This past Sunday, you may recall that I took a survey of the class asking certain questions about sharing your faith. Here are the results:Question #1 - I
- have never shared my faith: 2%
- have only occasionally shared my faith: 76%
- am always looking for opportunities to share my faith: 22%
Question #2 - I have the most trouble sharing or am most fearful to share with:
- family: 36%
- friends: 14%
- co-workers: 16%
- total strangers: 34%
Question #3 - I have the least trouble sharing or am least fearful to share with:
- family: 23%
- friends: 22%
- co-workers: 17%
- total strangers: 38%
Question #4 - I believe sharing one's faith is:
- optional: 10%
- not optional: 83%
- is for those with the gift of evangelism: 8%
Question #5 - I have personally:
- never openly shared my faith: 8%
- never led anyone to the Lord: 44%
- led at least one person to the Lord: 48%
What can we take away from this? Here are some of my observations.
- Not surprisingly, we have the most trouble sharing with family (36%), but we also seem to have as much trouble sharing with total strangers (34%).
- On the other hand, I was somewhat surprised to see that sharing with family is the second easiest group (23%) behind total strangers (38%).
- I was encouraged to see that a full 8 in 10 of you (83%) know that sharing your faith IS NOT optional.
- I was also encouraged that 48% of you have led at least one person to the Lord - though that leaves 52% who have never led anyone to the Lord.
- Finally, and here is what I think is the most telling statistic about why we are not doing a better job at leading others to the Lord - 3 in 4 of us (76%) only occasionally share our faith.
I wonder - do you think there might be a correlation between us not sharing our faith and not leading anyone to the Lord? But of course there is! It is my prayer and hope that when we finish our 4-week series on "Sharing Jesus Without Fear" that this is the one trend we can reverse.
