Since the release of the latest Australian Census data, I've been troubled by how many people in my nation are yet to know Jesus, and how ineffective we (as evangelical Christians) have been at reaching them.
I discovered that since 1991, there has been a 22% drop in the number of people claiming to be Christians and in a single generation there has been an 88% decline in the number of self-declared Christians.
So my friend Dave sent me this sermon by Philip Jensen from 1988, where he pulls no punches in pleading that churches change to reach the 97% who are not in our churches each Sunday.
You should listen to the whole message, but here are 10 quotes that stood out.... Read More
A talk by Phillip Jensen at the Evangelical Ministry Assembly 1988
For about 10 years I was involved in a growing non-denominational church here in Murray, Kentucky. I became involved in the church 9 months after it was launched. During that 10-odd-year period the church launched a second campus in a neighboring community - a 20 minute drive from Murray. Two years later it would close that campus because it had not grown from the original nucleus with which it started the campus. One of the lessons that I learned from what happened is that what works in one community may not work in another community. Every community is different. Cookie-cutter approaches, pragmatic or otherwise, do not work. Whatever approach we adopt, we must tailor it to the community that we are seeking to reach, to the segment or segments of the population that we are seeking to engage for Christ and ultimately lead to Him. Here again what works with one population segment may not work with another. I am now involved in a small Anglican church that is located in that same community and which faces its own challenges.
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