I like to listen to Seth Godin’s podcast, Akimbo, and heard an interesting one the other day called “Benefit of the Doubt”. In this episode, Seth talks about the various ways we give people the benefit of the doubt, or not. He touched on:
When we give someone, or something, the benefit of the doubt, we offer trust.
Sometimes, we don’t know who or what to trust, so our brain will use shortcuts. For example, banks will make their physical buildings look solid and classic, so that we will find them solid and trustworthy.
We are most likely to give the benefit of the doubt to our friends.
Seth is a marketing and technology guru, and people give him the benefit of the doubt all the time. I did, by giving my time to listen to his podcast! I started thinking about this in terms of church and church evangelism.
A scary word, evangelism, that our brain takes certain short-cuts to give us associations that often lead to the high pressure sales techniques and dire warnings of hell and damnation. What if, instead, we thought about giving evangelism the benefit of the doubt?
Various studies have shown that 70-85% of people who start attending church do so because someone invited them. Not because they saw a slick marketing campaign, or Facebook ad, or saw church in the yellow pages (remember those!). At Nativity, some of our folks started coming because a friend either invited them directly, or they saw something posted on social media about our church and wanted to check it out.
When I think about offering the benefit of the doubt, I realize that often times I am suspicious when I think someone is trying to convince me of something or sell me something. Part of why I felt a call to ordained ministry was to talk to people about Jesus, and ironically, I think the image of the collar and being attached to an institution of the church makes people suspicious of me – NOT giving me the benefit of the doubt. They are perhaps worried, because their brain does that shortcut thing that everyone else’s does, that I am going to offer the scary evangelism techniques described above.
The best form of evangelism is to be a friend. To listen and be trustworthy. Be worthy of the benefit of the doubt. Someone you know might need a community like Nativity that welcomes everyone and believes we are all beloved children of God. Someone you know might be searching for the Good News of Jesus and to put down their burdens and rest in God’s love. Someone you know might need to bring their suspicions, their doubts, their hard questions to a community that not just tolerates that, but welcomes it.
Maybe that person would be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. You’ll never know if you don’t ask.