1. Fear
Sharing your faith is a scary prospect. You can lose face and friends when you communicate this “narrow-minded” message of the Gospel, even when you do so in love.
Consequently, many Christians choose silence over sharing the Good News. Fear is the biggest culprit that keeps most Christians from evangelizing.
The fix:
Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the Gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should. Ephesians 6:19-20
2. Ignorance
There are many Christians who want to share their faith but just don’t know what to say.
If you were to put a microphone in the face of the average churchgoer leaving a typical Sunday morning service and asked them to define the Gospel message, many of their answers would range from um to dumb. And far too many preachers have overcomplicated the Gospel to the point that even true Christians wonder if they’re saved. They’ve added caveats and small print to John 3:16, until many believers are confused by the clear and simple Gospel they once embraced with childlike faith.
The fix:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4
3. Arrogance
Sadly, there are Christians who think they’re above sharing the Gospel. After all, isn’t that what they pay the pastor, youth leader, and missionary to do? These Christians want to sing about Jesus in the sanctuary and exegete His book in Sunday school, but they don’t want to get their lily-white hands defiled with the diseased and dirty “sinners” by having to actually talk to them.
The fix:
But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to His disciples, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’ Luke 5:30-32
4. Apathy
Many Christians just don’t have a burden to see the lost saved. They believe there’s a Hell. They know that those who don’t know Jesus will go there forever. But they, for whatever reason, just don’t care that much. They’ve lost their first love and, therefore, refuse to do what He commands. As with the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2:1-7, the remedy is repentance and a rekindling of their love for Jesus. Because when our love for Jesus is white-hot, we can’t help but love the things He loves, which includes sharing the Gospel with the lost.
The fix:
When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Matthew 9:36
5. Bad theology
This brand of bad theology has a range. One extreme defangs Hell by painting it as either mythical or momentary suffering (as opposed to eternal), therefore removing the urgency to evangelize. The other side of the range uses the doctrine of election as a way to eradicate urgency. After all, if God is sovereign in salvation, why evangelize?
Although I believe in the sovereignty of God in salvation, I’m also fully convinced that if people don’t hear and believe the Gospel, then they’ll be damned forever. I choose not to try to solve the riddle but live in the tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. It’s in the midst of this tension that God provides us both urgency and assurance—urgency to reach the lost who are headed to Hell and assurance that God is the only one who is sovereign in salvation.
The fix:
Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. 2 Timothy 2:10
