I’ve been on a church payroll for 35 years now. Thirty-five years of leading people — theoretically — into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

I want to tell you that’s been smooth sailing. I want to tell you I’ve got a stack of conversion stories a mile high and a system that works every time.

I don’t. I confess that even now, at times, I feel like a total failure at this.

You’d think it’d be easy for me. I’m a preacher, after all. But you should see the look people give me when I say those four words: “Hi, I’m a pastor.” It’s the same look you’d get from a raccoon you just cornered in your garage. Pure deer-in-the-headlights panic. Don’t believe me? Try it yourself sometime — you don’t even need to be clergy. Sit down next to a stranger at Tim Hortons and say, “Hi, I’m a pastor,” and watch them start calculating the fastest route to the door. “Who is this fruitcake? What do they want from me?”

So yes. Faith sharing is awkward. It has been for me for three and a half decades. But I’ve come to believe it doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it.

The word “evangelism” comes from the Greek euangelion — good news. That’s it. That’s the whole job description. Somebody once put it this way, and I’ve never forgotten it: evangelism is simply one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. Not an expert lecturing an idiot. Not a salesman closing a deal. Just one hungry person pointing another hungry person toward food.

This week I went back to the book of Acts, to Paul, of all people — under arrest, surrounded by an angry mob, about to be dragged into a barracks — and I found three simple moves he makes that I think we can still use today.

First, establish common ground.

Before Paul says one word about Jesus, he speaks to the crowd in their own language — Aramaic — and the place goes dead silent. Then he tells them: I’m a Jew, I was raised right here, I studied under Gamaliel, I was just as zealous for God as any of you standing here today. He’s building a bridge before he asks anyone to walk across it.

Here’s the problem for us: Paul was talking to people who already had a zeal for God. We’re not. The baseball fields of Miami County are fuller on Sunday morning than the churches of Miami County. That’s not a criticism — that’s just the mission field we’ve been handed. Seventy years ago, Billy Graham could fill a stadium telling people that being good wasn’t enough, that they needed Christ. People wanted to be Christians back then; he just told them how. Now? A lot of folks hear “Christian” and think “narrow-minded” and “bigoted” before they think anything else. We’re starting from square one, not square five.

I heard about a teenage girl in a jewelry store in Denver, flipping through the cross necklaces, who asked the salesperson, “Do you have the kind with the little man on it?” She meant a crucifix. She had no idea who the man was. Somebody said it well: the last generation treated religion as an accessory. This one treats it as unnecessary.

So like Paul, we’ve got to go find the connection points. When you go fishing, you put on the hook what the fish like — not what you like. Some of you moms are gifted at connecting with other moms in the carpool line. Some of you runners light up around other runners. Some of you band parents can talk to other band parents for an hour in a parking lot. That’s not small talk. That’s a bridge.

I found mine at a McDonald’s on Covington Avenue in Piqua back in 2004. A guy named Glenn was in there decked out head to toe in Harley leather — a Vietnam vet in his fifties, on his third marriage, about as far from “church guy” as you could get. He had zero interest in hanging out with a preacher, let alone talking to one. What did a 36-year-old Methodist clergyman on a Kawasaki have in common with him? Not much — except we both rode motorcycles. So we started riding together.

Second, build a friendship.

Paul kept befriending his captors. That’s remarkable if you think about it — he’s a prisoner, and he’s still investing in the people holding him. Here’s what I’ve learned: the deeper you get into someone’s life, the more you realize they’re on the same quest you are. They’re looking for God too, even if they’d never phrase it that way.

We live in a strange moment where we’ve got more ways to “connect” than any generation in history, and we’ve never been lonelier. We Facebook instead of talking face to face. We text instead of sitting across a table. That’s part of why we love shows like Ted Lasso — or, if you’re my age, Friends and Cheers — because deep down we’re starving for the kind of place where everybody knows your name.

Glenn and I became friends. Real friends. He helped me buy my first Harley. In 2006 we rode out to Sturgis and through Wyoming together. The next year, Arizona and Utah. The year after that, our wives came along for a trip to Vermont. Glenn didn’t show up at my church right away. It took time. But eventually, he did that too.

What if you made one new friend this year with someone who doesn’t know Jesus? Not a project. A friend. Imagine what God could do with that.

Third,  just tell your story.

This is Paul’s most powerful move. He doesn’t argue theology with the mob. He just says, “Let me tell you what happened to me.” I used to persecute people like this to their death, he says. I dragged men and women to prison. And then, on the road to Damascus, God stopped me cold and changed everything.

What a story. Genuinely — what a story.

Here’s my confession, though: I don’t love dramatic conversion stories, because I don’t have one. I suffer from what I call testimony envy. Some of you have a Damascus Road. I had a paint-by-numbers Sunday school childhood. I can just picture myself trying to punch up my testimony: “I was the Bible verse memory champion of my fourth-grade Sunday school class, and it went to my head.” Or, “I once snorted Coca-Cola through a straw to gross out the girls in my class, and God struck me down with a sinus infection.” That’s about as dramatic as it gets for me.

But here’s the thing — you don’t need drama. You need honesty. Nobody’s asking for a movie script. They’re asking, does this actually mean something to you? So tell them. This week, try saying to a friend, “Hey, let’s grab a coffee. I want to hear your story, and I’ll tell you mine.”

Common ground. Friendship. Your story. That’s it. That’s the whole strategy.

I think about Glenn a lot. About a year after that first McDonald’s conversation, he came by my office looking more serious than I’d ever seen him. He asked if he was worthy to join “my” church. I told him two things: first, it’s not my church, and second — no, he wasn’t worthy. None of us are. That’s not the point. Christ makes us worthy. Glenn asked me to pray with him right then, to invite Jesus in as Lord and Savior. I wish you could have seen the relief on his face. The joy.

Glenn lives in Florida now. He’s still part of our church family online.

Go find your Glenn this week. You don’t need a script. You just need a little common ground, a little time, and your own honest story.