I'm not sure who here knows who he is, but to those of you who do, here's a copy of the email I sent him because I'm wondering who all here agrees or disagrees with it.
Hello Ray, my name is April and I'm really hoping that you'll get this message. I'm a fellow Christian who evangelizes people and although it warms my heart that you are trying to turn people away from their sins and to Christ, I don't like and agree with the way you're doing it nine times out of ten and I want to explain to you why. You don't have to agree with me, but I hope you will take the time to read this and hear me out first. I have here three things listed that I don't like what you do and why and three things that I personally do and it has actually earned me a lot of success and people never get angry with me or cuss me out. First here are the things that I don't like.
1. You seem to use a whole lot of fear tactics and although I see where you are coming from and understand the concern you have for the lost winding up in Hell, atheists don't respond well to this tactic and I know why because this was used on me before I got saved in another church. The first reason I felt this way is because why should I fear Hell if I don't believe it exists in the first place and it is the exact same thing as the "Boogy Man" coming out to get me.
The second reason this method didn't work on me and why it didn't get me to wanting to know Christ as my own personal Savior is because why should I want to follow a God who will damn me to Hell if I don't believe in Him? It wasn't until it was explained to me that God loves me and doesn't want me to wind up in Hell and that's why He wants me to come to Him that I got saved. All I've heard you say in your videos thus far is that you're afraid of them going to Hell (which is understandable because I don't want anybody to go there either) and that Jesus died for them and paid the penalty for their sins.
I've rarely if ever heard you add why He died in the first place and it's because He loves us and He never even had to die in the first place and He wouldn't have if He didn't. He was even asking to have this cup removed from Him.
2. The second reason I haven't subscribed to you is because I don't like how you don't seem to leave it alone when somebody tells you that they don't want to hear and aren't interested in learning the gospel. The fact that you are planting the seeds for them in my book is great, but if somebody tells you that they don't really want to hear it and you keep chasing them and keep telling them that you love and care about them (although that's great too) isn't going to get you very far.
As much as it pains for me to have to tell you this, sometimes you just have to give up and pray for them and let God do the rest of the work. This also worked for me as I decided I wanted to try and find God on my own once I was just left alone to think about what I knew from my second church now that I didn't have to think that God must not love me very much if He's just going to damn me to Hell if I don't come to Him, because out of context and not knowing that He didn't actually want to do that is exactly what I thought.
3. Finally, the third reason why I haven't subscribed to you has already been mentioned above, but I'll go more into it. You tend to focus more into putting the fear of God into somebody than the love of God. God should be respected and it is in my own personal opinion that He wants to be respected, but I can't think of any mother or father I know that wants their children to be afraid of them. This is also why your tactic never worked on me.
I was so afraid of God that I wanted to run as far away from Him as I possibly could get. It would be nice if you started taking a much kinder and gentler approach and explain that as much as we're all sinners and we need Jesus to save us, He takes absolutely no pleasure in sending people to Hell. I've heard you say that you don't want people to wind up in Hell, but I've never heard you say that God Himself doesn't want us to wind up in Hell and that's why Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross for our sins. Maybe you think that people will just make that assumption on their own, but just like in my case it doesn't always work.
Now here comes the fun part as you have already seen what I have problems with, now I can tell you how you could possibly fix them if you wanted to with how I evangelize people. Here are the three different ways I have personally used to get people to want to know Christ.
1. I have made God sound more relatable, exciting, and entertaining to us in the twenty-first century: Obviously these aren't biblical days that we're living in anymore and even though you don't have to do the exact same thing I do to appeal to people it I'm just using this as an example. Say you want to sell something. If you just start talking about all the negative things about it people aren't going to want to buy that product. So if you just tell people that they're going to go to Hell if they don't come to Christ, more often than not it's probably not going to make them interested about coming to somebody who seems (again without context) to enjoy just damning people to Hell.
How did I fix this issue? I have written stories (it's about Christ living on earth in the twenty-first century and being a rock singer that plays the electric guitar hence the Rock God title for play on words) that although controversial take the gospel and make it funny and entertaining but at the end of the day people are still learning something. It's basically like Schoolhouse Rock (from what I've seen of it anyways) with a Christian element to it. If you want to hear more about this or have any questions I can certainly tell you and answer them the best I can and again you don't have to copy me directly you can certainly have your own ideas to make the concept of God and wanting to get to know Him seem more interesting to people.
(My target audience with this is also a younger audience so it's good to know your audience. It's like the same kind of thing as a contemporary church service.)
2. The second I do when I start to evangelize people is does the person I'm trying to evangelize even want to be evangelized in the first place? If I ask them do you want to know more about Jesus Christ and they say yes then the door is open. If they say no, I pray for them, give up, and move on because like I said before it doesn't do either of us any good.
3. The third thing I do when I evangelize people is I basically just tell them God is crazy about them and if He really had a body today He would NEVER stop hugging and kissing us and wanting to be near us.
Well, I apologize for such a long email because I honestly didn't mean to ramble so long lol however, I seriously hope that you have read and considered what I had to say into making some improvements on how you can talk to people about Christ since I have noticed that it always hasn't wound up the best for you in the end. You seem like you have a good heart and want to help people, but just be careful of how you go about it okay? Because like I said, I was somebody on the other side of that once not wanting to hear anything about Christ until I switched churches and in 2018 I got baptized.
I hope to hear from you soon and hear your thoughts about this. Also, I was born mentally challenged so please try to make things simple for me alright? I seriously want you to succeed with helping people come to Christ so although I debated about sending you this message in fear you wouldn't listen to me or it would start an argument, in the end I decided to because I actually do care about you like you care about everybody else.
Thank you for your time, and in Christ,
April
Here's his YouTube channel for those of you who don't know.
Hello Ray, my name is April and I'm really hoping that you'll get this message. I'm a fellow Christian who evangelizes people and although it warms my heart that you are trying to turn people away from their sins and to Christ, I don't like and agree with the way you're doing it nine times out of ten and I want to explain to you why. You don't have to agree with me, but I hope you will take the time to read this and hear me out first. I have here three things listed that I don't like what you do and why and three things that I personally do and it has actually earned me a lot of success and people never get angry with me or cuss me out. First here are the things that I don't like.
1. You seem to use a whole lot of fear tactics and although I see where you are coming from and understand the concern you have for the lost winding up in Hell, atheists don't respond well to this tactic and I know why because this was used on me before I got saved in another church. The first reason I felt this way is because why should I fear Hell if I don't believe it exists in the first place and it is the exact same thing as the "Boogy Man" coming out to get me.
The second reason this method didn't work on me and why it didn't get me to wanting to know Christ as my own personal Savior is because why should I want to follow a God who will damn me to Hell if I don't believe in Him? It wasn't until it was explained to me that God loves me and doesn't want me to wind up in Hell and that's why He wants me to come to Him that I got saved. All I've heard you say in your videos thus far is that you're afraid of them going to Hell (which is understandable because I don't want anybody to go there either) and that Jesus died for them and paid the penalty for their sins.
I've rarely if ever heard you add why He died in the first place and it's because He loves us and He never even had to die in the first place and He wouldn't have if He didn't. He was even asking to have this cup removed from Him.
2. The second reason I haven't subscribed to you is because I don't like how you don't seem to leave it alone when somebody tells you that they don't want to hear and aren't interested in learning the gospel. The fact that you are planting the seeds for them in my book is great, but if somebody tells you that they don't really want to hear it and you keep chasing them and keep telling them that you love and care about them (although that's great too) isn't going to get you very far.
As much as it pains for me to have to tell you this, sometimes you just have to give up and pray for them and let God do the rest of the work. This also worked for me as I decided I wanted to try and find God on my own once I was just left alone to think about what I knew from my second church now that I didn't have to think that God must not love me very much if He's just going to damn me to Hell if I don't come to Him, because out of context and not knowing that He didn't actually want to do that is exactly what I thought.
3. Finally, the third reason why I haven't subscribed to you has already been mentioned above, but I'll go more into it. You tend to focus more into putting the fear of God into somebody than the love of God. God should be respected and it is in my own personal opinion that He wants to be respected, but I can't think of any mother or father I know that wants their children to be afraid of them. This is also why your tactic never worked on me.
I was so afraid of God that I wanted to run as far away from Him as I possibly could get. It would be nice if you started taking a much kinder and gentler approach and explain that as much as we're all sinners and we need Jesus to save us, He takes absolutely no pleasure in sending people to Hell. I've heard you say that you don't want people to wind up in Hell, but I've never heard you say that God Himself doesn't want us to wind up in Hell and that's why Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross for our sins. Maybe you think that people will just make that assumption on their own, but just like in my case it doesn't always work.
Now here comes the fun part as you have already seen what I have problems with, now I can tell you how you could possibly fix them if you wanted to with how I evangelize people. Here are the three different ways I have personally used to get people to want to know Christ.
1. I have made God sound more relatable, exciting, and entertaining to us in the twenty-first century: Obviously these aren't biblical days that we're living in anymore and even though you don't have to do the exact same thing I do to appeal to people it I'm just using this as an example. Say you want to sell something. If you just start talking about all the negative things about it people aren't going to want to buy that product. So if you just tell people that they're going to go to Hell if they don't come to Christ, more often than not it's probably not going to make them interested about coming to somebody who seems (again without context) to enjoy just damning people to Hell.
How did I fix this issue? I have written stories (it's about Christ living on earth in the twenty-first century and being a rock singer that plays the electric guitar hence the Rock God title for play on words) that although controversial take the gospel and make it funny and entertaining but at the end of the day people are still learning something. It's basically like Schoolhouse Rock (from what I've seen of it anyways) with a Christian element to it. If you want to hear more about this or have any questions I can certainly tell you and answer them the best I can and again you don't have to copy me directly you can certainly have your own ideas to make the concept of God and wanting to get to know Him seem more interesting to people.
(My target audience with this is also a younger audience so it's good to know your audience. It's like the same kind of thing as a contemporary church service.)2. The second I do when I start to evangelize people is does the person I'm trying to evangelize even want to be evangelized in the first place? If I ask them do you want to know more about Jesus Christ and they say yes then the door is open. If they say no, I pray for them, give up, and move on because like I said before it doesn't do either of us any good.
3. The third thing I do when I evangelize people is I basically just tell them God is crazy about them and if He really had a body today He would NEVER stop hugging and kissing us and wanting to be near us.
Well, I apologize for such a long email because I honestly didn't mean to ramble so long lol however, I seriously hope that you have read and considered what I had to say into making some improvements on how you can talk to people about Christ since I have noticed that it always hasn't wound up the best for you in the end. You seem like you have a good heart and want to help people, but just be careful of how you go about it okay? Because like I said, I was somebody on the other side of that once not wanting to hear anything about Christ until I switched churches and in 2018 I got baptized.
I hope to hear from you soon and hear your thoughts about this. Also, I was born mentally challenged so please try to make things simple for me alright? I seriously want you to succeed with helping people come to Christ so although I debated about sending you this message in fear you wouldn't listen to me or it would start an argument, in the end I decided to because I actually do care about you like you care about everybody else.
Thank you for your time, and in Christ,
April
Here's his YouTube channel for those of you who don't know.
