Approaching Others

Approaching Others

Two years ago our church taught a class on how to introduce people to Christ. A six week program designed to teach people how to approach others, open the door of conversation and give them a peek at ourselves as Christians. The class was great, very informative and helped tremendously in certain areas. Unfortunately, opening the door to meet others was not one of the areas it helped me.

After spending many years in AA meetings and having the opportunity to discuss sin with people on a level that most will never understand nor experience, it teaches one how to show others who they are speaking with so the veil can be removed and expose their own sins. It is through sharing our experience, our failures, our successes and most importantly, Jesus’ loving Light shining through us, in spite of all our dark nights, that motivates another person to throw off the chains and free themselves.

Simply replace with words “Alcoholic, Alcoholics Anonymous, drunkenness, drinking or any word associated with alcohol replace it with the words sin or forgiveness and the passage below will read as if it were right out of the Bible.

See your man alone, if possible. At first engage in general conversation. After a while, turn the talk to some phase of drinking. Tell him enough about your drinking habits, symptoms, and experiences to encourage him to speak of himself. If he wishes to talk, let him do so. You will thus get a better idea of how you ought to proceed. If he is not communicative, give him a sketch or your drinking career up to the time you quit. But say nothing, for the moment, of how that was accomplished. If he is in a serious mood dwell on the troubles liquor has caused you, being careful not to moralize or lecture. If his mood is light, tell him humorous stories of your escapades. Get him to tell some of his.

When he sees you know all about the drinking game, commence to describe yourself as an alcoholic. Tell him how baffled you were, how you finally learned that you were sick. Give him an account of the struggles you made to stop. Show him the mental twist which leads to the first drink of a spree. We suggest you do this as we have done it in the chapter on alcoholism. If he is alcoholic, he will understand you at once. He will match you mental inconsistencies with some of his own.

If you are satisfied that he is a real alcoholic, begin to dwell on the hopeless feature of the malady. Show him, from your own experience, how the queer mental condition surrounding that first drink prevents normal functioning of the will power. Don’t, at this stage, refer to this book, unless he has seen it and wishes to discuss it. And be careful not to brand him as an alcoholic. Let him draw his own conclusion. If he sticks to the idea that he can still control his drinking, tell him that possibly he can – if he is not too alcoholic. But insist that if he is severely afflicted, there may be little chance he can recover by himself. Source

This is how it’s done with non-believers we find in the rooms of AA. This is how many have come to know Christ, have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and turn their wills and their lives over the care of God. It is through grace and mercy that we trudge the road of happy destiny.