Assessing Discipleship: Unveiling Evangelism's Achilles Heel
I recently led a youth leader training that assessed the Seven Vital Signs of Discipleship in each of their ministries. The room was filled with men and women from different backgrounds and denominations. The only two things these leaders had in common were Jesus and students. Well, those two things and one glaring weakness.
After sitting in silence to comb through a 70-question assessment, I asked the group to total their scores. It took about as long as you'd expect youth leaders to assemble - longer than it should. After the adding was concluded, each leader plotted their top two strengths and their top two weaknesses on the board.
Millennial Mindsets and Gen Z Trends: Unpacking Barriers to Sharing Faith
They verbally confirmed the results of the test. We dialogued about the strengths of each group, ranging from service, community, and mentorship. The good feels abounded. But, then I directed their attention to the weakness column to highlight one indicting fact: Most of these groups had evangelism as one of their top two weaknesses.
Transparency time - it's also true for my own student group.
Barna's research on the topic of evangelism has some alarming number:
- 94% of Millennials believe that the best thing that could happen to someone is to know Jesus
- 73% of Millennials say they are gifted at sharing their faith with other people
However...
- 47% agree at least somewhat that it is wrong to share one's personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith.
This study was done on Millennials. My assumption is that those numbers are more discouraging for Gen Z.
Moving Beyond Invitation: Empowering Teens to Share Their Faith Authentically
In fact, nearly every time (and I mean, every time) I encourage my students to share the gospel with their classmates, I get the same retort: "But my classmates are Jewish." I then point out that Jesus was too! It doesn't go as far as you'd expect.
Bottom line, I fully believe that much of students' hesitancy for evangelism can be traced to the belief ascribed to by the 30-and-under crowd that evangelism is a tool to better the church rather than to better the individual far from God.
To combat this build-an-earthly-kingdom mindset, here are two things we must do.
#1 Instilling Urgency for Evangelism and Empower Student Missionaries
Stop equating invitation to evangelism. Of course you should be encouraging students to bring their friends to youth group or the campus club. And it's true that there's no better place for them to be than around other believers. But, if the only coaching your kids are getting for sharing their faith is how to get their peers to your program, you are sending two detrimental messages to your students: Evangelism happens at church AND it is done by professionals.
Teens need to see that there are more ways to share their faith than recruiting for cultivating. They must be taught how to share their story, how to consistently pray for their classmates, and how to lead someone to Christ. They need to know that the power of Jesus lies within them, not just the youth leader.
When you are rallying the troops to invite others, be sure to overtly communicate that this is not the sole form of evangelism. Create your own axioms, such as "Invitation is one aspect of sharing your faith," or "No event is greater than your personal story." Do something to make sure your kids completely understand that plugging in people to build a program is not what Jesus intended when He unleashed His Church.
#2 Cultivating a Culture of Celebration: Recognizing and Replicating the Impact of Planting
All to often we devalue conversation and overvalue conversion. That's not as sexy as it sounds. Of course we should be celebrating when someone passes from darkness to light - heck, the angels do it, right? But, by hyper-focusing on the "reaping" we may be neglecting the "planting."
It's been said that, "What gets celebrated gets replicated." When we constantly celebrate the output (conversion) and overlook the input (conversations of Jesus), frustration can ensue. It can be discouraging for those who are faithful to "planting" to not see the connection to the "reaping."
What if success stories weren't just, "Brody shared his faith and Kaleigh accepted Christ!" What if a success story worth broadcasting included, "Brody shared his faith with Kaleigh and now we wait and pray!"
1 Corinthians 3 makes it clear that the reaping is the work of Christ. Let's celebrate that. But let's also celebrate the planting that our students are doing, regardless of what the immediate outcome is.
When planting gets celebrated, planting gets replicated.
Questions to chew on
-
Does your ministry create an urgency for students to share their faith?
- Have you enabled your students to be missionaries in their schools/teams/clubs or are they solely recruiters?
- Could your students share their story or lead someone to Christ without your help?
- Do you need to enter a season of celebrating planting?
_____
Jonny Radcliff is a Youth Minister, Speaker, and National Coordinator of Resource Development at NNYM. He lives in Pennsylvania (Go Birds) with his amazing wife Sarah and their four incredible kids.
This article was originally published on Youth Specialties