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Over the last couple of years, I have been blown away with the lack of evangelism in the Christianity that I observe. A little over a year ago, I heard that the population of Texas in the late 90’s was 19 million and twenty-five years later, there are 19 million lost people in Texas. Couple that with the research that says 3% to 5% of the churches in America will grow through conversion growth. The lost population is getting larger, and churches are getting smaller. This is not a problem with the power of God or the Holy Spirit, but a problem of the people who call themselves followers of Jesus. There are a lots of reasons we can point to for this, but ultimately, we as followers of  Jesus have chosen to not share the message of Jesus with people. We have chosen to remain silent. That is harsh, but what other conclusion can we come to? The current state of evangelism in the church today is due to silence when it comes to evangelism.

                There are several things that can be brought up now to justify this but ultimately, we must decide that we need to do something or stop complaining. When I was in Athens, Greece in 2004, I stood on top of Mars Hill. This is where Paul spoke of the philosophers amid the Areopagus about the altar to “The Unknown God.” This was the first time I had ever stood in a place that we found in the Bible. As I looked over the area below, I saw the ruins of a market. What hit me in that moment was this is a place where Paul took a stand for Christ, and yet Christ was almost non-existent in that country. I began to be challenged to not allow where God has planted me to be a place that formerly heard of or spoke of Jesus Christ. I immediately changed the way I did ministry to focus on discipleship and disciple-making. What has transpired over that last twenty-plus years is a call for more people to begin to take seriously their relationship with Jesus and call others to look and act like Jesus. But in all of that, evangelism has continued to falter. So, here is the challenge for us today: what if I began to take seriously the call to “do the work of the evangelist” and share my faith at least once a month? What would happen to those people and what would happen inside me? Great questions that can only be answered by doing that and seeing what God does. We need to stop being quiet and begin speaking Jesus into a lost and dying world because we have the answer and His name is Jesus.