Friday, January 11, 2008 - Reaching the Unchurched

At Hope Baptist we have been focusing on personal evangelism in the adult/teen Sunday school.  I’m just now wrapping up the material I planned to teach and now it is time to start talking!

This morning I came across a great article in USA Today, a survey on attitudes towards christianity among the “unchurched”.

Survey: Non-attendees find faith outside church  (Link to full USA Today article)

Here´s a quote from the article with my added boldface…

“But despite respondents' critical views of organized religion, Stetzer is optimistic. He cites the finding that 78% would "be willing to listen" to someone tell "what he or she believed about Christianity."

They already know believers — 89% of the unchurched have at least one close friend who is Christian, Stetzer noted.

And 71% agreed that "believing in Jesus makes a positive difference in a person's life."

"What surprised me is the openness of the hard-core unchurched to the message of God and Christianity — just not as expressed in church," Stetzer says.

"It's a personal thing, not an institutional thing. It's a matter of starting conversations."

Now if I read that right it means that 89% of us have a close friendship with someone who doesn’t know Christ… 71% of us have a positive testimony with our non-believer friends…

BUT 78% of us are keeping it to ourselves!  Seven out of ten people think your faith in Christ is a positive influence and nearly eight out of ten will be willing to hear you out!

At Hope Baptist we have been focusing on one giant aspect of personal evangelism more than any other, the POSITIVE CONFESSION OF CHRIST.  It is important to know what you believe and be able to back it up with scripture.  Above all we must live it openly before a watching world and be vocal about it.   

Brazil is more than a pluralistic society, the personal belief systems of many people here are pluralistic in nature.  To pin most people down to what they actually believe and practice it sounds like Roman-Cathlospiritulaistic-New-Age-Hedonistic (but if you say it really fast you might become a mystic).  Deep down, people are not happy and they know that there has to be more to life than what they are living.  We have the most positive message on the planet – JESUS.  Lets get out there and talk to someone!