Elicitation

Elicitation
Elicitation is the act of obtaining language data from another person. In the case of evangelism this is used to fish out personal data that can be used against you. This will sound like innocent conversation, but in reality, it is meant to learn more about your identity so they can have a better idea of how to sell to you the idea of the evangelical ideology.

These take the form of innocent questions. Here I will list the more common ones, taken form various evangelical websites, fitted in categories:

Generics

1. What gives most meaning to your life?

2. What, or who, are your sources of strength in your day-to-day living?

3. When you have problems or crises, how do you manage to get through them?

4. Is religion or God important to you?

5. Wouldn't you like to have faith in something?

6. Have you ever thought about heaven?

7. Can you give me a bit of a background?

Spirituality

1. Does God (or a Higher Power) seem personal to you?

2. Do you feel close to or far away from God?

3. What do you imagine that God is like?

4. Can you point to things that God has done for you?

5. How is God working in your life right now?

6. Are you comfortable with what you understand to be God's guidelines and laws for living?

7. Do you feel there are barriers of some type separating you from God?

8. Have you ever been mad or upset with God?

9. Have you ever done something for which you feel God could not forgive you?

10. Do you understand the way to forgiveness and what it means?

11. Do you think God has a plan for each person's life?

12. What would it take for you to live up to what God expects of you?

Devotional life and practice

1. What kinds of religious material do you like to read?

2. What are your favorite authors, writings?

''3. Do you like religious music? Kinds? Favorites?''

4. Have you read much of the Bible?

5. Do you understand the Bible when you read it?

''6. Does Bible reading help in living? How?''

7. Is prayer a meaningful part of your devotional life?

8. Do you feel there is any spiritual growth going on right now in your life?

The Church

1. Are you involved in a church?

2. What you get out of being involved in a church?

3. Which teachings of your church resonate the most with you?

4. Do you personally know anyone who is the pastor of a church?

5. Are you a member of an accountability or nurturing group in your church?

Religion and illness, dying and death

1. Has being ill made any difference in your thinking or feeling about God or your religious faith?

2. How has being ill affected your devotional life?

3. When you are ill, do you ever have feelings that God is punishing you or that it is His will for you to be sick?

4. How do you feel about suffering?

5. Do you trust God with your future?

6. Why do you think that there is so much suffering in the world.

Interesting enough, with these particular types of questions, you can begin to see that they can easily probe for potential objections and prepare their sales pitch accordingly. Notice how they focus on your perspective of things, they try to push the boundaries of personal space. One should be very cautious when hearing such questions. It is easy to answer them without thinking.

Once sensitized to these questions, you should be able to deflect the questioning and even influence them by choosing carefully your answers. Any computer programmer will tell you, if you control your input, you will affect the output.