Lifeway Head Highlights Church's Dwindling Evangelical Emphasis
by Allie Martin
April 4, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Thom Rainer, president of Lifeway Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) believes the American church has become evangelistically anemic. In a recent column for Lifeway.com, he pointed to statistics that seem to bear out that assessment. According to a 2004 research project Rainer led, it took 86 church members in America one year to reach a single person for Christ. The study also revealed that, in the past six months, more than 50 percent of pastors made no evangelistic efforts whatsoever.
The Southern Baptist leader says Christians often get caught up in minor issues, meanwhile losing their passion for soul winning. "The majority of evangelical Christians will live a Christian life, die, and go to heaven without ever having shared their faith one time with a lost person," he says.
"And when I say a majority," Rainer continues, "I mean in the mid-50 percentile. We've got to do something to connect our people, our evangelical Christians across America, with the lost and unchurched world so that we can tell them the best news that there is -- the news that Jesus Christ saves."
As head of one of the largest distributors of Christian products and literature in the world, Rainer observes that the church in America is not lacking in resources, but lacking in genuine zeal for evangelism -- a deficit for which he feels there is no good excuse.
"We have all the tools," the Lifeway spokesman notes, "and our research has shown that the unchurched world is really very receptive to Christianity." In fact, he adds, "Overall most unchurched, lost people are receptive to Christianity and receptive to Christians; so the disconnect, to borrow a phrase from a secular company, is [at the point of believers being willing to] 'just do it.'"
In other words, Rainer contends, if people will make the effort to witness, they will discover that a fair percentage of people are open to the gospel message. "We have found that if someone shares their faith about five times, there's a likelihood that in one of those times, someone is going to say, 'Tell me more about Christ,'" he says.
The church cannot afford to get so busy with its various projects that it neglects the Great Commission, Rainer insists. He says believers throughout the body of Christ need to examine themselves to make sure they are making evangelism a priority.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
