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Getting Sold on Peer-to-Peer Evangelism

The first rule of writing is to write about what you know. For Alec Niemi, a 55-year-old entrepreneur and lifestyle evangelist, that rule translates well to evangelism too. Alec is passionate about helping people find their evangelical niche. And he believes that most professionals have a willing audience in people who share the same professions. People who share the same concerns about the markets, those who deal with political issues, those who are trying to make a difference in their chosen careers.

Alec has seen many retired and semi-retired businesspeople reach their peers for Christ by speaking in their ‘language.' Cultural and political boundaries seem to dissipate when like-minded people get together, so Alec is able to cross borders all over the world with men and women who want to share their secular talents and speak about their devotion to God in places like Nicaragua and Cuba.

Black Out on the Road

Alec’s own journey of faith was a long road. Like most of his generation, he attended Sunday School as a young child. He listened to what they had to say there, then promptly "put [salvation] in my back pocket as an insurance policy." When he became an adult and started a family, he began to worry about what he would say when his daughter – then three – would inevitably ask him who Jesus was. Also, his aunt would challenge him to start living the life he first heard about as a child in church. Then he had a dream. "I was driving down a steep logging road with the edge on one side and the mountain on the other. I was in a ‘59 Chev convertible. A truck drove down the road and rode right over me. Everything went black . . . I hadn’t used my insurance policy."

Eventually, Alec accepted that Christ was worth much more to him than an insurance policy payable on death. When he became a Christian, he talked about it to anyone who would listen, including many of the men on the job sites where he worked as a building contractor. Now, as part of a team from Campus Crusade for Christ, he is in the business of connecting people all over the globe.

Pack your Bags

"If you’re willing to come with me and share your faith during your stay, we’re here to take you as far as you want to go," says Alec, recognizing that everyone stretches their own comfort zone at their own speed. "I say ‘have you got a passport?’ If they do, we can be off to almost anywhere within ten days."  He’s there to facilitate the trip and to make sure that the right doors are open when visitors get there.

Most business people who take a trip with Alec find that a one week excursion – usually leaving on a Friday and returning the following weekend – fits nicely into their schedule.

Closed Country, Open Doors

In communism’s heydays in the Ukraine, Alec and his cohorts at Campus Crusade talked shop with 3,500 "trade union" leaders in the country. Unlike North American unions, Ukrainian trade unions were considered the third tier of government. If a citizen wanted to work, he or she had to belong to a union. Alec’s group saw a 65-percent response rate to the gospel once they began taking North American business people to to Eastern Europe to help leaders who were trying to be productive under the communist regime.

Peer to Peer

"If you’ve been successful in business, other business people will want to hear you story," he says. While business tactics and influences will be a part of the story, Alec recognizes that speaker’s faith will also play a key role in the discussion. When someone has a living faith, it effects every facet of life, including their vocation.

"People want to talk with like-minded people. If we bring a top politician in, the top politicians in that country want to come in and hear what they have to say."

Alec feels so strongly about the idea of peers counseling peers that he wrote his masters thesis on the subject. And even though he explored the complexities of the issue in his thesis, he says putting it into practice should be about as easy as breathing for most people – you just have to be willing to go and find others who share the same interests, same expertise as you.

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