Biblical, Relevant Evangelism

A Biblical, Culturally Relevant Evanglism

From Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century by Aubrey Malphurs

In this section of his book, Aubrey Malphurs takes a look at some of the practical reasons why people do not share their faith with others.

Most Christians ?isolated and insolated from people who are not following Jesus. (352)
Even when people do not grow up in the church and become believers later in life, they can allow "church life" to become so significant that they disconnect from their previous relationships with those outside of the church.
- Christians aren't comfortable around non-Christians
- Christians expect non-Christians to behave like followers of Jesus
?Churches maintain culturally irrelevant methods (353)
- ?Many churches attempt to reach people in today's unchurched culture with methods that worked with people in yesterday's churched culture.
Churches have Missed the Unchurched Culture (354)
- Churches often have false assumptions about who the unchurched is today.
- They believe that "as long as you hang a 'welcome' sign out front, people will flock to the church." (355)
- Our current American culture is no longer primarily Judeo Christian. While some are hostile, according to Malphurs, "many look on Christianity as simply irrelevant to them and the times." They are just secular.(355)
- The unchurched are more present-focused than eternity-focused.
- The unchurched are process not event oriented. "Sharing Christ is much more of a process now than an event because there is very little pre-evangelism taking place."(356)