DR. DAVID GEISLER AND BRIAN HENSON DR. DAVID GEISLER AND BRIAN HENSON
Summary
Instead of becoming defensive and ending up in endless arguments, it is possible to have productive conversations with Latter-day Saints. It may take an adjustment, but by following the LISTEN approach, the Christian evangelist can be more productive and share Christianity in a loving way by creating a more receptive atmosphere.
Introduction
Perhaps you’ve had a couple of people come to your door who claim to be Christian but hold an unorthodox perspective.1 In your conversation, you rush to let the individuals know what is wrong with their views. You may even articulate in a brilliant fashion why those views are dead wrong. But what typically happens after encounters like this?
If a person isn’t ready to hear everything you have to say, you’ll likely never see them again. May we suggest that if you have had an experience like this, it could be a sign that you need to consider a different approach. Jesus Himself understood this dilemma. He confessed to His disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12).
Many times, we “win” an argument with Mormon friends or neighbors, but then they begin to avoid us because we use an argumentative approach. I (David) remember a conversation I had with a Mormon bishop from Washington who sat next to me on a plane. My approach with him was soft and nonthreatening. To my surprise, before he got off the plane, he confessed to me that I was the first evangelical Christian he had ever talked to who wasn’t, in his words, “in my face.”
I also left him to wrestle with a question that he struggled to answer, but the question was worded in a way that didn’t make him unnecessarily defensive. Furthermore, by walking a mile in his shoes, so to speak, I was able to get him to hear and think about an issue that challenged his faith, but I did it without an argument.
A Different Approach
My experience with the Mormon bishop highlights an important paradigm shift that we may need to make in our conversations with Mormons. To begin with, we should think from their perspective. Perhaps we should ask ourselves, “What problems might Mormons have with our traditional Christian faith?”2 You may have heard the proverb, “Never criticize a man before you walk in his shoes.” This is especially good advice for witnessing to Mormons. Once we understand their questions and concerns more clearly, we can offer answers from a correct Christian perspective.
We also need to learn how to both listen better and talk less! As Christians, we have been taught from our youth that we are responsible to proclaim the gospel. Unfortunately, this leaves us at times with little reason to listen. But if we truly believe that these people are victims of the enemy (2 Corinthians 4:4), maybe we should really listen and earn the right to be heard. We also need to truly love them, as Christ taught (Matthew 5:44).
We should also learn how to ask the right questions with the purpose of clarifying their beliefs and gaining a greater understanding of why they believe what they believe. We need to ask questions in a way that doesn’t make the Latter-day Saints unnecessarily defensive, leaving them with no desire to continue the dialogue. With these concerns and cautions in mind, let us suggest an approach that may be fruitful in witnessing to Mormons using the acrostic LISTEN, which is an abbreviated version of the “Conversational Evangelism” approach advocated at Norm Geisler International Ministries.3 The acrostic LISTEN4 stands for the following ingredients to this approach:
Learn Their Story
Invest Time in Them
Search for Gaps
Throw Light on the Conversation
Expose the Gaps
Navigate in the Conversation
Let’s briefly look at each ingredient in more detail and suggest some applications that can help us in our conversations with our Mormon friends.
LISTEN
Sometimes we as Christians are unaware that the most important way to build bridges with Mormons is to hear what they have to say. If we listen carefully, we might glean what they actually believe and have a better idea how to help them take a step closer to the cross. By listening first, we communicate that we want to win them over, not just win an argument. My (David’s) experience with the Mormon bishop left me with the impression that most of those evangelical Christians with whom he spoke were somewhat argumentative. This kind of approach is rarely productive. A better approach would be to first ask a Mormon what he or she believes and listen intently rather than argue against positions a Mormon is supposed to believe.
For example, I (Brian) will ask someone what he or she believes about God. Very rarely does someone say that God used to be a man, as Mormonism’s leaders have taught. That is why we have to listen beyond the label and not assume that in today’s mix-and-match religious culture all Mormons hold to all the beliefs of traditional LDS teaching. Again, the most important thing we can do in our first encounter with a Mormon is LISTEN.
Learn Their Story
If our purpose in a conversation is not just to listen well enough to tear down someone’s beliefs, perhaps we might see a different outcome. In an initial encounter, our listening should be directed at learning their story. Too often we only listen in order to find a chink in the armor, a weakness we can exploit to prove how wrong Mormonism is. What we should focus on first is learning about the Mormons’ spiritual journeys that led them to where they are today. We can ask thought-provoking questions like these:
• Why is your faith so important to you?
• How does your faith help you cope with difficult times?
• How does your faith help you resolve the tension you may sometimes feel that you don’t meet your own personal standards of how you should live?
• How does your faith help you to achieve a sense of purpose and meaning in your life?
If we spend more time getting to know the Mormons with whom we have contact while learning what’s important to them, certainly we will have a better idea of the deeper questions we can ask. But this can only take place after we have earned the right to be heard.
Invest Time in Them
To learn about our friends and their spiritual journeys, we must spend quality time with them. Many faithful Mormons have spent time during their missions knocking on our doors and sharing their faith with us. Shouldn’t we return the favor and invest time in them? Remember that Jesus was a friend of many unbelievers (Matthew 11:10; Luke 7:34); He knew these people well! Jesus also spoke to the crowds in a way that kept their attention even over long periods of time. In the same way, the more we get to know the Mormons who live in our area on a personal level, the more open they may be to continue the conversation. Furthermore, if we do see them as victims of the enemy and not our enemy, maybe we should at least rethink any initial urge to get rid of them quickly when they come to our door!
Search for the Gaps
Once we take the time to really listen to our Mormon friends, learn their stories, and invest time in their lives, our next step can be more fruitful. When we search for the gaps in their beliefs, we are looking for contradictions, outright errors, or areas where their beliefs lack a satisfying or coherent answer. By this, we don’t mean that the moment we detect any gaps, that we immediately point them out! We may not be at a point where we should be asking penetrating questions.
Asking the wrong questions at the wrong time is like walking through a minefield, not knowing where the landmines are placed. Certainly we should ask God for wisdom (James 1:5) to make sure our approach is gracious and “seasoned with salt” (Colossians 4:6). But please remember that some people may not be motivated to change their beliefs until they see that the foundation on which they are resting is not strong enough to hold them up. This in turn may provide the motivation for them to take steps away from their current beliefs. But before we surface these gaps, it is important that we first learn to “hear”5 and recognize the gaps ourselves.
The gaps in the beliefs of your Mormon friends may include their incomplete criteria for truth, the lack of archaeological evidence for the Book of Mormon, or perhaps the belief that God could have once been a man, as both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young taught. You may also find that some Mormons agree with what a Mormon prophet says, but some may not. Make a list in your mind of these gaps while listening very carefully with a discerning spirit. No matter how many gaps you may hear, at this stage it may be more helpful to hold back any questions you may have.
Throw Light on the Conversation
Some Christians, in their encounters with Mormons, ask questions too quickly about the gaps in their beliefs. Can you imagine if we acted the same way with our loved ones, trying to settle a disagreement by pointing out all the things they say that don’t make sense to us? This is a recipe for disaster! Similarly, if the focus of our conversation with our Mormon friend is to merely run through a grocery list of things we find contradictory or offensive about what the LDS Church teaches, our first encounter with them may be the last!
That is why it is so important that whatever gaps we may hear, that we tuck away those potential questions and focus on throwing light on the conversation by clarifying their beliefs. We can do that by simply asking them questions such as, “What do you mean by…?” We cannot overemphasize how important it is to learn to ask that simple question, especially with those who hold non-Christian beliefs.
Mormons use many words that we may need to clarify with them.6 For example, it may be helpful to ask Mormons to define terms like grace, faith, Jesus, Heavenly Father, heaven, works, and Scripture. I (Brian) have discovered over and over that a Mormon will say they are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, just as we do. But they mean something different by these terms than what I as an evangelical Christian understand them to mean. That is why defining the terms (asking, “What do you mean by [blank]?”) is so very important.
You might ask clarifying questions about the nature of God, such as:
• Do you believe the Son of God is eternal? Is He all-powerful?
• Is the Son of God all-knowing in His divine nature like the Father?
• Is God the Father eternal, infinite, all-knowing, and omnipresent?
Expose the Gaps
The next step is to raise their doubt by asking thought-provoking questions. We can use certain words in our questions to minimize the possibility that someone will become unnecessarily defensive. Here are a few phrases you may want to keep in mind no matter what kind of questions you ask, which I (David) find actually work well with almost anyone:
I am curious to know…
Would you agree…?
Have you ever considered…?
Did you know…?
How is it possible…?
Let’s give a few examples of questions you can ask your Mormon friends using these phrases:
• I am curious to know if you think that man’s real problem is that we don’t work hard enough to achieve a better state. Or is it that we have fallen short of the standards of a holy and righteous God?
• Would you agree that our beliefs should never contradict what the Bible teaches?7
• Did you know there are some discrepancies between the teachings of Mormonism and the Bible?8
• How is it possible to have an infinite progression of gods? To explain our own existence, don’t we have to start with an eternal being that is the first cause of everything?
The downside of using thought-provoking questions like these is that they could raise red flags in their minds and end your conversation. That is why it is so important to cultivate the fine art of asking the right question in the right way at the right time.
Navigate in the Conversation
One way we can make sure our questions to Mormons have the greatest impact is to keep in mind the three D’s of Conversational Evangelism: Doubt, Defensiveness, and Desire. We want to ask questions that surface their doubt, minimize their defensiveness, and create a desire to hear more.
For example, to help Mormons see some of their gaps yet desire to continue a conversation, I (Brian) will first explain to Mormons that there is evidence to God’s existence using arguments like the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments.9 Then I’ll explain how we can use history, archaeology, fulfilled messianic prophecies, and the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection to argue for the truth of the Christian faith. Since Mormons also tell me they believe the Bible is true, they usually welcome hearing the arguments for the Bible.
I’ll also ask them if they think the Mormon scriptures have the same amount of evidence. When they begin to say, as they often do, “I feel they are true,” I’ll ask why they think that God would make it so that the Bible can be grounded with reason and evidence, but the Mormon scriptures cannot. In doing this, I am creating a desire in them to hear about apologetics (since they believe they are Christian), while at the same time helping them surface doubts about Mormonism. Keeping the three D’s in mind when speaking with a Mormon may increase the likelihood that they will want to continue the conversation at another time.
Conclusion
To summarize the conversational evangelism approach, the Christian will want to begin by listening to the Mormons, learning their story, investing time in them, and searching for the gaps in their beliefs. Only once these steps have been completed should questions be asked to throw light on the conversation and clarify their beliefs. The final step then is to navigate the conversation using the 3 D’s (Doubt, Defensiveness, and Desire). Here we want to probe further and ask thought-provoking questions that expose the gaps in a way that surfaces doubt yet minimizes any potential defensiveness. We also want to ask questions in a way that creates desire on their part to continue the conversation!
In today’s world, this indirect approach could be especially helpful when speaking with those who have never given themselves permission to question what they have been taught and may be reluctant to engage in a meaningful exchange of ideas. The LISTEN acrostic can lead toward a step in the right direction.
David Geisler (Indian Trail, North Carolina) is the cofounder and president of Norm Geisler International Ministries and adjunct professor at Southern Evangelical Seminary. He coauthored Conversational Evangelism: Connecting with People to Share Jesus (Eugene, OR: Harvest House) with his father Norman Geisler. David is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary (ThM/MABS) and Southern Evangelical Seminary with a DMin in apologetics.
Brian Henson (Matthews, North Carolina) is the director of youth apologetics and evangelism for Norm Geisler International Ministries (NGIM). He received a master’s in biblical archaeology degree from Wheaton College (2001) and earned a second master’s degree in Christian apologetics from Southern Evangelical Seminary (2011). Brian teaches Bible classes at Charlotte Christian School. His Grounded video training series for youth can be found at www.ngim.org.