Passive witnessing

Passive income is the Holy Grail of entrepreneurship. Classic examples of passive income include book sales and patent royalties. The idea being that you write the book or invent the widget and set it loose on the world. You put in the upfront effort and then passively reap the rewards.

Given that, let me introduce you to…

Passive witnessing requires an upfront investment but will lead to passive rewards in the future. Like passive income generation, you’d set up a system that would allow you to witness to people without altering your daily lifestyle.

Like passive income, passive witnessing is a conscious pursuit. It doesn’t just happen.

Young businesses start out with the goal to make a profit. Focusing only on this goal, however, leads to the owner working 100+ hours a week in an attempt to make money. Eventually the efforts can pay off financially, but the owner is still working to death. The owner might make a six-figure salary or more but has no opportunity to enjoy the income.

The same happens with Christian witnesses.

We can focus so much on witnessing that we miss out on enjoying the benefits of witnessing, the fellowship with the believers and more importantly, the fellowship with God.

Another danger of the workaholic approach is burnout. How many business owners are sick of their work, work they once loved? How many Christians are tired of sharing the Gospel?

You know what burnout is. You’ve experienced it before. You may get results but the side effects kill you.

So the solution?

I believe it’s passive witnessing.

The idea for passive witnessing hit me as I was thinking about Halloween. On Halloween, kids (and some adults) dress up, knock on doors, and ask for candy with the roundabout, trick-or-treat phrase.

For many years, my church has used this as an outreach opportunity. What better time to witness than when people are naturally coming to you, right?

Enter passive witnessing.

If this is the best way to witness, why wait for this once a year Holiday to enjoy it? Why not set it up to work all the time?

Is that possible?

Passive witnessing, like passive income, is anything but passive in the beginning. It requires action to initiate, usually proportionately more than average because it’s being paid forward. In essence, you’re acting now so you won’t have to act later.

For passive witnessing to work, I see two general elements that would be required.

2 Elements of a Passive Witnessing System

Number 1: People have to come to you.
Number 2: You have to be able to witness to these people without diverting your normal activities to engage in witnessing.

Number 1 would require some sort of incentive to draw the people in. You have to give something they want, something they would tell their friends about. In short, you’d have to set it up so people would advertise for you. That way, once you witness to someone, that person would go tell someone else, who would tell someone else, and so on.

This gets you out of the loop for trying to reach out to people. Instead, it’s like your customers are coming to you, and all you need to do is give them what they want.

Number 2 could be accomplished through witnessing by example, meaning that you live you life normally, and everyone who sees you automatically is drawn to Jesus. This sounds great in principle, but could it actually work?

Jesus seemed to use this method most of the time:

“For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps…” – 1 Peter 2:21

If Jesus used the example method and gave us an example of how to live by living as an example, it seems that it should work for us also. In fact, it seems to be the best way to do it.

The practicality of this isn’t fully developed in my mind yet. I wanted to share the concept with you to get your input. So if you have any ideas on passive witnessing, I’d love to hear them.

Serving Suggestions

(1) Let me know if you think this could work. Is it possible to structure your life in such a way that you don’t have to actively pursue to witness?

(2) Let me know if you think we should even try to get it to work. Should we try to witness passively or is does the Scripture tell us differently? Is evangelism supposed to require an active pursuit?

(3) If you’ve made it through the first two with affirmative answers, try setting up a passive witnessing system. How do you do it? I’m not a master of this, so any suggestions would be appreciated.