Back when I was in Bible college, to fulfill one of the Bible and theology requirements, I had a choice between a class on the Book of Acts or a class more overtly focused on evangelism. I chose to take the class on the Book of Acts.

I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t remember the professor’s name. He wasn’t one of the more celebrated full-time profs. He taught one class at night on the side. Maybe he taught the same course another day, I don’t remember. He was the pastor of a church no one heard of. He had no office space. He drove to the college, taught his class and drove off back to his home and church.

Given the title of the class, I assumed it was going to be class on that particular book of the Bible. I’ve always loved the Book of Acts and was looking forward to studying various aspects of it. I took other classes in Romans and in John and found both to be formative to my faith in the years that followed.

Imagine my surprise when the class really turned out to be a class on evangelism. If I had wanted that, I would have chosen the other class, the real one called evangelism. I don’t think my class was meant to be that exactly. The teacher just couldn’t help himself.

He was passionate about telling other people about Jesus, and even though he was pretty sure we were all Christians, he did his best to tell us the gospel. This was, in part, because we as Christians are made for and meant to tell others the good news. But I think he also recognized that some students were encouraged more by their paying parents than by their transformed hearts to come to a school that required as many units of Bible and theology as whatever course of study you chose. The prof also did open-air evangelism in Los Angeles. He was always talking about the different people he had engaged in gospel conversations.

He required us to memorize the Romans Road, which was his favorite approach to sharing the gospel. He challenged us to pray for opportunities, and when they came, to take them.

He warned us, and it was a warning, not to fool ourselves into thinking that evangelism was something we did; instead, it was something that the Holy Spirit did through us and circumstances and other people.

He prayed for us in class out loud to have opportunities to tell other people about Jesus. Looking back, it seemed to me like he prayed that in every class, and it wasn’t a rote prayer, but a passionate one that came from his heart. We all were pretty sure that we were Christians, so finding people who weren’t was kind of a challenge.

I went home one weekend and connected with a good friend from high school. I’ll call him Ray.

Ray was smart. He was smarter than I was. He wasn’t a Christian, but we were in band and orchestra together through high school (he played French horn and I played trumpet) and we ended up in several other classes together. He made sure his Christian friends knew that he wasn’t a believer, but he liked us anyway. I knew I wanted to go to my Bible college (Biola), Ray went to USC. That impressed me—the big, exclusive, private, expensive school that always went to the Rose Bowl and usually won. (This was a long time ago.)

That weekend, he came over to my house, and we compared notes on our colleges and caught up with each other. During our conversation, Ray kept asking me questions about my faith in Jesus. It was sprinkled in between our talk of other friends who we had or hadn’t heard from and things we liked or didn’t like about college.

All the Scriptures that my nameless professor was pointing us to in class. . . I found myself opening the Bible and showing them to Ray because they were answering the questions he was asking.

I remember thinking, this is the weirdest thing. I mean, ringing in my ears, I heard the prayers of the Acts professor as I was talking. I remember thinking that God was answering that man’s prayers right then and there. The Holy Spirit was giving me the Scriptures that answered the exact questions Ray was asking. I got excited.

This was not the day he decided to follow Jesus. But a few weeks later, Ray made the leap from unbeliever to believer. Eventually he served several terms overseas as a missionary engaged in Bible translation.

A lasting lesson I learned from my professor is that evangelism is more than a technique or campaign. It's a story, your story, of how you were lost but now found, dead but now alive, far off but now near. Come to think of it, evangelism is also more than your story—it is God's story told throughout Scripture. It's his story we are to retell as we keep our eyes wide open for the lost and dead and far off, and our hearts wide open to the Holy Spirit working through us. Every person we meet has a story. We have only to pray, listen and be willing to speak.