The following article originally ran in the Spring 2026 issue of Onward.
By Merv Budd
Missional Initiatives Team Member
Evangelism Crisis
One of the primary aspects of the Church’s purpose is an evangelistic witness to Jesus, a task the church in North America is failing at. There appears to be a dwindling of evangelistic zeal in Canada and the United States. Consider some of these discouraging findings:
- A Lifeway Research study conducted with the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College in 2019 found that only 29 percent of unchurched people ever had a Christian share how to become a follower of Jesus with them.[1]
- Barna reported in February 2019 that almost half of Christian Millennials believe it is wrong to share their faith.[2]
- According to one study in Canada, “65 percent of church leaders say that evangelism has not been a priority in their church in the last several years” and “55 percent of Canadian congregations do not equip for evangelism.”[3]
- A joint study conducted in 2017 by Barna and Lutheran Hour Ministries concluded that most Christians in the United States are not sharing their faith with others. It found that 74 percent of self-identified Christians in the United States have nine or fewer spiritual conversations with anyone – including other Christians – per year. Nine percent have none.[4]
So why is it that the North American church is failing in such a primary aspect of its purpose?
When participants in the Barna study were asked why they were not sharing their faith, the number one reason respondents gave was fear. They were afraid they would be misunderstood, persecuted, marginalized, or silenced if they spoke up for their faith. More than this, the younger generations were more likely to be concerned that others would see their efforts at sharing their faith to be offensive.
When I have spoken to many NAB church leaders about evangelism, one of the exercises I have conducted was to ask them to complete the sentence: “Evangelism feels ___________,” inviting them to share their visceral reaction to the thought of evangelism. Of the 270 responses I have received from five different cities, 70 percent of the words that come back are negative. The top four visceral reaction to evangelism were:
- Scary
- Intimidating
- Uncomfortable
- Awkward
It seems that when it comes to evangelism, fear is a very present emotion for many people.
Very often, when it comes to helping congregations to become better equipped in the area of evangelism, the focus starts with helping people understand how to do evangelism. The thinking behind this strategy seems to be that if we can simply give people the right tools and techniques, then they will more effectively share their faith and the message of the Good News with others. By and large, this method of equipping people has been employed for several decades, if not centuries.
However, it seems to me that such a strategy is sadly misguided. It is not that instructing people in how to share their faith is wrong, but it seems to me that it is a wrong starting point. One of the very many definitions of evangelism is the one-word definition: “overflow.” Evangelism overflows through the life of Christians as a natural outcome of their being evangelistic. Instead of equipping believers in what to do, might we be wiser to start by equipping them in what to be? What if we were to help congregations to become more evangelistic?
Embodying the Gospel
To say someone is evangelistic is to say their life is characterized by the Gospel. In short, being evangelistic is living in such a way as to embody the Gospel in all the ways in which we live. When we conform our lives to the Gospel, we create curiosity about the person of Jesus and invite spiritual conversations.
Commenting about a North African document from the third century in which the church father Cyprian wrote 120 precepts to guide the church in Carthage, Alan Kreider writes, “Nowhere in the 120 precepts did he admonish the faithful to evangelize. And yet the church was growing rapidly because Christians were living attractively, alert to the concerns of their non-Christian neighbors, and ’chattering’ unself-consciously to them about their faith. And they were doing these things so naturally that they did not need Cyprian to lecture them to do so.”[5]
We find instruction about living evangelistic lives scattered throughout the New Testament. Paul’s instruction to Titus urged him to “[t]each slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive” (Titus 2:9–10 NIV, emphasis added). In a similar vein, Peter urges wives with unbelieving husbands to adorn themselves with purity and reverence so their husbands might be won over (1 Peter 3:1–6) How we live and conduct our lives should bear witness to the attractiveness of God’s good news.
In Ephesians 5:25, we read, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” It is not only for the sake of the wife but also for the sake of the Gospel. To those who watch, they are telling through their actions what God’s love is like. And when husbands fail to love their wives in that way – perhaps they are known as abusive or dismissive or demanding – what is communicated to those who watch is a false Gospel.
And yet, it is not only by our individual lives that we bear witness to the Gospel and make it attractive. The corporate life of the Church is to bear witness to the Gospel in how they live and treat one another. Consider this sampling of verses:
- Romans 15:7 – “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” Those who want to understand how Christ has accepted each of us should need only to look at how we accept one another.
- Ephesians 4:32 – “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” If unbelievers want to know what God’s kindness, compassion, or forgiveness is like, they should need only to look at the Church.
- 1 Peter 1:15 – “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do.” If people want to understand what the holiness of God is like, they should need only to observe the lives of Christians.
Our evangelistic witness starts with the consistency of our lives. We enact the Gospel long before people will listen to us declare it. Perhaps we need to consider what message we are embodying and repent of the heresy of wayward living.
Evangelistic Discernment
Naturally, growing more evangelistic lives is an ongoing and life-long process, but there is more to being evangelistic. When we attune our hearts to being evangelistic, we nurture evangelistic discernment, which is evidenced in several ways. I will share two.
First, we are curious to discern where people we engage are at in their spiritual lives. All people are on a journey – some away from God, some towards God, and others who seem stuck in a bewildered trance overwhelmed by the very crowded space of spiritual options that are espoused in overt and covert ways all around them. We can’t always judge a person’s spiritual state simply by outward circumstances. When we pay attention to the spiritual lives of those around us, as it is disclosed in their speech and actions, it opens up invitations to inquire without being pushy. These types of gentle prods flow naturally out of conversations born out of genuine curiosity.
I was getting a haircut the other day, and in the course of normal conversation, I discovered the lady cutting my hair was a single mom. As we were talking – and to be truthful I can’t remember how the topic came up – she mentioned that her young son’s bedtime routine with her was to read a book and say his prayers before kissing him and saying goodnight.
I found this interesting, so I simply asked her, “You said that you pray with your son before bed; do you go to a church?” The question was non-threatening because it had been her who had mentioned praying. I found out she didn’t go to church because she worked on Sundays, but she had a Catholic upbringing as a child. I found it curious that she saw enough value in faith that she was raising her own child to pray. Since Christmas was coming and she would be off for Christmas Eve, I was able to invite her to our kid-friendly Christmas Eve gathering. But more important than an invitation to our church gathering was the opening of conversation around spiritual things, and perhaps my engagement with her may have further encouraged her continued spiritual growth.
A second way in which evangelistic discernment is nurtured is through continually watching and asking the Spirit to open our eyes to where he is present and working in our day-to-day lives. Evangelism is less about us making opportunities than it is about discovering the opportunities the Spirit has prepared for us – not just with conversational opportunities, but with those opportunities in which we find it possible to give others a taste of the goodness of God’s Kingdom through our actions.
It is through experiential encounters that we can share our faith with others. We share love and joy and kindness. We share hope and forgiveness and mercy. These tactile expressions of our faith touch people so they experience the faith and not just hear about it.
A lady at my church just shared a testimony on the tenth anniversary of her mother’s death. Her mother was a Jew who was brought to the church by her daughter and son-in-law because she was lonely and we had a seniors group. Her daughter thought she just came for the food, but over time, the small touches of kindness, compassion, and love wore down her resistance.
One Sunday, after I had preached on forgiveness and reconciliation, she turned to her daughter and said she guessed she needed to forgive “so and so” – a person she had held a grudge with since she was 17. This was the first evidence something was changing in her heart. Later that year, as they were out for a walk, she said to her daughter, “I want to change. I want to be like you and the people at the church. I want to get baptised and follow Jesus.” She was in her 80s when she confessed Jesus as her Lord and Saviour. It wasn’t the sermons that won her; it was the small, continuous touches of love that were poured out on her by many people who didn’t even know they had made a difference. They simply discerned those opportunities to share God’s love with her in tangible ways.
Evangelistic Prayer
It may seem too obvious to say we need to pray for the salvation of others. But I am not so sure that heartrending prayer for the lost happens as much as it once did. I say this because I believe when we pray for the lost it is we who are changed. I can’t help but think that the dearth of evangelistic zeal is a byproduct of evangelistic prayerlessness.
Evangelistic prayer is not only for the lost; it is also about prayer for ourselves. Praying for opportunities to share our faith, speak about the Kingdom, bear witness to the King, and discern the opportunities God is providing should become a default rumination upon which our minds fall back on. It is a spiritual practice we need to reinforce as often as we have opportunity.
I find it curiously interesting that in Jesus’s parable about the persistent widow, which he tells to illustrate prayer, he concludes by saying, “And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:6–8, emphasis added). It seems that prayer and faith are linked. In this parable, Jesus seems to suggest that if you have faith you will persist in prayer. Furthermore, it appears that faith cannot be developed or exercised apart from prayer. Prayer and faith are necessarily joined at the hip. (Or should I say heart?)
The twentieth-century novelist E. M. Forster once scornfully caricatured Christianity with the dismissive phrase: “poor, talkative, little Christianity.” I fear that the equipping emphasis on what to say and ways to get into conversation about it have proven to support Forster’s critique. My perspective is that we might have erred in shaping people’s verbal messaging, at the neglect of having shaped their hearts and identities so that they become evangelistic people. My suspicions is that when the heart is right, the words will follow. Or perhaps, as Jesus said, “The things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart” (Matthew 15:18). To equip evangelistic congregations, we need to focus on their hearts becoming evangelistic.
[1] Mark R. Teasdale, “Rescripting Evangelism: Attending to Anxiety in the Evangelism Classroom,” Witness: The Journal of the Academy for Evangelism in Theological Education 38 (2024) 2.
[2] “Almost Half of Practicing Christian Millennials Say Evangelism Is Wrong,” Barna Group, February 5, 2019, https://www.barna.com/research/millennials-oppose-evangelism/.
[3] Alpha Ministries Canada, The Priority & Practice of Evangelism (New Westminster, BC, 2021), 4.
[4] Teasdale, “Rescripting Evangelism,” 2.
[5] Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 9.