We Baptists say that we have 16 million members, but on an average Sunday only about four million attend Sunday School. There was one thing that surprised Debbie and I as we traveled to different Baptist churches in Mississippi, Florida and Georgia, two of the pastors mentioned the fact that the majority of the people who come to Christ in Southern Baptist churches come as a result of Vacation Bible School. According to this, our most effective evangelism outreach is done in one week out of a year. This got me to wondering why we as Baptists seem not to be reaching the world as we should and why people are not attending church after they become a believer in Christ.
God kept bringing to my mind the word "confess." Many times at the end of a church service you will hear the pastor exhort people to come forward and confess their belief in Christ before men. In Romans 9:10, it does say this, but it also says to believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead and you will be saved. As you can see, the belief as well as the confession by mouth are coupled together. The word "confess" by definition also means "to acknowledge." Our acknowledgement of Christ can be verbal as well as non-verbal. How we live our lives in our community gives a strong indication as to whether we "confess" or "acknowledge" Jesus before men. Do our actions, conversations and interactions with other people acknowledge Jesus or are we deep-cover secret agents? The speaking about what Jesus has done in your life in ordinary conversation can be an effective means of witnessing.
John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim's Progress, was passing by some women who were discussing the things of God. They talked about a new birth, the work of God in their hearts. This was new to John Bunyan. He drew closer and listened to the conversation more intently. And as a result, he was drawn to conviction. If it were not for the conversation of these ordinary women, the conversion of John Bunyan and the writing of Pilgrim's Progress, the second most published book after the Bible, would not have occurred. How many times during the day do we have the opportunity to show the light of Jesus and to be the salt of the earth. Here I am paraphrasing two different verses, Jesus said that we are the light and that we are the salt. By not acknowledging Christ before others we hide our light under a basket and our salt loses its savor (Matt. 5:13-16). Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in The Cost of Discipleship, says of disciples whose "flight into the invisible is the denial of the call. A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him." This is a very strong statement and is something we need to think about.
At one church, we attended a Wednesday night gathering in which the subject being discussed was evangelism. All through the conversations, there were statements such as, "I can't do that. I might offend them. I'm too shy." These statements were the majority of what was being said. Has our belief become so shallow and our light dimmed so much that it cannot be seen by others? Are we at risk of being denied by Christ at the Throne of Judgement because we did not acknowledge Him? The next time you are out and about remember the 7,200. This is the number of people who die each hour on an average day, two per second. A great majority of these people will be going to hell.
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