This is the first part of a series of articles we will be doing on evangelizing on Instagram that will be broken down into a few parts; Stories, Feed Posts, Comment sections, and the DM. Each of these has a completely different approach and will require different advice! Stay tuned and enjoy!

The idea of sharing your faith on Instagram can bring about a broad range of emotions from fear to excitement. And there is a lot of validity in those emotions, with so many unknowns in how people will respond to what you say, the possibility of being canceled for saying the wrong thing, conflict with people who disagree, follower counts and likes hanging in the balance, the internal conflict of being open about your faith can be messy, I get it.

So before we dive into learning about how we can share Jesus on our Instagram stories, what is the why? Why do we do this?

Personally, I share Jesus on my Instagram stories because I love people, and I want to live that out. I love engaging with people online, and I love having conversations with people. I view every interaction with immense gratitude. Of the millions of people on the earth, for some reason, these people are in my life and they follow me, how amazing is that?! I see every interaction and conversation online as an opportunity to invite people into a radically different perspective of who Jesus is and what sort of people Christians are. One that is contrary to the narrative or experience portrayed about Christians in a lot of American culture. One that is filled with love, one that is more concerned about living at peace and creating an open invitation to accepting Jesus Christ, rather than one that is concerned about convicting or judging the whole world and telling them what is right or wrong.

I hope that you have the same intentions, simply to love God and love people, and to show that love to others by the way you share on social media. Hopefully, you are invested into the Word of God as well. It is important to read the Bible and know at the very least the fundamentals of what you believe before you being to share.

Now that you understand my why, and if your why is similar, these are some things that I have done that have been helpful to living that out.

Try to engage and relate before you explain. Often times, people post Bible verses or something they are learning about God with no context, they just post it. This is not a bad thing, at all, but it really will only help people who are seeking out the advice or wisdom in those verses or things you are learning, otherwise, people just won’t make the effort to understand it. So instead, craft a story or narrative that gets people to see themselves in a situation that is applicable to what you are learning. For instance, if I want to share with people how gossip is destructive and not loving others how we are called to love, I can first invite people into a new mindset by asking them with a poll if they have ever been in a situation where someone was gossiping about someone else. Then I would ask them if they were confident that the gossiper had their best interest in mind and would talk positively about them with others. Hopefully, people have experienced that when people gossip about others with them, not only does it tear down the person being gossiped about, it also hurts the credibility and trustworthiness of the gossiper, which is the main point I would drive home. By creating polls and engaging people to remember a time when they experience gossip, it allows them to be more open and understanding of the points about gossip I want to make, and it invites them into hopefully not gossiping about others in the future, and instead talking positively and loving others well.

Open up questions. On IG stories, you can create a way for people to ask questions directly to you. Inviting your audience to share things they need prayer for, or to ask about your life or your faith is an awesome way to get people engaged. You can follow up with those people personally in the DMs or respond to them in your stories. Bonus: Instead of responding with text and an image, responding to them with a video of yourself is even more personable and a great way to make it fun!

Simply share a story. Experience something that can glorify God? Want to share your testimony? Stories is a great way to share with people what you’ve gone through and makes it easy for people to reach out and ask more if they feel inclined.

Ultimately, stories are best for engaging people and getting them curious. Every story is an opportunity to engage with someone, even for a split second. What a gift! Try to steward it wisely, and pray that people are drawn to Jesus through the stories you release!

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