Evangelicals are doing less and less evangelizing. SBC Voices is on the case.
Dr. Ed Stetzer, Executive Director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, wrote an article about this recently. He listed seven reasons for the decline in evangelism.
There has been a backlash to past evangelistic methods that seemed reductionistic and simplistic.
Many believers do not have confidence in the gospel.
It is getting harder to share the gospel in a context where people are further away from what their parents and grandparents believed.
Some believers have replaced evangelism with another spiritual emphasis. (like social justice or environmentalism)
A lack of compassion for the lost around us.
Some believers fear not having the answers to questions people raise.
Some Christians worry that their lives are not good enough to qualify them as witnesses.
Two things: First, I love explanation number 5 — a lack of compassion. That is, believers are thinking, “I don’t have a problem with Cousin Bubba spending eternity as the fuel in a Tiki Torch.” Heh.
But what is striking to me about this earnest list is what is missing: The Christian narrative is crazy and only a dysfunctional mind falls for it.