What is the huge crisis in western church?
What is the huge crisis in western church?
Most of us have friends, workmates or schoolmates and people we have relationship with, that don’t know Christ. We know that we need to share Christ with them but we don’t know how to create opportunities to share the Gospel, and when we do have an opportunity we sometimes get tongue-tied and think later ‘why didn’t I say that?’ or ‘what did I say that for?’
As I travel around preaching in a variety of different churches I often ask the same question, ‘Who here today thinks that they could share a clear Gospel message with a non-Christian?’. In most cases there is less than ten hands that go up in the church. Campas Crusade for Christ statistics show that only 2% of Christians regularly share their faith. If the Great Commission is to go into all the world with the Gospel and to disciple those that are saved, and most of the people in our churches cannot articulate the Gospel, then we have a HUGE CRISIS in the church!
The Gospel is the power of God for Salvation (Rom 1:16) but there has been very little training available for Christians to help them communicate the Gospel effectively in today’s modern world. There are a few tools available, and after trying them out I have been personally frustrated due to being one or more of the following:
- Antiquated — haven’t been updated in years (or decades).
- Full of religious jargon — what is ‘sin’, ‘righteousness’ and ‘the Blood of Jesus’. “I don’t want any blood on me! Is this some sort of cult?”
- Full of scriptures — they assume non-Christians understand passages like “the wages of sin is death”, leading to people feeling confused and like they have been ‘bible-bashed’.
- Rely heavily on the Christian having the ‘gift of the gab’ or to fill in the gaps — many Christians just don’t feel they can do this.
- A bit simplistic — ‘you’ve sinned, Jesus died for you, pray this prayer and you’re in!’.
- Too much of a social Gospel — based on man’s felt needs and how God can meet them, a man centred Gospel.
- Lacking vital elements that the scholars say are a part of the historic Gospel.
- Limited in their application — either to be used in the context of a friendship only, or just in street witnessing.
The Gospel hasn’t changed in the last 2000 years, but the method of presenting it certainly has. Most Christians today aren’t sharing the Gospel regularly, and if they are it’s normally with lots of religious jargon and/or antiquated tools. It’s time to do something about this crisis! It’s not good enough to just preach about how we need to get out into the world with the Gospel, as leaders we need to provide teaching, tools and training – the “how to’s” of the faith. And this is where Train To Proclaim comes in. We specialise in training Christians to communicate the Gospel effectively with love and grace. The tool we train people with is called the G7 or Gospel in 7. As a full time evangelist for 20+ years I have used many tools, but the G7 has revolutionised my evangelism. If you are interested in finding out more then feel free to browse the site, view the videos and if you have any questions then please go to the contact page and send me an email.
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