First, listen

The very first step in Richie-Ashburn style evangelism is to listen — carefully, and longer than you want to.

Imagine two wizards fighting. Each of them sends crashing waves of blinding energy at the other. Nothing could withstand these energy bolts! But the wizards are frying the air absolutely in vain — their thunderbolts are aimed not at their opponents but at seemingly random targets. Their bolts hit only emptiness.

I have certainly seen situations like this in online discussions. I’ve been such a wizard, unfortunately. The disputants hurl arguments and catch phrases at each other without first finding out where the opponent is. For instance, an “evolutionist” and a “creationist” may flail at each other, neither striking anywhere near the other’s actual position. So the very first thing is to ask, ask, ask: “What do you mean by ‘evolution’?” State your best understanding of the other’s position and ask if you’ve got it right. If you’re absolutely unable to figure out what the other is saying, you can resort to open-ended responses like, “I can see you really care about [some important word the other used].” Or “Looks like you’ve thought a lot about [X].” Or “The term [Y] is really important to you.” These apparently empty statements elicit further words from the other, without sounding inquisitorial. And since you aren’t stating any content of your own, you don’t trigger angry or defensive canned responses. You can find out whether the “evolutionist” is a thorough-going materialist or perhaps an intelligent-design person who subordinates evolution to God. Now you at least know the position of the other.

In an essay "Christian Apologetics," C.S. Lewis wrote "I find that the uneducated Englishman is an almost total sceptic about History. I had expected he would disbelieve the Gospels because they contain miracles; but he really disbelieves them because they deal with things that happened 2000 years ago. He would disbelieve equally in the battle of Actium if he heard of it." He learned this by listening. If he had not learned it he would have been arguing futilely against what he thought his audience believed, not against what it actually believed.

Furthermore, active listening makes the other feel that you’re really attending to what they’re saying and you understand their point of view. This is likely to reduce their defensive anger and to move them beyond catch phrases and slogans. They’ve already pronounced the magical formulae, and you have gently opened them up to explaining what is behind them.

And indeed you now can ascertain the kinds of info the other will find convincing, the foundations and reasoning chains that lie behind the slogans, and so on. You now have a good chance at framing questions that will create room for the Holy Spirit to work in.

There is no real need yet to set out your positions. The idea isn’t to set a trap for the other, but to focus on learning in some detail what the other thinks and where he or she is coming from.

Obviously it is to the benefit of the audience to have the terms and positions clarified. And your willingness to calmly listen to and talk with the other will gain you “ethos” points — you will appear reasonable, open-minded, and fair.