Untitled Sermon (3)
Introduction
According to a study done by LifeWay Research dealing with churches’ response to the Great Commission, Ed Stetzer found that “80 percent of those who attend church one or more times a month, believe they have a personal responsibility to share their faith, but 61 percent have not told another person about how to become a Christian in the previous six months.” It is also interesting to note that while the same research “found eight biblical attributes consistently evident in the lives of maturing believers … of those eight, ‘Sharing Christ’ has the lowest average score among Protestant church attendees.” Here are a few more highlights revealed in the study:
• Three out of four churchgoers say they feel comfortable in their ability to effectively communicate the gospel.
• 12% say they don’t feel comfortable telling others about their faith.
• 25% of churchgoers say they have shared their faith once or twice; 14% have shared three or more times over the last six months.
• Nearly half (48%) of church attendees have not invited an unchurched person to attend a church service or some other program at their church in the past six months.
• 33% of people say they’ve personally invited someone one or two times, and 19% say they’ve done so on three or more occasions in the last six months.
• 21% of churchgoers say that outside of church worship services they pray every day for people they know who are not professing Christians; 26% say they pray a few times a week; 20% say they rarely or never pray for the spiritual status of others.