The Church Answers Podcast
Why Are Conversions Down So Much in Churches? Part 2: The Priority Challenge
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They are doing an absolutely great job. Just last episode, we talked about why conversions are down so much in churches. And we talked about the demographic challenge, particularly the aging of the church. And you really brought up a good point in that. And I don't want to return back to our previous episode for those who listened to watch it. But essentially, you said you age because you didn't evangelize in the first place. Is that a good summary? Yeah, yeah. And that's the underlining issue, is really continuing to understand the next generation. And maybe just to kind of build on that a little bit before we jump into this, you know, you talk about what are some of the major issues between generations now. I have found, even reaching my peers and younger generations, that evangelism and sharing Christ has a new challenge. And I'm sure that historically maybe it's been around, but it feels brand new to me. What I've noticed is that this idea of communicating the need for Christ, it becomes a lot more difficult because people merge the idea of sin and who they are. And so evangelism now, actually sharing Christ, the big challenge is separating those two things, who you are and what you do. And our culture has absolutely merged those things together. And so my generation, younger generations are living in this and we're trying to unravel this. Previous generations, for the most part, again, I don't have data on this, but previous generations prior to this, that wasn't an issue. What you did and who you are, we're typically removed sin and identity weren't the same with the younger generations aren't. So you look at the aging of the church from a demographic standpoint. We're also talking about, you know, not reaching, it's become way more difficult, way, way more layers to pull back to actually help people understand why they need Christ. I totally get that and as a matter of fact, one of my mentors, the late Louis Drummond, he used to say, and this is not what you're saying. He said, I got to tell you brother, I'm not going to mimic his voice. I got to tell you brother, here's one of the challenges with evangelism. We're having trouble getting them saved because they don't know they're lost. Well, that's not exactly what you're saying, but you're saying there's a different paradigm and the understanding of sin and salvation. And that's what he was saying as well. Right, right. Well, I think for the longest part is people didn't recognize they were sinful beings. Now what I'm saying, they're identifying that they are sinful beings. And so it's kind of the next layer down that we're seeing in culture. Yep, yeah, and it's been around is come is all these, these cultural things are cyclical and you can go all the way back to the first century AD and you can begin to find some of the cultural issues. But here's the bottom line. We're commanded to do evangelism. And if there is, if the adversary, the enemy Satan has any plan that he would like to thwart. It was, it would be seeing people come to Christ. So ultimately, when we're doing evangelism, we're doing spiritual warfare and a lot of people don't want to sign up. They don't, they don't want to enlist. They're waiting on someone to draft them or to avoid the draft one of the two, but they do not want to list the spiritual warfare is scary and tough if you really understand it. And that's where, that's one of the areas where Satan is going to work the hardest is to keep evangelism at bay and to keep Christians as quiet as possible. So I'd love to hear your comments on that. Yeah, I know, I think that's often when you look at a church and maybe if a church is decreasing in size of angelism is also in a way. It's a weird way of angelism is the first to go because when there's less resources, they just tend to go and we need to hold on to what we have. Let's take care of ourselves. And I believe that's, that's the lie Satan begins to put out there. That's the lie is, hey, you need to stop doing this. You need to take care of yourself. Whether we realize or not, that's, that's a spiritual warfare that's spiritual battle or facing is this constant desire to look inwardly. But even as you go out and evangelize even if you go, go out, you're experiencing spiritual warfare and Satan wants to do nothing but get in the way of those who seek to share Christ. And I've, I've seen in my own church, when we, when we have more of a concerted effort, even with our elder team with certain people in our church, when we begin to move outwardly, you can feel the obstacles grow. You can feel like there's more challenges to overcome because Satan, he's actively working to stop every effort of the church to actually share the truth. And one of his points of attack would almost always be the pastor and the pastor's family and the pastor's family because the pastor is the role model for the church to see whether the pastor wants that or not. And usually the way most pastors are going to be thwarted and evangelism and critical areas of obedience to God is if their family is having challenges. So you combine those two and the pastoral role models tend to be few and far between in terms of some of the great role models that are out there. Yeah, and it does. I mean, this is, this is why conversions are down. This is why we're seeing a listing of evangelism, pastors feel this and whether we know it, you know, directly or indirectly, we feel that, that element of when we begin to lead our church more hourly focus we feel the attacks. When we talk about spiritual warfare, we're talking about the role model of the pastor, biggest combatant is prayer. When I know when my church is praying for me, I can feel it, I can sense it, even without them telling me is I can feel like I'm not having to carry and fight those battles on my own. So, why are conversions down. I think when you look at spiritual warfare when you look at the role of the pastor. We've often lost sight of, of our mainline of communication Mark Clifton says it well prayers wartime communication. If we're serious about sharing Christ serious about fighting the spiritual battle as a pastor I need, I need to lead the way. I've got to be a prayer warrior and I've got to lead my church to be prayer warriors as well. That is, is the precursor to actually going I think so many times we try and go without praying, we have to pray before we go. We own name of book. I go. I totally set you up for that. I hate you. I hate. I did that man. Well, hey, the the hope initiative which uses the book pray and go. That's the perspective that we have you got to pray. And then you go, you pray, and then you go. And again, yeah, this is some type of marketing spill just to talk about hope the hope initiative in my book praying go but it's, that's how we devised this entire ministry. And by looking at churches that had said, we're going to develop ministry through prayer. We're going to give a jump start to this through prayer and going. And thus became the hope initiative and that's why we're saying in many churches. God bless that because we're not we're not talking about evangelism and human power. We're talking about evangelism and God's power through prayer. And tying it back to our previous episode, we talked about just the aging and the demographic battle. You want to talk about if you're in a church that that is older demographically or older and age. Just begin to pray and being specific in your prayer for your pastor and for the evangelistic work of the church. Just start with that and pray for yourself, pray that God would use you evangelistically as well. It's because, again, I get we're so busy, like we live in this busy culture that it's just always going, someone's always trying to pull at us. We can stop and pray, communicate all those things for our church for our pastor for intentionality. It really helps us out and really to move forward against the spiritual warfare that we're faced. It's in our community group at your church, we call our group pericopy. It's just a strange name that I actually did not come up with. Janice, because it's because it's creative. Yes, it's creative and she came up with it and that's you knew that I did not. So, we did we have two times a prayer we have prayer where we just go around and ask for the typical prayer request. At the end, one of our church members will read from my book, call when the people pray, and it's 30 days to pray for your pastor in your church. And so we, that's how they, that's how we close, but it could be my praying, and it's usually for you, but it's related to the entire church as well. There's so much we could talk about here. Last conversion down spiritual warfare pastoral role models, busy culture, those are some of the issues that we're addressing we're going to continue to talk about that we won't stop. Peter and john were pretty much on target when they said and that's for we can help but speak about those things that we've seen inert, we'll continue to talk about that in the church answers podcast thanks as always for being with us. 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