I'm not sure why, but I was reminded today of an older woman I met my sophomore year in college. My heart broke for her then, and as her memory resurrected itself in my mind this evening I felt a sharp pang of helplessness hit me all over again.

It was the last session of a semester-long class I'd been taking called "Evangelism." We had discussed methodology and examples for months; we'd read books on evangelism, taken quizzes and test over it and heard lectures on it. On the final day of class my professor came into the room and said, "Today you are to share Christ with someone. We can talk about it all semester, but if you don't actually do it this class will have been a failure. I know this scares some of you to death, but we're called to it as Christians and you are especially called to do it as ministers. The fact that God has called you into ministry means He has gifted you for the task."

Obviously there are a lot of ways to do evangelism and the most effective is to share Christ with a friend over a period of time; they trust you, they understand they're not just a notch on your "evangelism belt," and they can relate to you. However, given that we really only had an hour and a half to do this, we all went to the mall in Marshall, Texas armed with a questionnaire and a prayer.

We were supposed to ask people questions about what they believed on a whole slew of issues: eternal life, God, sin, etc. At the end of these questions we were supposed to ask if they minded us sharing what we believed, and if they said that we could, then we were to share Christ with them.

Again, this is not the most effective way to evangelize, but it's purpose was to get us out there.

I spoke to three different people that day. All of them were kind to me and all of them allowed me to discuss Christianity with them...except Fran.

Fran was the last woman I spoke to. She was probably in her late sixties and very cordial. She let me ask her all of the questions and she answered honestly to the point that I decided she was an agnostic and just might be open to the Gospel. I asked Fran if I could share with her about what had made a difference in my life and she politely allowed me to begin.

I began by telling Fran about Jesus and how much I loved him, but she cut me short. Fran looked me in the eyes, and holding back tears she said, "Son, you seem like a nice young man and I don't want to hurt your feelings. But I grew up in a household where my father was a Baptist minister and my grandfather was a Presbyterian minister. In eighteen years I spent more dinners hearing fights about the Bible, God, and Jesus than I ever care to remember and those subjects were always a hotbed of great contention. It's nothing personal, but I'm not interested in hearing anything you have to say about it."

I wish I could write that God gave me the perfect words in that moment to gain Fran's respect and that she was suddenly able to see Jesus as much more than a "hotbed of contention"...but I can't. I honestly didn't know what to say. In fact, I thought for weeks afterward about what I should have said.

Maybe I should have told Fran that Jesus was just as saddened by her experience as she was; or that her father and grandfather weren't very good representations of the God who loves her dearly.

Maybe I should have told her what a shame I thought it was that it becomes harder and harder to become a Christian the farther away we get from the time when Christ actually walked the earth. Whereas it used to only require that you follow after Christ with everything you have, it now requires you to believe a certain way about the trinity, baptism, women in (or out) of ministry, gifts of the spirit, nationalism, etc., etc.

But instead of saying all of these things...I didn't. I just looked at her and said, "I'm so sorry."

And she walked away from me.