Alabama Baptists’ strong role in evangelizing reflects the significance of Baptists evangelizing nationwide, evidenced by a recent Barna Research Group national study.
This new study shows that nearly 50 million born-again adults — some 60 percent of that population group — shared their faith in Jesus Christ with nonbelievers during the past year.
The study reflects a strong Baptist connection because one out of every three people in the 60 percent are aligned with a Baptist church — that’s about 16 million people. Nondenominational Christian churches also made a strong showing as did Catholic churches.
Alabama Baptists are strongly involved in evangelism, according to Sammy Gilbreath, director of evangelism for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM).
“Alabama Baptists lead the nation in FAITH-trained churches,” Gilbreath said, referring to a Sunday School and evangelism strategy of LifeWay Christian Resources and the North American Mission Board (NAMB). FAITH stands for Forgiveness, Available, Impossible, Turn and Heaven.
He said Alabama Baptists also lead the nation in NET training, which is an evangelism strategy of NAMB. NET was created to produce a culturally relevant approach for sharing Christ in a post-Christian culture, according to NAMB.
The evangelism office of the SBOM has developed a strategy called “Intentional Evangelism.”
“This strategy asks: ‘What are your people passionate about?’ We will help you make that (passion) intentionally evangelistic,” Gilbreath said.
“We then take their area of passion —whether it is bikes, horses, tennis, golf, acts of kindness, pregnancy crisis counseling or whatever — and help them know how to use their passion to share their faith,” he said.
One of the keys to the sharing of Jesus is training people in churches to share as part of their lifestyle, rather than approaching evangelism as an isolated event, Gilbreath continued.
Gilbreath agrees with Barna’s findings that the amount of evangelism depends on how strongly Christians believe God’s Word. It also depends on the belief that people must have a personal relationship with Christ to receive the free gift of eternal life in heaven.
“A veritable army of Christians is still active in spreading the good news about what Jesus Christ has done for all people,” said George Barna, reporting the results of the study. But, he admitted that the church still faces many challenges when it comes to evangelism and suggested that the place to start is with churchgoers’ beliefs, rather than with evangelism training programs.
Beliefs affect behavior
“We know that people’s behavior is driven by their beliefs, and the research showed that the most significant distinction between those who share Christ with the culture and those who don’t relates to their religious beliefs. Providing motivation and behavioral training are helpful, but the factor that seems most likely to stimulate Christians to bring the truths and love of Jesus into the marketplace are what they believe about sin, surrender and salvation,” Barna wrote in his report.
Seventy-seven percent of evangelizers said they believe the Bible is accurate in all of its teachings, compared with 57 percent of people who don’t evangelize. Those who believe they have a personal responsibility to spread the gospel are 67 percent of evangelizers vs. 38 percent of nonevangelizers.
Common beliefs of evangelizers revealed in the study were that Satan is not just a symbol of evil, that a person cannot earn a place in heaven through good behavior and that Jesus Christ did not sin during His time on earth. Some 81 percent of evangelizers interviewed said every word in the Bible is true and can be trusted.
Perhaps most troubling among the study’s findings was the fact that there are few huge differences between evangelizers’ lifestyles and those of the rest of the population. While nonevangelizers are slightly more likely to smoke than evangelizers, the survey showed no significant differences regarding levels of volunteerism, problems with serious debt, dealing with a personal addiction or consulting a psychic.
That may be why some evangelizers have a hard time getting the Christian message across.
“Nonbelievers are seeking evidence that Christianity is truly life-transforming,” Barna said. “Naturally, none of us, no matter how committed we are to Christ, will live a perfect life, but the research encourages believers to allow God to change us from the inside out so that our lives will substantiate the difference that following Christ makes.”
Barna said helping Christians better understand the core teachings of the Bible and to see life and daily opportunities through a faith lens would increase the prevalence of interpersonal evangelistic activities.
The Barna research involved telephone interviews with more than 4,000 adults between August 2002 and May 2003.
Barna is an independent marketing research company located in southern California.
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