Matthew Stuckey here and I'm giving you another soul winning tip and we're going
to take a bit of a break from instructional videos we're going to get
back to that but I want to address this question that I think every soul winner
has wondered about and probably just about all of us have been asked this
question by other people before and that's this question
how long should your gospel presentation be how long should your gospel
presentation be now let me just say this that this is actually a question that
many good people have different opinions of now there are some extremes that are
just not acceptable for example I had an old pastor that he said he liked to do a
six-week Bible study because he really wanted time for the Holy Spirit to work
on that person's heart
that's insane to say that when you preach the gospel you gotta spend six
weeks and then you also see these people that try to trick people into praying
prayers and they're counting like 50 salvation in an hour
that's obviously ridiculous as well but even amongst good people there's quite a
varied opinion on this question and so I'm not super dogmatic on my answer this
is just my opinion but there's not a two plus three equals five obvious answer
that thus saith the Lord according the Bible so I'm gonna give you my thoughts
on this and number one once you realize this it's not really about how many
minutes you spend or how much time you spend it's really about how much
material do you cover so for example if someone said okay I'm gonna preach the
gospel and I want to start in the book of Genesis and just really go to the
background of everything and they spend hours and hours explaining the stories
like the flood and Abraham and Moses and all these things well here's the thing
about this they might have spent hours and hours but they're gonna have to
spend more time because they never actually got to the gospel itself and so
you know just because you spend hours doesn't mean that it's good it depends
on what you're actually mentioning and so it really comes down to you know what
material are you covering so there's certain things that people need to
believe to be saved they need to understand Jesus is who he says he was
and that he do what he said he do and underneath that umbrella you see things
such as believing that Jesus is God understanding the Father sent the Son
believing salvation is a gift believing it's eternal it's not works and there's
all these steps that people need to understand and believe and you know what
you need to be able to accurately cover all of this information and if you've
spent a long time but haven't covered all of it then it's not sufficient so it
really comes down to how much you know are you able to cover that's really the
question that we're looking at now here's the thing about this though you
know obviously you cannot cover everything in a very very short amount
of time two minutes is not enough to cover everything that the gospel is
about so obviously there's an extreme on this end that's too low and there's an
extreme on this end that would be ridiculous and too high but you know
first you know realize it's really about you know how much material do you
cover all of us as soul winners we are trying to maximize our results obviously
the more time you spend with someone the more likely they are to get saved I mean
if you have ten more minutes to just add another five verses to make sure they
got it then yeah you probably have a higher percentage of that person
actually got it but then if you're spending like 40 minutes per
conversation you might be wasting your time when there's a lot of people that
are already ready already willing to listen and you could have gotten that
person saved earlier so all of us are trying to maximize our results if you're
too short on time you could pray with a lot of people that don't actually get it
but if you spend too much time you could be missing out a lot of on a lot of
conversations so as I said this is my opinion in terms of what is the best
approach so number one really comes to how much material are you able to cover
another thing is what is the background of that person so for example if someone
is a Hindu a Muslim a Buddhist it's gonna take more time because they have
more material and more information that they're off on and that you're gonna
have to double-check I've gotten Jehovah's Witnesses and Hindu saved and
you know what it was not a 15-minute gospel presentation it took a lot longer
than that you know it took probably over 30 minutes you know to get those people
saved because there's a lot of stuff they need to believe and you know you
have to ask them a lot of questions to make sure they're getting it so it
depends on their background now I have gotten somebody saved in less than 10
minutes once in Guyana now I personally don't recommend a gospel that is that
short I'll talk about that later on but I want to give you the scenario here
where I was talking to this woman in Guyana and her eyesight was really bad
so she said just can you read the verses and you know literally every verse that
I quoted she finished quoting it for me in the King James you know she knew it
memorized it in the King James you know what must I do to be saved you know you
ask people that question and people don't know what the answer is and this
woman she responds and they said believe on the Lord Jesus Christ so she's quoting
all the verses and she knew so much about the Bible but she wasn't actually
saved and like she literally changed what she believes so quickly and you
know I was going through the gospel and I'm just thinking I mean I I think she
got it I mean she understands you know what I'm asking but I've never moved on
so quickly to the next step in my gospel presentation so look there may
have been a time in the past where people really knew their Bibles and it
might have taken less time but you know oftentimes today people know very little
so if somebody has a background and they're believing this stuff very
simply and they can understand it simply it's going to take less time so it
really depends on their background number one it's really how much material
do you cover number two it depends on their background and number three as I
kind of mentioned it depends on if they're getting it or not and so don't
have this idea that my gospel is 15 minutes no matter what well you need to
make sure you're asking questions to see if they're getting it and if there's any
hesitation if there's any problems you're gonna need to spend more time to
make sure that they actually get it so don't have this idea that you have a set
number and no matter what you're gonna go through your gospel in the same amount
of time the same exact verses you're not gonna spend an extra second we need to
make sure that those people actually get it so in conclusion my opinion is that a
gospel presentation that is 10 minutes or less is too short now I'm not saying
that everybody would agree with me on that there are like-minded people that
have shorter gospel presentations than me and I'm not saying it's impossible to
get somebody saved in 10 minutes because I gave you an example of somebody I got
saved in less than 10 minutes but I am saying that I personally believe that if
I made my gospel presentation 10 minutes you know what would happen is a lot of
people that I would pray with would not actually get saved because they'd still
have some questions because I was rushing it just a little bit too much my
personal opinion is that the gospel should generally be between 15 to 20
minutes on a normal conversation now look I know good people that have gospel
presentations less than 15 minutes I know good people that have gospel
presentations that are more than 20 minutes on on average but I will say
that you know for me personally I would say 15 to 20 minutes is my general
gospel presentation if things are lining up and I personally don't have a goal to
shorten it or lengthen it because I believe I'm able to cover everything
very in-depth in that amount of time but I do believe that if I were to shorten
my gospel presentation you know there might be some people that would pray but
not actually get it because I wasn't quite as in-depth as I need to be but
one final thing to think about is you know when you're first starting
preaching the gospel you shouldn't just try to be exactly like somebody else if
they spend 15 minutes you're gonna spend 15 minutes because the truth is when you
first start preaching the gospel you're not gonna be as clear with explaining
the gospel and it's probably gonna take you more time to do a good job because
you're still kind of learning your system to be able to be perceptive and
to get everything to click and everything like that so honestly if
somebody's new at preaching the gospel I really would just encourage them to make
sure you're in-depth make sure you're asking questions to make sure that
they're getting it and of course as time goes by and you're more perceptive you
know you're gonna be able to explain things a lot more clearly and more
precise and you know you could probably end up spending a little bit less time
as you get more experience but for me personally I would say that you know 15
to 20 minutes is you know my general gospel presentation if things line up
pretty well if there's really no problems it's generally around probably
15 minutes if things are just clicking really really quickly and if there's you
know slight hesitations or if I sense they might not be getting it it
oftentimes runs to 20 minutes and of course you know sometimes it takes even
more than 20 minutes if it's someone who has a lot of questions it could take a
lot more time so it really depends on the person this is a very tough question
to answer there's a lot of different opinions I'm not you know upset at
people that have a slightly different opinion I would just say that in general
15 to 20 minutes if you've got your technique down you can be extremely in
depth and you what I personally don't think you should really try to shorten
it below that because I think you're gonna pray with a lot of people that
aren't actually getting it so how long should your gospel presentation be well
it really depends on a myriad of factors but in general I would say 15 to 20
minutes is kind of a good time frame to look at anyways thank you and God bless