“Sometimes you just need to stick a rock in their shoe.”

I’ve been chewing on this idea since I heard Thaddeus Williams shared it during his session at a TruthXchange Think Tank. Williams was speaking to the idea that sometimes the best thing we can do for those pursuing relationships outside the parameters set by God is to change the categories.

As his argument goes (and it’s a good one), the problem in our relationships is that we put these God-sized expectations upon those we pursue. And when they fail us—and they will, because the weight of our expectations are too great—it’s not simply that our relationship is over, it’s that our “god” has let us down. But we keep repeating the cycle, over and over again, hoping that the next time will be different (though it never is).

This is how you stick a rock in someone’s shoe.

What’s helpful about this approach is that it understands evangelism to be a slow process, something Jerram Barrs addresses in Learning Evangelism from Jesus. Commenting on the interaction between Jesus and the lawyer (or Bible teacher) in Luke 10:25-37, Barrs explains that Jesus was content “to send this man away without the message of the gospel. Instead of the good news of salvation, Jesus leaves this teacher with some issues to ponder in his heart” (61).

In other words, Jesus was content to stick a rock in his shoe.

This, again is helpful for us to keep in mind in personal evangelism: sometimes the least helpful thing we can do for a person is come out full tilt with a full-frontal gospel assault. For those whose hearts have not been sufficiently prepared by the Lord, this may only serve to drive them further away. Instead, there are times when we would be wise to take a different approach—one that gets people thinking (and perhaps even annoys them) as they wrestle with an idea or a question.

Evangelism is often a slow process; sometimes it’s enough to stick a rock in someone’s shoe, and see what God does with it.