When I was a newly ordained preacher, my hope was that once I preached on evangelism, my congregants would go out and share the good news with others, and that church membership would grow steadily from that point on. After many years of ministry, that hope has been disappointed time and again. As preachers, we might want to blame this state of affairs on parishioners, reasoning that they are slow to accept and listen, or that they are too unenthusiastic to act. Yet we all know that laying blame on others without exploring the root cause of the issue is futile. So how can we, as preachers, best encourage our people to share their faith with the many people whose lives intersect with their own?

After doing much listening, I came to discover the following three reasons for my congregants’ lack of passion for evangelism, and three passages of Scripture that, when preached well, could help address these challenges.

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