How To Share The Gospel In 5 Minutes Or Less

Hey, today, we’re going to talk about how to share the gospel in five minutes or less. My name is RK Castillo with the Commissionary Podcast. 

Now, the gospel in five minutes, believe it or not, if you go look at the Story Evangelism Framework, which I created at storyevangelism.com, there’s different ways to start a conversation with people about Jesus.

1. 2 Phrase 2

Now, the easiest way, I call it your 2phrase2. And when we do the training, it’s actually how to talk to someone about Jesus in 15 seconds. 

Now, imagine this. Jesus and the disciples go in across the lake, a huge storm comes up where the disciples, who were fishermen, they all think they’re going to die on the lake. Jesus is sleeping on the boat. He wakes up. They get to the other side. As soon as they get to the other side of the lake, this crazy demonized guy runs out from the caves.

I’ve seen guys like this in India and Africa and stuff.  Their clothes are shredded, their hairs, all full of doo-doo, all kinds of stuff. Maybe it’s not doo-doo, but it’s at least mud, right? Imagine this guy running at Jesus, the Son of God, the disciples in the boat going, “Why did we come over here? What’s the purpose of us being here?” You got crazy guys running out of caves at Jesus. Jesus cast the demons out of this guy. This guy had a legion of demons, which is thousands of thousands. 

I remember watching a video, and the Roman army is marching a legion up into the city. I remember thinking, “Man, that’s a whole lot of people.” So imagine if this guy had a legion of demons, tons of demons, I mean, he’s living in caves. He would break the chains that people would chain them up with. Jesus cast the demons out of this guy. They clothed them, which means before you got the demons cast out, he was like the crazy, naked dude, right? 

He’s clothed in his right mind. It says the people from his area, when they saw him, he says they saw him and they were afraid. So they were afraid of him before when he was the crazy guy in the caves, with doo-doo in his hair. He gets set free by Jesus, and they’re still afraid of him, right? 

And so, imagine this scene. They come up to Jesus and they say, “Jesus, do you think I can go with you?” He says, “Jesus, can I join your discipleship movement?” You guys remember what Jesus says? I think we do this so differently nowadays, because nowadays, we’d put this guy through 5-10 years of counseling. We’d make sure he goes through all the discipleship groups and the training groups, and he proves himself before we let him do what Jesus told him to. 

Do you guys remember what Jesus said to do? He says, “No, you can’t come with me.” He goes, “I want you to go and tell your people everything I’ve done for you.” How long has this guy been saved for? He’s been saved for like five minutes. He just got set free of his demons, got some clothes on, right?

You know what’s amazing? The area that Jesus went to where this guy was at is called the ‘decapolis’ (deka – ten; polis – cities). It’s an area of ten cities. Jesus leaves and he sends his person a peace, his missionary out. This guy hadn’t been through Bible school. We don’t even know if he’s had proper training.

You know what he has? His story of one encounter with Jesus. That was it. He had his one story. Next time Jesus comes to the capitalist, it says people ran from all over. So from all these ten cities, people came to meet with Jesus. Do you know why? it was because his person of peace that he found that ran out from the caves had one story. He went out and he shared probably with everyone that he can meet – the story of how Jesus set him free. 

So, if that guy could go and reach ten cities, I mean, what could you do? If you have one story of an encounter with Jesus, you could use it. If you do 2phrase2, it takes you 15 seconds to share your Jesus story with someone. If you have more time, you can take more time, right?

So, how to share the gospel in five minutes or less? Start with your story of how Jesus transformed your life. 

2. Who Is Jesus To You Story

The second story in the Story Evangelism Framework is Who Is Jesus To You story? I realized that if I was to be taken to court for witnessing a crime of some sort, I would go to share a story of a thing that I saw, I heard, and I experienced. It was something personal that I need to go and testify of. 

Jesus asked his followers, “Who do people say that I am?” And then they look right at him and say, “Yeah. Who do you say I am?” So your testimony is not just how you got saved. That’s your history. Your testimony is what have you seen and heard and experienced about Jesus that you could share with others? 

Now, Jesus is not just a religious figure. He’s not just a guy who did something 2000 years ago. He’s a God who did something 2000 years ago that changed everything forever in history and he’s your friend and he’s a part of your family. You can share your story of who Jesus is to you and use that as your story in it. 

Again, it takes less than five minutes. You talk about who Jesus is to you. It’s one of my favorite things to sit in the gym and say, “Man, can I tell you what Jesus is like?” and tell them who Jesus is to me as a person, not just as someone who did something 2000 years ago, but my friend that I know who’s a part of my life every single day.

3. Three Circles

The third way that you could share the gospel in five minutes or less is by using a tool that I call the Three Circles. Now, if you go through the Story Evangelism Training, I talk about there’s two forgotten parts of the gospel that I think most people leave out. It’s the gospel. Gospel means good news. So it’s the good news of something specific. So the gospel is not just how people get to heaven when they die. The gospel is good news of what? Of the kingdom. The kingdom of who? The kingdom of God. 

So if we’re going to share the gospel with people, we need to be talking about a King in his kingdom because that’s what the Bible says. The gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole earth and then the end will come, right?

So the gospel is not just how do you get saved so you can go to heaven when you die. Did you know that the words ‘go to heaven when you die’ aren’t anywhere in the Bible? Isn’t that crazy? You know the one thing that God said? He said, “Pray your kingdom come.” Where? “On earth as it is in heaven.” So we’ve been trying to get people from earth to heaven when God’s trying to get heaven to earth. The way we do that is by preaching the good news of the kingdom. They get filled with the Holy Spirit. They begin to live the life that Jesus did. 

So, the tool is the Three Circles. Now, I see the three circles in a framework that I call Good Bad Give Go. Again, if you want to get the full training, go to storyevangelism.com. You can pick it up there. But everything was good. When God created he saw that it was good. Then it became bad. What happened? What did God do to destroy and get rid of the bad? Man, that’s what the good news of the kingdom is.

Now, there’s one part of the gospel that I think a lot of people leave out, right? We’ve made the gospel about how you can get saved and so you don’t go to hell when you die. The gospel is so much more than that. The gospel is the good news of the kingdom. 

So, Good Bad Give and then the fourth part of the gospel is Go, which means at the end of the gospel, like the gathering demoniac. They say yes to Jesus. They get sent on a mission immediately. And the mission is get out there and do something.

And so, if you listen to the Luke 10 Evangelism talk, I say there’s seven parts of doing evangelism the way Jesus said. The last one is teaching sin. You send them out to go and do the things that God called them to do because we need to find workers. We need to find the person of peace, the house of peace that will become the workers in the city. So we can find people like the gathering demoniac and they can go and reach ten cities when you’re gone. Okay. 

So again, how do you preach the gospel in five minutes or less? Your 2 Phrase 2 takes 15 seconds. Your Who Is Jesus To You is a conversation about who Jesus is as a person. Finally, Good Bad Give Go using the Three Circles. Those are the ways that you can easily preach the gospel in five minutes or less.