Teleios
recently evaluated how often evangelical Christians share the Gospel and what
makes a person fear doing so. We surveyed all attendees at one Sunday worship service in a
Midwestern Evangelical Church. Approximately 370 people participated.
Last week we discussed that this survey indicated Bible believing
Christians have generally high ratings of wellbeing. Although some respondents
confessed to fear in explaining the Gospel to others, they continued to present
with better wellbeing than those who do share the Gospel.
Approximately
30% said they share the Gospel verbally once a month or more. However, they
also indicated that they felt a need to exaggerate how frequently they actually
evangelized! Why? Perhaps they
overstated how much they shared because of their hesitancy to tell the Gospel to
others. This is probably consistent with
many of our experiences.
The survey also
discovered what many people consider to be sharing the Gospel may not
necessarily include a verbal explanation! In fact, a verbal Gospel message came
in only number five on the list of how people say they share. Most common
methods are noted below.
Table 1 - Most
common methods to share the Gospel
|
Question
|
N
|
%
|
|
I normally share the Gospel by doing any of the following (choose all
that apply):
|
||
|
Lifestyle example
|
288
|
78%
|
|
Praying for others
|
263
|
71%
|
|
Encouraging others
|
260
|
70%
|
|
Loving others
|
251
|
68%
|
|
Verbally communicating the elements of the Gospel message
|
110
|
30%
|
|
Inviting others to church
|
106
|
29%
|
|
Giving videos or books
|
85
|
23%
|
Is it
important you actually verbalize the Gospel? Is simply living a pure life or
praying for others sufficient?
The Bible
indicates in Romans 10:13-15 that someone has to actually hear the words of the Gospel to
understand salvation. Further, the apostle Paul in 1st Thessalonians 2:9-10
noted that although he worked day and night to live a blameless life in front of
the Thessalonians, he still verbally spoke the Gospel to them. In other words,
non-verbal efforts, although important, will not bring somebody to belief. A
non-Christian needs to hear the specific Gospel message.
Is sharing
the Gospel message to be feared? In a humanist society where Christians often are
demonized as judgmental, and our adversaries claim they are more loving because
they accept all religions (except Christianity), we often feel ashamed. Yet if
our God is the God of the Bible, He has given us His power and truth to
salvation and for daily living. We have a wonderful message to give our
colleagues, family and friends. We are correct and society is wrong! Therefore,
we should be confident in sharing these truths in a patient and loving manner
(II Timothy 2:24-25).
As a
physician, if I knew the truth about someone's life-threatening medical
condition and also knew how to cure it, would I withhold disclosing the
diagnosis in case my patient found it offensive or didn’t believe me? If so, I would be a terrible doctor! We have
the truth which we can help others. Our society needs the truth of the Gospel!
How do we
effectively share the Gospel in our complex culture? That's a great question
and we'll discuss this next week. Please join me as we discussed how to share
the Gospel.
WC Stewart
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