It strikes me that, in the Scriptures, Jesus first asked people to follow him before he asked them “Who do you say I am?”

It's like he was giving people, and his disciple especially, the opportunity of a trial period (21 days free 🙂 before they were asked to really commit to believing in him.

How different is this from the way churches evangelize people nowadays? I know soooooooo many people who are emphatic (maybe paranoid is the better term) about getting non-believers to make a “first-time commitment” to Jesus the first time they walk into a church or attend an event.

Is this fair, if we've not even given these folk an opportunity to walk with Jesus for a while, to listen to him speak, to evaluate his actions – to really suss out if he is the best for our lives?