Back in early 2023, I asked our congregation about evangelism in a church wide survey. Here are the results of that simple, three question survey.

1 About how many times have you been able to just say something about either the gospel, Jesus, the Bible or truth to a non-believer, in the past 3 months, via face to face, email, call or text – not social media? 78% 3x or less. 35% 1 time or less.

2 On a scale of 1-5, 1 being low and 5 being high, how would you rate yourself on your efforts to share your faith with non-believers? 90% 3 or under, and 60% 2 or under.

3 On the same scale, how well do you think NBC has equipped you and motivated you to share your faith with others in your life? 85% 3 or more. 60% 4 or more.

Now, surveys are notorious for not telling the whole truth and surveys should be taken with a grain of salt for various reasons. However, these results are telling for a few reasons.

First, this survey communicates that evangelism is intimidating for most Christians and that intimidation prevents us from putting much effort into trying. These statistics are not uncommon from similar ones I've seen that survey the whole evangelical church landscape in America. The numbers are pretty eye opening about how infrequently people even try to share about their faith with people much less actually see someone come to faith in Jesus. As I've reflected on these survey results, and my own efforts in evangelism, I humbly have concluded that the #1 reason why we don't evangelize more is simply because there are alot of reasons we can come up with not to.

Second, this survey communicates that people are honest in their self evaluation. This is really good to see by the way. I'm sure God is pleased to see humble, honest confession of Christians lacking in this area. When we can be honest with ourselves, others and God, we have opened the door to be teachable. When we are teachable, God can work in us to improve.

So, how can we as a church family get better at evangelism? This is the one-million dollar question that many churches are asking of themselves as well. We are not alone. Of course, many good suggestions can be made. For the sake of brevity, I want to make just one recommendation. Try this: naturally try to integrate simple, spiritual comments or questions into your regular conversations with people as opportunities arise; especially with people you know and care about. This may open the door for you to share your personal salvation story with them and to share the gospel with them too. If you need a resource to be able to share the gospel with someone, here is one we have posted on the church website https://northshorebible.com/peace.