc. Most people like to tell you about themselves, and it can be helpful to understand the perspective they are coming from.

Your story is your personal testimony of how you came to faith in Jesus. It should be relatively short, perhaps one to three minutes. Your story can be useful in illustrating how God’s transformation has occurred in you, and how you responded to the call to faith and repentance.

God’s story is communicating the core gospel message. You could use a tool to illustrate this, such as “3 Circles” in the Life on Mission phone app, or you could share a passage from Scripture that illustrates salvation, such as John 3 where Jesus tells us that we must be born again.

The invitation

The last and most important part of the gospel appointment is inviting your friend to respond to Jesus. Ask if they want to give their life to Jesus and follow Him through faith and repentance.

Even if your friend doesn’t come to faith that day, you may have opportunities to keep meeting with them and sharing Jesus. If they do come to faith, you can become their main mentor and help them grow in their faith.

Gospel appointments are not just a method for college students to use on their campus but a great resource for any believer to share their faith.

Lainee Pegelow, a freelance writer and photographer, is the missions and communications catalyst for Christian Challenge AZ. She is a member of Challenge Church, Flagstaff.