Break through the barriers that keep you from witnessing! (The 4 Sound Barriers)

Sharing the gospel involves breaking 4 different “sound barriers.” This concept is adapted from various CCC resources. They are called sound barriers because each involves your need to speak. Each barrier represents a real point in every conversation where you will be tempted to give in to fear and back down. It is vitally important to analyze where you are at in a conversation and trust Him to cross the next sound barrier.
 Trusting Him is the foundation. Understand these barriers but go in a context of prayer, filled and controlled by His Spirit. Then, cross each of these barriers.

Sound Barrier #1 – Meeting someone and initiating a conversation. This can be done in a natural way (ex. Ask a question of someone you are near at some location - like asking, “What’s the best item on this menu?” at a coffee shop or restaurant). 
After meeting someone, asking questions about them is a natural way to keep a conversation going. 
This can be done using various ministry tools - like a short spiritual interest survey (ex. Ask, “do you have a couple of minutes for a quick spiritual interest survey?”) or the Soularium.
 Using a tool like these naturally gets you through the 1st 2 barriers instantly. 


Sound Barrier #2 – Moving from a general conversation to a spiritual conversation. 
Once you are talking with someone about general topics (the weather, news, hobbies, etc.) it is easy to transition to a spiritual conversation by asking thoughtful questions. 
Ex. If you’re talking about the news and the bad in the world you could easily ask what their hope is. 


Sound Barrier #3 – Moving from a spiritual conversation to the gospel.
 From a spiritual conversation you can easily transition to the gospel by asking another transition question like, “what has been your experience with Christianity?”
 From there it is very easy to continue into a presentation of the gospel. 


Sound Barrier #4 – Moving from the gospel to a decision. No presentation of the gospel is complete without asking them to respond to Christ’s message. Most good tools will include this (ex. “The Know God Personally” booklet concludes Principle 4 by asking the person where they’re at and where they’d like to be and then telling them how to get there). Whatever tool or method you use, make sure to convey the fact that they have a decision to make.

Those are the barriers. Don't get duped by the 10 evangelism lies either. If you practice working through each of these barriers you will quickly find yourself sharing the gospel fearlessly and often! For more info on breaking through the barriers, check out the MP3 from the Nightvision concert evangelism workshop below and get the notes from that workshop here.



Also, here's the "Gabriel" video one more time. It kind of illustrates each of these barriers and using tools to get through them (it is in spanish though!!!).



Get 21 new evangelism ideas here.
Get 23 recent evangelism stories here.