Reviving Evangelism

Definitions

• Practicing Christians identify as Christian, agree strongly that faith is very important in their lives and have attended church within the past month.
• All others are US adults who are not practicing Christians under the definition above. These fall into two main groups:
  • Lapsed Christians identify as Christian but have not attended church within the past month. Only 4 percent consider their faith very important.
  • Non-Christians identify with a faith other than Christianity (“religious non-Christians”) or with no faith at all (“atheists / agnostics / nones”).
• Millennials were born 1984 to 1998 (ages 20 to 34).
• Gen X were born 1965 to 1983 (ages 35 to 53).
• Boomers were born 1946 to 1964 (ages 54 to 72).
• Elders were born before 1946 (age 73+).

Introduction

An early hallmark of Jesus’ ministry was delegation. He worked strategically to entrust his message of the coming of God’s kingdom to people capable of remembering and faithfully transmitting that message to others—along with express instructions to pass it on. Famously, his parting words to his disciples, known as the Great Commission, are a mandate for worldwide discipleship, a process that requires evangelistic work—gospel work.

In the first generations after Jesus gave those instructions, Christianity experienced explosive, exponential growth in spite of profound internal and external challenges. Theological debate, cultural skepticism and government-sponsored persecution complicated the carrying forward of the gospel. But within a few centuries, that good news had been preached from Britain to India, inland Africa to China, resulting in one of the most remarkable stories of global transformation in history. The spread of the gospel changed the course of history—and has in every century since. Although Christian history has been fraught with failures as well as successes of mission, one thing is certain: The original commission from Jesus has been carried forward, generation to generation, across the centuries.

With that continuing mission have always come challenges, and this generation is faced with plenty of obstacles to effective evangelism. Christianity in the United States has always been in a perpetual state of reinvention, but cultural and demographic changes over recent decades have led to a season of unprecedented challenge. The overall number of practicing Christians is falling, against a cultural backdrop that is increasingly tribal and difficult to define.

Significant societal upheavals have led us here. They include the innovative disruptions of the Internet and social media, generational shifts accompanying the coming of age of Millennials and Generation Z, and increasing political rifts between Christian conservatives and progressives. Complicating this turmoil are factors actively tearing at the social fabric: the breakdown of institutions such as the traditional family; the rapidly diversifying racial and ethnic makeup of America; the revelation of sexual aggression and abuse in once-hallowed religious, artistic, academic and political spheres; and highly public violence such as terrorist attacks and mass murders in community spaces.

What or who can be trusted anymore? It feels to many that threatening waters are rising fast and common ground is in short supply.

Historically, the Christian community has been a source of stability and encouragement in the face of uncertainty and suffering. But today’s difficulties are compounded by the fact that practicing Christians are not immune to the destabilization felt so widely. Christians in America are fewer and less unified than at any time in recent memory—and few show signs of knowing what comes next.

This trajectory cannot correct itself. Difficulties for Christians will likely increase in coming years, especially as perceptions of our reliability and reputation suffer. Besides further demographic shifts,as the last of the Elders pass and Boomers age out of dominant influence, it’s likely that public perception of Christian faith in America will continue to decline, seen by non-Christians as irrelevant, politically corrupt or morally hypocritical. Many in Gen Z, whose oldest members are on the cusp of their 20s, feel little cultural pressure to maintain a faith identity, Christian or otherwise.

If you feel these combined dynamics point to an existential crisis for the Church, you’re not wrong. But the crisis may not be the one that comes immediately to mind.

Ask the Right Question

Our calling as Christians is not demographic dominance. It’s not even about cultural survival, or about securing the faith of the next generation (as important as that is). The Church’s mission is to spread the message of saving, sacrificial love and ultimate hope that Jesus commissioned his followers to proclaim. It’s not about numeric growth; that’s just a byproduct. It’s about the good news.

Losing cultural ground? We can cope with that.
Losing the gospel? That’s a different story.

Are we faithfully sharing the good news? The answer to that—not a mere count of conversions— is a true indication of the Church’s flourishing. Cultural decline and fragmentation cannot threaten the existence or integrity of the Church as a gospel community, but the failure to share our faith certainly can. We must ask ourselves how we are faring in our role as heirs of Jesus’ call to the apostles.

On this count, Barna’s recent research, commissioned by Alpha USA, suggests reason for concern. The study was designed to assess both active Christians’ and non-Christians’ perceptions and experiences related to faith-sharing and spiritual seeking.* Researchers interviewed two groups of people: practicing Christians (in Barna’s definition, those who say their faith is very important in their life and have attended church within the past month) and all other US adults (which includes both non-Christians and people who identify as Christian but don’t prioritize or practice the faith, who we call “lapsed Christians”).

From the findings emerge three key realities:

1. Evangelism Erosion: The forces of cultural and religious change are eroding the landscape of evangelism.
2. Blurred Maps: Christians’ perceptions of the landscape and of themselves are often hazy or wide of the mark.
3. Fertile Soil: Real opportunities remain for evangelism, but effective faith-sharing today looks different from the past.

As we will see, Christians do not have a united front in support of evangelism. Additionally, many lag behind their non-Christian peers in the kinds of diverse relationships that are desirable for cultivating a healthy evangelistic culture and opportunities to share Christ. What’s more, their relational and conversational skills are sometimes lacking.

Failure to proclaim the gospel demands that Christians ask hard questions of ourselves before turning our eyes outward. It would be easy to assign responsibility for declining numbers to cultural factors. But the easy explanation doesn’t fit the data. We who are entrusted with the message of Jesus are ultimately responsible for faithfully communicating it. What is it about our community or our presentation that is disconnected from the needs of our neighbors? We must do our best to ensure they can hear the good news shared with them in a way both faithful to the call of Jesus and framed for cultural intelligibility, so that they can give the message of hope and life a fair hearing.

This begins with us. Some of the most troubling numbers emerging from the data are not about “them” at all. A majority of practicing Christians does not consistently support evangelism, and 47 percent of Millennial Christians believe it is flat-out wrong to evangelize. This invites us to ask difficult questions, including what has gone so wrong with our gospel presentation that a majority of Christians hesitates to wholeheartedly support it.

Compounding this are factors that depress Christians’ ability to reach out to others skillfully—most conspicuously, that Christians are the faith group least likely to have friends who are different from them.

Additionally, Christian perceptions of what motivates non-Christians to consider or move toward faith are different from the actual felt experiences of non-Christians. The low level of spiritual hunger reported by most non-Christians is one example, along with their desire for more compelling evidence for the faith and negative impressions of Christianity’s reputation. Overall, Christians perceive non-Christians to be considerably more interested in spiritual things in general, and Christianity in particular, than they actually are.

Christians must realize we are not doing evangelism on a clean slate. Cultural perceptions and Christianity’s poor reputation are actively de-converting people raised in church and hardening non-Christians against evangelistic efforts.

Understand Ourselves & Others

In order to be engaged and effective in our call to share the good news, we must understand and respond to these changing realities. But in perhaps the most eye-opening results from Barna’s research, Christians are often poorly equipped in the relational skills needed to navigate a new era of sharing the gospel. Their self-understanding, and their perceptions of non-Christians, vary widely from the perspectives of those outside the faith. Additionally, the overall relational capital and skill set of Christians are often inadequate to maintain a trusted place in public dialog and to earn a fair hearing from those who might consider faith in Jesus Christ.

There is a unique opportunity for the US Church to return to its core identity during this time of transition. Against the backdrop of changing generations we see signs for optimism. While faith in America will never look the same as for our grandparents, it can be strong, authentic and resilient for whatever the future has in store. After all, you don’t pass the same message along for 20 centuries unless there’s something in it that can transcend cultural shifts.

Above all, we ought to keep hold of hope. History has seen the Church flourish time and again in discouraging evangelistic environments. Today is a wake-up call that can inspire us to grow, to reconnect with the call to be and make disciples, and to press forward into deeper and more radically countercultural faith. Rather than discouragement, this research can profoundly encourage us—if we are willing to embrace it realistically and respond humbly.

Seen rightly, our unprecedented challenges can become untapped opportunities. But only if we begin to understand them.