As friends popped round yesterday, they noticed I no longer has my motorbike which I sold a while ago. It’s not that I didn’t like it, I enjoyed riding it on sunny days over th’moors. The problem is, in Oldham, you don’t get those days very often! More often than not, I was finding I was arriving at pastoral meetings cold, wet and not particularly in the best frame of mind. I then started to weigh up the costs and, once you factored in insurance, servicing, tax and petrol, the handful of times a year I might need to use and Uber and the improvement in the bus service didn’t even make it cost effective, so I got rid.

One of the downside of riding a bike is that you are simply there, on your own, with your own thoughts. Which, of course, some people welcome. I don’t always NOT welcome it. But I also discovered a great line of evangelistic conversations to be had in the back of taxis. I’ve even had Uber drivers get me to my destination and want to continue their conversations with me and find out where my church is because they’re so interested in what we’ve been discussing. And as anyone who has ever met me knows, I’m really not that interesting or exciting to talk to!

The conversations pretty much always start the same way:

Driver: Hello. How’s you’re day going?

Me: Alright thanks. How about you? Have you just started your shift or are you just coming to an end?

Driver: . So, do you work mate? What do you do?

Me: I’m the pastor of a church

Driver: Which one?

Me: Bethel Church. In fact, you’re dropping me there now for [insert whatever we’re doing with a bit of spiel about what it is]

*pause*

Driver: Do you mind if I ask you as question? I hope you don’t think I’m being rude…

[Most Uber drivers in our area are South Asian Muslims]

Me: Not at all. Go ahead. Ask anything you like.

Driver: [Some question he has about Christians based on what he’s heard from other Muslims]

And like that, away we go. Sometimes, the drivers are more chatty than other times. Sometimes they have lots of questions, other times just one. Sometimes the conversation flows and goes on and on, other times it’s clear we’re just passing time until I’m dropped off. Sometimes conversation starts up, we have one Q&A and then we don’t say much until my destination, other times the driver stops at the destination and (usually politely) says something like, ‘I hope I’m not keeping you but I’m really interested…’ and then we carry on chatting about the gospel. Frankly, it’s brilliant.

Interestingly enough, another person in our church said something similar to me. I happened to have my car and offered them a ride home. They declined saying, ‘I like to get Uber because I chat to the drivers about Jesus’. I said I did the same if and when I get them. We both shared similar experiences.

Now, look, I’m not suggesting here that we all throw all our evangelistic eggs into the chat-to-uber-drivers basket. That would be both hideously expensive and, I suspect, not entirely fruitful. It is very much not a core part of my evangelistic strategy. But it is an opportunity to talk about Jesus to somebody who is specifically asking about the hope that we have. And I am quite happy to not only obey Jesus by having those conversations, but to engineer them a little as when I am able.

I don’t think building your entire evangelism around a ‘who knows what the Lord might do’ philosophy is a good idea. We kind of know how the Lord typically operates and we do want to aim to be a bit effective. But at the same time, it isn’t wrong to take the clear opportunities that come our way, believing that it is our sovereign God who ordains and appoints such discussions, and making the best of them, think to ourselves that nothing is wasted with him and who knows what might become of a little throwaway conversation on a 10-minute ride.

So, maybe next time you’re riding in a taxi, rather than sticking the ear buds in and cracking your phone out to scroll through some mindless nonsense, why not see what conversations you can get with your driver? I know it’s relatively easy for me – it’s hard not to get a spiritual conversation with ‘I’m a pastor and you’re dropping me at church’. I mean, it’s either a decent spiritual conversation or stony silence the rest of the trip, but you get the point. You might need to shoehorn in something about your church or whatever. But just be open to talking, be open to seeing what doors the Lord might open, you may just be surprised by what people know about your church locally (or, what they don’t, in point of fact) and you may be able to help fill in some blanks. At worst, somebody might just leave with a nice impression of local Christian people. But you may just find the Lord has appointed this conversation because there is somebody he wants to hear the gospel from you who is ready and willing to hear it with a boot full of questions.