Each week I receive an email entitled “Pastors Weekly Briefing” (affiliated with Focus on the Family). Yesterday’s feature article was titled, “DO YOUR PEOPLE SHARE THEIR FAITH?” Following are some excerpts from the article, along with my own editorial comments and observations.
A report from Lifeway Research (March 26, 2009) notes that the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) is launching a new national campaign to bring unbelievers to Jesus, another evidence that many Christian groups are acutely aware of the decline in evangelism that we have noted and addressed in recent blogs. One of the greatest challenges facing the contemporary (21st century) church is our decreased desire and ability to “grow” the church through focused efforts in evangelism. An interesting result of the Lifeway survey is the finding that most people want to receive information about Jesus in one of two ways — a conversation with a family member (63%) or with a friend or neighbor from the church (56%). Many (most?) people don’t want to hear about Jesus, and of those that do, the preferred source is friend or family member. Other efforts will likely be ineffective. Even worse, other approaches may be a “turn off” to those we are hoping to reach.
The survey emphasized again the significance of family, friends and coworkers in evangelizing a resistant world. For at least two decades, I have been publishing statistics that indicate the ineffectiveness of ministerial or organized church invitations or contacts with visitors compared with contacts from friends and relatives. Now the Lifeway research supports those observations with new statistics. Paul’s reference to ‘the foolishness of preaching’ (1 Cor. 1:21) is not only a first century phenomenon. Our society still considers preaching a foolishness!
A careful analysis of our situation is revealing. We have thought preaching/proclamation inside our church buildings to be “public” proclamation, but in essence our assemblies are “private” gatherings with very few visitors present (if any). Most of those who do come are connected in some way and are not genuinely “visitors”. We do little genuinely public proclamation. Public proclamation occurs in the outside contemporary world almost exclusively in impersonal ways–TV, radio, media. If our assemblies are primarily “for us” (1 Cor. 14, “if an unbeliever comes into your assemblies….”), the place of the preaching and teaching may be to prepare and support Christians as they live out their Christianity in the community outside the four walls our the building. The church ultimately goes outside its walls and enters the community, not through the organized efforts of the church, but as each member goes forth to live life (“as you are going….”, Matthew 28:19).
[The article in Pastors Weekly Briefing also included some interesting comments about evangelism and evangelistic efforts. Those I will share in tomorrow’s blog.]