How often do you think about Lost
People? Too often we fail to think about the certain consequences facing a
person outside the Christian faith. We somehow believe if we don't think about
them, our responsibilities diminish. Our failure to share the gospel with people
does not change the consequences of their failure to respond positively to the
invitation of Christ. Listen to what the Bible says about the lost:
"And you were dead in your
trespasses and sins; But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love
with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us
alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)," -- Eph 2:1a, 5 NASB
"There is none righteous, not
even one … for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, For the wages
of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our
Lord.” -- Rom 3:10, 23; 6:23
NAS
The Bible clearly teaches that a
person, without a personal faith in the Lord Jesus, is lost and condemned to
eternal death! I think these people deserve our immediate attention.
When a church admits that our
primary purpose is evangelism, we must consider what we are doing to reach the
lost of our communities. Sadly, too many of our churches confuse evangelism with
numerical growth. Here is what I mean. We think, as our communities increase in
population, that our duty is to see that people join our church. While having
people join our church is not wrong, it is not a substitute for evangelism. A
disproportional number of our church additions are transfers from other church
memberships. In fact, over two-thirds of our additions fall into this category.
Additionally, when we factor in the reality that about one-half of our reported
baptisms are of believers who join our churches from other denominations or from
the children of our own members, we see that a dismal few of our baptisms are
actually new converts from strategic evangelism efforts. Let me give you a
glimpse of what a church might look like with these numbers:
A church has 100 additions this year. Sixty-six (66) of these are transfer of letters from people who have moved into our community and joined our church from another church. Seventeen (17) are children of current church members who accept Christ and are baptized or are believers who join our church from another denomination. This means that this church had approximately 17 decisions for Christ through our church's evangelistic efforts. The sad fact is that this hypothetical church would be listed as a growing, vibrant church by many denominational agencies!
Something needs to happen. When we
read about the early church in the book of Acts, we see that evangelism was the
natural result of the church functioning under the leadership of the Holy
Spirit. I am convinced that the church today is less representative of the
Church in Acts and more akin to the Church in Revelation (2: 1-7).
What can we do? Here is a
beginning;
- We must seek the face of God about His desire for ourselves,
and our churches in the area of reaching a lost world with the Gospel.
- We must confess our failure in the area of evangelism.
- We must repent of our sins of apathy and lethargy.
- We must return to our first love.
Think on these three words: Remember - Repent - Return. This will be the beginning of REVIVAL! When genuine revival comes the church will, because of her renewed love for Jesus Christ, have a broken heart for the lost world. When our heart breaks, we are bound to do something about it! Let's pray for Revival!
