Evangelism Expert: Why Aren't We Sharing Our Faith?
One evangelism expert asked Christians a simple yet pervasive question that most church and ministry leaders have - ''Why aren't we sharing our faith?''
One evangelism expert asked Christians a simple yet pervasive question that most church and ministry leaders have - ''Why aren't we sharing our faith?''
In a recently released book entitled The Complete Evangelism Guidebook, Scott Dawson surveyed more than 6,000 Christians about why people have a hard time sharing their faith.
"When you look around, it wasn't they were asking 'are you sharing your faith?' because it's apparent we're not sharing our faith. I just wanted to find out why...why aren't we sharing our faith? And the best way to find out is just simply ask people."
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Recent studies have shown Christians placing evangelism as a secondary priority and there has been no significant change in faith sharing in the past decade with six out of ten Christians claiming to have shared their beliefs about Jesus with someone, according to The Barna Group. Additionally, more missionaries in the United States, such as those from the North American Mission Board, are seeing their own homeland as a major mission field.
Dawson conducted the survey over a period of nine months last year at different conferences and churches. And the most frequent responses he received were ignorance, fear, and friendship or loss thereof.
"The idea of building a friendship with the intent of sharing Christ is foreign in most believers' mindsets," said Dawson. "We have to bring evangelism back into the forefront."
To drive that forward, Dawson gathered a team of some 60 evangelism experts, "the best of the best," he called it, to provide Christians with the most comprehensive manual on evangelism.
It's not another "program of evangelism," emphasized Dawson, nor is it meant to be read from cover to cover. Rather, it's a "tool" to be used in evangelism.
"This book is more of a resource. We've learned that you no longer have to cross the ocean to reach the world; you may have to cross the street and meet your neighbors," he commented. "Our goal is to have this in every business man's desk drawer, every student’s locker, and every Sunday School classroom."
As a manual, the more than 365-page book gives advice on how to address people of a broad range of backgrounds including strangers, patients, the military community, Hindus, inmates, rich and poor, men and women, and millennials.
"As we're sharing our faith, the message will never change, but the tools we need will be different in every opportunity," noted Dawson. "You're constantly going to come up with someone with a different mindset, a different basis of authority, and different family situations."
Scott Dawson is founder of the Scott Dawson Evangelistic Association in Birmingham, Ala. He has reached more than 550,000 people through conferences and crusades.
