We also invited Holly to come to our adults’ small group, which meets at our home for lunch after Sunday church service. So Holly came to our home. That day we had a large BBQ for all the families at our church. Holly was intrigued. Being a new immigrant to Australia, she also wanted to learn how to host a BBQ at her own place. So we offered to help her and supplied her with our BBQ.

So Holly hosted a BBQ at her place. She invited families from our church’s playgroup and families from a different (non-church) playgroup that she also attended. Here, most of the families were non-believers. As a result, many non-believers were able to meet believers at the BBQs, chat, and form new friendships. The flow-on effects from Holly’s BBQ have been astounding. For example, one couple that we met at the BBQ has become our friends. Not only that, they are now starting to attend a local church with another Christian couple that they met at Holly’s BBQ.

As another example, shortly after Holly’s BBQ one of the couples suffered a tragedy—the husband was injured in a motorbike accident and became a quadriplegic. As a result of that accident, the couple was able to meet our church’s pastor and his wife who suffered a similar tragedy—our pastor was also in a motorcycle accident and is now himself a quadriplegic. And as another result of the accident, the couple have started coming to my wife’s midweek Bible study group with other mothers.

Can you see what has happened? At least three couples are now checking out Jesus, all because my wife Steph stopped to help Holly at a shopping mall a few years ago. This is not what Steph had in mind at the time. Back then she was only going out of her way to help a distressed shopper. She was being Jesus to the other woman. But that one act triggered a set of unforeseen, tangential, sequences of events that resulted in evangelism. This is exactly what Nassim Nicholas Taleb would call a “Black Swan” moment.

Maybe we can do the same thing. In addition to our efforts to do evangelism—i.e., create opportunities for evangelism—we need also to be Jesus, and evangelism opportunities might come and find us tangentially in unforeseen and exciting ways.

Conclusion

In much of the Bible, we see God’s people working out how to be foreigners in a foreign land. In the Old Testament, we have at least Joseph, Moses, Daniel, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Jonah. And in the New Testament, we have Peter in Caesarea and Paul in his missionary journeys—particularly before foreign powers (e.g., Agrippa) and audiences (e.g., the Areopagus in Athens). It seems that a key part of our identity as God’s people is knowing how to be foreigners (cf. 1 Pet. 1:1).

Interestingly, part of being a foreigner is also knowing how to speak up when it matters. On the one hand, this is never an easy thing to do. For example, Moses worried that he wasn’t gifted enough to speak (Exod. 4:10). Nehemiah was very much afraid of the King’s anger (Neh. 2:1-3). Esther similarly feared for her life (Esther 4:11). On the other hand, often this is exactly why God has placed us in these situations, so that we can speak up. Mordecai’s words to Esther might also be for us: “Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14).

Perhaps “For Such a Time as This” can be our motto. We live in interesting times. Our friends are more skeptical than ever. In much of the Western world, we are now post-Christian, post-churched, post-reached, post-millennial, and post-anything-else-that-we-can-think-of! But these are also exciting times. Jesus promised his followers that one day we would have to speak up for him (cf. Luke 21:12-13). What we might think of as threats to our witness are actually God-given opportunities to speak on his behalf. Hopefully the above ten tips might free you up and empower you in your identity and activity as a witness for Christ.