Grace & Peace Magazine - Summer 2020

Page 20

G&P: Do you have any words on the

future of evangelism, how methods or perspectives may change? ES: It’s harder now to share our faith, and it’s going

to get harder. Most of our evangelism is based upon evangelizing people who are nominal Christians. Most people that most Nazarenes share the gospel with already think they’re Christians, and it’s almost like our job is to convince them they’re not so that they can be! Most polls say that around 75 percent of Americans say they’re Christians. Yet only about a quarter of Americans actually plan their lives around their religious faith. That means about half of Americans are nominal Christians. That’s where most of our evangelism has been. But here’s the challenge: Every year the number of Americans who identify as Christians decreased by about 1 percent, and 1 percent more identify as “none of the above,” or, the Nones. So we need to prepare ourselves for an evangelistic future where we’re not evangelizing nominal Christians to bring them to understand the deeper faith, but we’re evangelizing truly secular people who don’t know Christ and are one, two, or three generations away from any religious memory in their family.

G&P: Who are the “Nones”? ES: The highest percentage of Nones are younger,

but it spreads across the whole spectrum. To be fair, that’s always been the case. You’ll notice during the ’70s, the younger generation was the most secular. People become more religious as they age, according to research, but it’s a little tricky. Among college students, one out of three is actually intentionally or openly secular, and that’s a huge shift from prior generations.

G&P: Is the persecution of Christians

increasing, or is that just a perception? ES: It is getting more difficult. In the U.S. and in Canada, people are starting farther away from faith. The strongest, life-threatening kind of persecution is more prevalent outside of the U.S. and Canada. Things like the “War on Christmas,” or a clerk

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A common thread throughout most of the books I’ve written has been becoming effective at reaching and engaging people for the gospel. saying, “Happy Holidays” is really not persecution. I don’t think it’s the Walmart clerk’s job to tell people about Jesus. I think it’s my job and your job to tell people about Jesus. We certainly see the increasing pressure not to mention religion or share our faith in the culture of the U.S. and Canada, and this is likely at least partly due to the rise in secularism.

G&P: The standard has traditionally been to not talk about politics, religion, or sex in polite society. We definitely talk about sex and politics, but are we still more reluctant to talk about religion? ES: Isn’t that ironic? What has emerged is what I call the “Oprah-fication” of American spirituality in which you can believe whatever you want as long as it makes you happy and you don’t try to convince anybody else. But we Christians are part of a missionary faith. The founder of our faith told us to go and make disciples of all nations. Jesus’ last words should be our first priority. The call we have, to do what Jesus said, doesn’t fit as well in our world. We’re supposed to live and let live, everyone find their own spiritual way, their own path, and as long as we’re happy and we’re not hurting anybody else, it’s fine. But at the end of the day, that’s not really what we as Christians believe. We believe that men and women need to hear the good news of the gospel.


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