(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Matthew Stuckey here and I want to give you another soul winning tip and in this soul winning tip I want to talk to you about the importance of staying engaging and basically what I mean is trying your best to keep the attention of the people that you're talking to. Now of course you know the gospel is very serious business it's not a joke it's not a video game or anything like that but at the same time you know you can be entertaining as you're preaching the gospel you can do a better job of trying to keep people's focus as you're preaching the gospel so I want to give you three quick tips to that. Number one is just having compassion on the people that you're talking to actually caring about the people that you're talking to whether you realize it or not people can often sense whether or not you actually care about them or not. Some people might go soul winning just because they feel obligated maybe their friends are going it's kind of their routine maybe their life is getting really busy and they don't really want to go soul winning on a Saturday or a Sunday but they're just kind of going through the motions at that point in their life and you know it's going to come out as they're preaching the gospel the people that are listening to them are going to be able to actually tell that they don't actually have a care or compassion for them. See the Bible says and if some have compassion making a difference when you think of the reality of heaven and hell and how unsaved people are going to burn in hell forever if they do not get saved you ought to have compassion on those people and it's going to become evident to the people you're talking to whether you actually have that or not. Jesus even said in Matthew 10 as he's sending them out to preach the gospel and when you come to a house salute it. When you're saluting a house you have a deep respect for the people that you're talking to and as we're going preaching the gospel it sounds very simple but we should just be excited in what we're actually doing. A great example of what not to do are the Jehovah's Witnesses they walk very slowly from door to door it's obvious they don't really care who who they're talking to and they're just kind of going through the motions because they feel obligated to do that. Sometimes as soul winners our lives can get busy and maybe sometimes we go out soul winning in the same sort of way you know if that's developing in your life you need to make a change because the people we're talking to are going to be able to tell whether or not you have real compassion for them or not. So point number one just have compassion and care and love for the people you're talking to and it's going to be evident as you're preaching the gospel your gospel is going to help keep them paying attention to what you're saying better. Number two do not sound robotic preaching the gospel. Now it's great when you first start preaching the gospel to take a good presentation use it as your model use it as your basis and you're basically trying to repeat the things that they're saying. However eventually the goal is to take that gospel presentation and make it your own. Now I'm not talking about taking that gospel presentation and going off to crazy tangents and just saying things that are completely unrelated but I'm just saying that all of us have different personalities we're different people and as long as you're explaining the same things in a logical way it's okay to say things a little bit slightly differently that fit with you know how you want to preach the gospel or how your personality is as long as it's in the same ballpark and it's not much different than a normal gospel presentation. So eventually you want to take that gospel presentation and make it your own. Now it's good to start off by just basically repeating that gospel presentation however it's a little bit robotic I mean you're you're just kind of going through the motions you're like a telemarketer who just has this spiel that he has to go through and you know what it's gonna be obvious to the people that are listening if you're sounding robotic and some people are gonna lose focus because it's just not as interesting so point one have compassion point two do not sound robotic point three just stay interesting as you're preaching the gospel the more you familiarize yourself with preaching the gospel and you get experience you know it's gonna be easier to do these things because instead of just reading from a script you're actually just thinking on the fly and you know you're paying attention to what they're saying and what they're thinking and things such as that so we want to stay interesting as we're preaching the gospel so I want to kind of give you an example what I'm talking about when I preach sermons I never plan out jokes because I've tried that a couple times it just doesn't work the jokes fall flat however if you are just you know interested in what you're saying sometimes jokes naturally come out and people will laugh and everything and of course if you listen to my sermons I take the sermons very seriously it's not just a joke it's not like I'm spending 20 minutes just goofing off and not being serious but at the same time I am trying to be a speaker that's you know not just going through a lecture but you know I'm preaching a sermon and I'm allowing thoughts coming into my head as I'm preaching and sometimes jokes might come out and so an example of what I'm talking about is you know I've had this situation come up where I'm talking to two people or three people and I think of a situation a couple months ago where I was talking to three people and I asked them a question and said do you think you're gonna go to heaven or hell and you know I think I said that if you committed murder after you get saved or something like that one person said heaven the next person said hell and then the other person was being kind of quiet and then so I was I was like so do you think heaven do you think hell do you think purgatory and I said purgatory is a joke because I had already explained to them that there's only heaven or hell but I said in a joking way so you think purgatory and then the people kind of laughed at that and so obviously your gospel presentation is not meant to be this big joke you need to take it seriously but I just want to help you understand that you don't have to sound like you're going through a lecture you don't have to sound like a robot you can actually go out there preaching the gospel as you feel comfortable and you can be entertaining with the people and you know I'm not saying make it a joke and just spend you know 50 minutes you know with whatever but I'm just saying you want to try to try to stay as entertaining as possible and if you stay more engaging you're gonna find less people fading out of the gospel presentation so if you find yourself having a lot of people fading out of the gospel presentation you know you might want to make some very slight changes to just how you're explaining things because maybe you're doing something slightly wrong because in general when you're preaching the gospel most people if they said they're willing to listen most people will end up paying attention to you and so it should not be common for them to just always be fading out anyways thank you and God bless