8 Evangelism Lessons From a Former Lesbian Youll Never Forget

By Nicholas McDonald

Dr. Butterfield is a former lesbian and literature professor at Syracuse University,

and is now a Christian mother married to a pastor in the Reformed Presbyterian
Church. In the interview, she shares the story of her unlikely conversion and
speaks frankly with Christians about how we can be better witnesses.

Here are some of my favorite quotes, organized into lessons I want to put
into practice:

1. Be patient

Rosaria describes the attitude of the pastor who reached out to her, and her first
night having dinner at his house:
They also didnt do two of the things that are in the standard instructional book
namely, share the gospel and invite someone to church. They didnt do either of
those things. I trusted them because they did not do those things. I did not want a
kind of relationship in which I was expected to change and give up things that I
dearly believed in and dearly held
They didnt treat me as a blank slate: OK, heres someone who needs the gospel,
lets get her through these points before we get her home. They seemed more
interested in having a long relationship with me We started to become friends,
genuine friends.
Good evangelists are patient; were not trying to rush people into decisions, were
coming alongside them as a genuine friend who cares.

2. Be polite

Attitude is everything.

Dr. Butterfield describes the letters she received after publishing a critical article
regarding Promise Keepers, and the one letter that stood out:

The responses tended to be of two kinds. I had a tray for fan-mail and a tray for
hate-mail.
And then I had a letter from a pastor, Ken Smith, which wasnt nasty, it was just
questioning. So I didnt know what tray to put it in. Some of those questions, I had
thought we had already dispensed with. But he had written in such a gracious way
that I was intrigued by it
.The manner in which we introduce the gospel is at least as important as what we
say.
3. Be probing

Butterfield describes the contents of the letter as questions that intrigued her:
It had some questions that no one had ever asked me in my life. He asked
whether I had considered the canonicity of the Biblethat it contained every genre
that we taught at the university. Canonicity and genre were literary terms I was
familiar with. There were also questions about my well-being. They were genuine.
And then there were questions about what I believed about God, and what I
thought He thought about all this.
Good evangelism almost always starts with good, genuine questions. Just look at
the life of Jesus!
Will Metzger, in his book Tell the Truth, describes three layers of questions:
1. Common interest questions
2. Value questions (hopes, dreams, aspirations)
3. Belief questions.
We need to ask good questions on all three levels to evangelize to the whole
person.
4. Be prayerful
When Rosaria first set foot in church, she was impressed that the people of the
church were on their knees for her:
What struck me is that what this church had been doing was praying for me
faithfully. These are now my friends, and they shared with me that it was easier for
them to be disgusted with a person like me than to pray for me

The church went from being a cleaned up, homeschooling kind of church to being a
church with a lot of broken people.
If conversion is regeneration, none of our words can sufficiently do the job. We
need the power of the Holy Spirit to break through.
When was the last time lost souls made their way into the prayer bulletin at your
church?

5. Be plain
Several times, Butterfield pleaded with Christians to quit acting like we had it all
together, starting with the first prayer she heard that made an impression on her:
He prayed a prayer that asked for forgiveness of sin, and not just a general prayer
but one with specificsKen prayed for forgiveness for his carelessness of speech,
for example, and these made me think of myself. Forgetting to bring a meal to
someone
Churches need to share not only their resources, but their needs: Please pray for
me in my lust; please pray for me in my bitterness, Ive never forgiven so and so
We would like to know that there are people who struggle with hard things: Were
all cleaned up, but dont buy it
Non-Christians need to see that we are not people whove gotten it together, but
whove fallen apart at the cross of Christ.

6. Be philanthropic
One of Butterfields observations regarding evangelism was the need for hospitality.
She describes that in her experience with the LGBT community, she learned the
value of getting to know people on a raw level by opening her house with her
partner:
We need to be willing to take some risks. Ken and Flow had me in their house. And
in their house, we talked frankly about sexuality and politics. You have to think
about whether those are conversations that might contaminate your world.
With small children, we have to be careful. But I dont know that were doing our
children a great benefit if we claim that the Christian life is really easy I dont
know that weve been a great blessing to our children when weve sheltered them
from some of these things. My friends from Syracuse had me into their homes and
their children nurtured me and taught me a lot about life As youre concerned
about influence issues, work that out, but dont think that the big sin is the problem
that other people are going to track in through your front door
Professors and pastors, you could really be off with your community because you
only see them when theyre cleaned up Once a week, our home was opened.
People would just tell me what was going on.
Christians, we need to bring those we consider dirty in the doorwe need not
fear contamination because we are the contaminants as well, and we have a
remedy through Christ.

7. Be in pursuit
Butterfield challenges Christians to let go of their self-righteous prejudices and
unfounded fears, and make friends with those they consider different by their own
initiative:
They knew that they needed to bring the church to me, that I could not, could
NOT, come to the church We dont want to have gay and lesbian friends because
why? What are they going to do? Go ahead, bring it on. What, youll have to talk to
your children? Good! Your children will be better off if you talk to them about it
I believe this conversation is no longer going to happen effectively in the public
square. We Christians are perceived as hard-hearted, outdated, outmoded; we
speak out against gay marriage, were bigots. We are no longer relevant. We need
to gain a sense of relevance again, and we will do that by being good neighbors, by
being good friends, by engaging with people on the private sector of things

Who is this Jesus? If we debate the politics and the culture, itll go forever. But who
is this Jesus who has called you to give up so much? Who is this Jesus who would
be humiliated to be born in human form and to die on the cross?

Her analysis of society demonstrates that we need less vitriolic emails, less political
facebook posts and less arguing on the superficial levels of politics and family
valuesthese conversations need to happen in our homes, with our children, or
theyll be communicated to deaf ears.

They also need to be centered around the root of the issue, not the peripherals:
Who is Jesus Christ?

8. Part with preferences

Butterfield was amazed that the pastor who invited her to dinner made a real
attempt to connect with what Butterfield felt was valuable. He sacrificed his
personal preferences to reach out, while not compromising in his integrity:

He didnt have air conditioning, and that was important. One of the things I had
presumed about Christians was that evangelical Christians were people who just
felt entitled to have a kind of dominion over the earth that is hateful and violent.
And unhelpful, unkind.

But their house was a little bit like my house. They served a vegetarian meal, and
that was helpful because at that point I felt that the eating of meat was a violent
activity, and their home and their culture didnt actually seem so different from
mine.

As Christians, we need to strip away every unbiblical obstacle to Christ and meet
people where they are, and sacrifice our preferences for nonessentials in order to
do the essential work of evangelism.