“Sharing our faith is not about winning arguments; it’s about winning hearts,” believes Preston Perry, “you don’t need a theology degree, or to know the whole bible by chapter and verse, to tell the truth of the gospel to other people.”
Preston Perry is a poet, performance artist, and apologist raised in Chicago. Videos on his YouTube channel regularly gain hundreds of thousand views, and he now lives in Atlanta, USA, with his wife, the spoken word artist, Jackie Hill Perry, and their four children.
Summer 2024, Proximity sent Claud Jackson to chat to Preston about evangelism.
Preston believes we tend to overcomplicate apologetics and evangelism, and so in his new book, ‘How to tell the truth,’ he shares his own journey to faith, and his experiences over the years sharing faith with others, while offering wisdom and advice to make it less daunting.
Growing up in the states, in a neighbourhood where drugs, guns, and racism were widespread, he tells the stories of people who shaped his life, including the death of a childhood friend, the faith of his grandmother, and the street-preaching of an ex-gangster. This isn’t a memoir, however, and the stories are told more to illustrate the importance of understanding where people are coming from. Preston is big on listening as well as talking, and he believes genuine connection and conversation must outweigh any desire to win theological arguments. Sometimes evangelism is taught like a sales pitch, with the sinners’ prayer acting like the closing of a deal. This is not how Preston feels about sharing faith. We must see the person in front of us, with their own life story, rather than as a project or deal to be closed. When we understand that we’re just planting seeds, we will lose the feeling of failure when somebody doesn’t react as we would wish them to. After all, it’s not about winning arguments, but reaching hearts. We honour Jesus by honouring those around us.
But what about evangelising in lower socio-economic areas? Does Perry have any thoughts around apologetics in urban contexts, especially when the church sometimes portrays money as blessing, and unwittingly promotes a theology of upward mobility, in other words: to make it, is to make it out.
Preston reminds us Jesus left the richness of heaven to dwell in the poverty of earth. Nazareth wasn’t a resting place for the elite, it had a reputation for the opposite. Essentially, Jesus was raised in the ‘hood, and even though he did not have a place to rest his head, he was about his father’s business. If the gospel doesn’t work in the ‘hood, it doesn’t work anywhere.
Before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, Preston and his wife, Jackie, co-led a church in a poorer neighbourhood of West Side Chicago, where he and his evangelism team would serve the streets in both word and deed. Sharing truth would walk hand in hand with hospitality. Conversations would happen over good food, as his team would cook and feed hungry neighbours, as well as sometimes helping financially with those struggling to pay their rent. This all recalls the teaching of Salvation army founder, William Booth, who famously said, “You cannot warm the hearts of people with God’s love if they have an empty stomach and cold feet.”
It’s good to be reminded of the necessity of evangelism. Our income-deprived neighbourhoods might be short of opportunity and resource, but they should not be lacking in chances to hear the good news. After all, Jesus prioritised good news to the poor over any other social class.
The last few years have seen a quote attributed to St Francis of Assisi do the rounds, ‘Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.’ The sentiment being that our lives should proclaim the good news more than our voices. For those of us on estates, however, we want to be more than good neighbours or holy social workers, we want to be sharers of the gospel. If we hope our communities are going to slip into the kingdom through the door marked ‘nothing to declare,’ we are selling both our neighbours and Jesus short. Our estates need love and justice, healing and joy, which doesn’t ultimately come from governmental reform, but from the kingdom of God. Therefore, we are not just filling empty church seats by evangelising, we are filling our communities with the love of God. If we believe that church renewal begins from the margins, we must take the good news to the margins. And yes, our lives should be on message, but so should our mouths. Sorry St Francis.
Finally, it’s worth remembering Jesus went to people in their own communities, he attended their homes, celebrated at their parties, used their language, and spoke about things that they could relate to. He didn’t leave his personality at home when switching into evangelism mode. He didn’t hand out invites to the outreach barbecue at church. Nor did he hand out tracts or stand on boxes in town with a microphone and an attitude. Our sharing of faith needs to be less of a sales pitch and more of a conversation. Listening as well as speaking. As Preston Perry says, we honour God when we honour people. It’s said a Bishop of Lindisfarne, who died in 651, evangelised everyone he met by asking, ‘Do you love God?’ If they said, ‘yes’, he would say, ‘then go love him some more.’ If they said ‘No,’ he would say, ‘Then can I tell you about Jesus?’ It’s that simple. In your own way go and encourage your neighbourhood to love God more, and tell those who don’t know him, the life-transforming story of Jesus.
Our thanks to Preston and Claud for the interview. Grab a copy of Preston Perry’s book ‘How to tell the truth’.