Photo Credits:Marc Minter
More than half of churchgoing Protestants now say they haven’t shared the gospel with anyone else in a long time. According to the 2019 Discipleship Pathway Assessment study from Nashville-based LifeWay Research, 55% of Protestants who go to church regularly said they haven’t tried to convince anybody to accept the Bible over the past six months. Another 24% of them said they only did it 1-2 times and about 9% of people did it 6 times or more.
“Sharing the good news that Jesus paid for our sins through His death on the cross and rose again to bring us new life is the mission of the church,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research, “but it does not appear to be the priority of churchgoers.”
On the other hand, more than half of Protestants say that they are praying for opportunities to share their faith. “A majority of churchgoers (56%) say they pray for opportunities to tell others about Jesus at least once a week, with about 1 in 4 (23%) praying for such moments every day. Another 1 in 4 (27%) say they rarely or never pray for those opportunities. Those with a high school diploma or less are most likely to say they pray for those opportunities every day (31%). Hispanics (36%) and African Americans (29%) are more likely to offer those prayers every day compared to whites (20%) or other ethnicities (17%).”
Interesting thing is that young adults are more optimistic than older adults about telling someone their fairytales about Christianity. “Recently, there has been much discussion about young adults participating less in evangelism. That’s not the case, however,” said McConnell. “In fact, young adult and middle-aged churchgoers are more likely to have shared with someone how to become a Christian in the past six months than older churchgoing adults.”
“Jesus never promised the Great Commission would be completed quickly,” said McConnell, “but He set the expectation that the efforts to reach all nations with His gospel should be continuous. Many in church today appear to be distracted from Jesus’ final command.”
It seems like more learning leads to less sharing of the gospel, so Jesus’ final command may never be completed.
