What would you say is one of the biggest myths about evangelism in the church today?
There are a couple of things. I don’t know what the biggest one is. I think one of the biggest problems is that no one feels like it’s their job.
I hear pastors say, “Well, it’s not really my job to go out and share my faith with people. I’m really supposed to equip the people to do that…” And the people say, “Well, I’m not a preacher, so I don’t like to preach to anyone. I just try to show them by having a nice life…” Bottom line, no one is really getting the Gospel out.
The truth is it’s everyone’s job. If pastors were out sharing their faith, then they could say, “Follow me; I’ll make you a fisher of men. Watch how I do it.” There would be a sense of discipleship where people can come along. Instead, we give sermons about fishing and PowerPoints about fishing and books about fishing, but who’s actually out there fishing and taking someone along with them. That’s the problem.
Pastors aren’t doing it, so then the sheep don’t have that type of example. The truth is the believers should be doing it themselves and showing other believers – this is what I do in my workplace, look at how I share with them, notice how I got into this guy’s life and how we go golfing together, and after a while, he got to see my life, and I got to lay out the Gospel. We’re not discipling people in that. What we do is a big church program, send out fliers, and if you have enough courage, maybe tell your friend to come to “Jesus on Ice” or whatever program we’ve got going on, but we’re still not fluent in Scripture.
It’s so weird to people that Jesus is the most important thing to us yet we’re so awkward in talking about it.
We love our kids. We’ll talk about our kids all day. We love our wives. We’ll talk about our wives. We love a sport. We’ll talk about that sport.
But when we talk about Jesus, it doesn’t just flow out of this natural, this is who I am. I’m crazy about God and what He did for me. It’s supernatural how He answers my prayers, and I just love Him. That type of conversation, I understand, is politically incorrect to talk that way, but nonetheless, I think the biggest problem in the church is this awkwardness.
We just don’t know how to converse with people. We’re scared to do it, so we don’t do it.
