By Rebecca Hoeffner rhoeffner@tylerpaper.com

About 10 years ago, Tony Garrett decided to take up the saxophone and start a swing band.

Now, the group, called The Al Fine Little Big Band, has been on five mission trips and visited countless nursing homes and church groups around town.

“It’s a kind of music that attracts people,” he said. “The upbeatness, the loudness of the horns. Lots of people enjoy it.”

Along with jazz standards and traditional big band music, the group plays hymns in the same style (who knew that was even possible)?

They’ve taken something they enjoy for fun and turned it into a ministry.

Maybe too many people are focused on sharing their faith in “official” ways: Going door-to-door, preaching on the street corner, handing out tracts. But is that the only way to share our faith? Are those the best ways?

Can we share our faith simply as we are doing things that we already enjoy?

What if instead of going door-to-door, we spoke about faith casually with a new neighbor when we are telling them about ourselves over dinner?

Jesus said “go and make disciples of all nations.” A disciple isn’t the same thing as a convert.

The thing about making a disciple is that you have to stick around to teach them.

At the annual Verge conference this year, Christian speaker Jo Saxton talked about a big mistake people make when they try to evangelize — they aren’t strategic and they don’t look for “the people of peace.”

The people of peace are the ones who are actually interested in what you have to say about your faith. Scripture is full of these. It very seldom mentions stories of Christians evangelizing to people who weren’t interested in what they had to say, but I doubt that was because there weren’t any.

In a climate that was already highly religious, I doubt there weren’t people who rolled their eyes at Christians.

The person of peace is one who “welcomes you, receives who you are, is open to you, will be open to what you have to say about Jesus, is open to the life you live because of Jesus, but who also serves you,” Ms. Saxton said. “So often when we’re seeking to minister, we want to do everything for somebody else, but the person of peace often wants to make a contribution in some way.”

If we share our faith as a part of our everyday lives and focus on sharing with the people who are already open to hearing it, would the world have a more positive view of Christian evangelism?