Sharing the gospel is easy

An easy way I’ve found to share the gospel with others is to include a booklet or book along with a gift for a special occasion.

At Easter, I gave each girl in my youth small group a gift bag of goodies, including a copy of The Story that Matters. As an incentive to actually read it, I told them I’d give them a small gift card if they read it and could come the following week and answer several questions from the book.

One Christmas, we included with our usual gift of goodies to the neighbours a copy of By This Name.

At Halloween, we’ve given out paper bags with chips, candy and a copy of The Story that Matters.

Know a new mother? A gift of some cute clothes, diapers and a copy of The Lamb can be very meaningful.

When giving the books to people as part of a gift, we always try to make sure we’re generous with our other gifts. We want to present the gospel amidst generosity and we never want the person to walk away feeling like they were somehow shortchanged — “All they gave me was this book.”

What happens with those books? Well, often we never find out. But there have been times when we’ve been blessed to get feedback. One young girl received a copy during a children’s program at church. She had read the book What are Christmas and Easter All About? several times on her own during the week and was so proud of her accomplishment. Her attendance at the children’s program was her one exposure to the Bible’s message. I was thrilled to know that she now understood the basics of the gospel message.

Of course, if you share enough books around, you might have a book thrown back into your yard, apparently not appreciated, as once happened to us. But other than that once, the responses have been positive and appreciative.

Whatever the case, we are thankful we have materials we can so easily use to share the gospel with a variety of people in many different ways.