Our Context

Currently in many North American communities a growing percentage of people have no Christian memory and little knowledge of Christian language, making it difficult to share faith using traditional Christian language. Yet in this context, a growing percentage of persons today become disciples through the testimonies, deeds, and encouragement of someone they trust.

In light of this, a major challenge facing the church is that though pastors and leadership teams are finding it increasingly difficult to depend solely on programs of the church to reach new persons in the community, a growing percentage of Christians have difficulty building new relationships with new persons, and are not in the practice of sharing their faith with their neighbors, friends, relatives, or strangers.

Our Task

The academy and the church must rediscover practical faith-sharing ministries to meet the challenges of the current North American context.

• Practical faith-sharing must flow from a holistic, biblically and theologically grounded understanding of evangelism.
• Methodologies must focus on relationship-building as the context for applying faith-sharing techniques.
• A cycle of practical principles must guide in developing new relationships with new persons to provide opportunities to share one’s faith-story.
• Social, societal, and relational networks, as well as social media must be developed as avenues for the evangelist today.
• Christian denominations must find ways to embrace practical faith-sharing within their structures. For the United Methodist Church, we must create structures that will provide graceful ways for our membership to daily share their faith in Christ.