Reason for Failure in Evangelization
Why? The reason is because we have this mentality of giving to the task of spreading real Christianity only what is extra, what we can spare after deducting what we require for our personal, family and social needs from our earnings. That is the obstacle to the accomplishment of the task of spreading genuine Christianity around the world in our generation.
And how do we remove this obstacle? Simply, by getting rid of this mentality and putting in its stead the attitude that this task is the most important work of our life and that it deserves all our finances.
But how do we do this in practice?
Failure of Attempts at Evangelizing Work
Those who enter the religious order or congregation do give all their earnings to their respective order or congregation. They do not withhold anything for their personal, family or social needs. They left their families, so they see no obligation to support them, except in very specific circumstances of dire need. Their personal needs, like food, clothing and shelter, are taken care of by their religious group or order. And their social needs, like recreation and personal interrelationships, are also taken care of by the order or congregation.
The question now is: By their giving of all their earnings to the order or congregation have they done what they should do to fulfill the great commission? Certainly not. Many nominal Christians still live even just outside the confines of their monasteries or religious houses. Perhaps they themselves are still nominal Christians.
They give all and yet the work is still not done. What happens is that the funds are devoted to the well being and spread of the order or congregation and not to the spread of the good news.
Let us take another case. There are church and para-church organizations which purportedly exist to fulfill the great commission. There are hundreds of them. Almost all Christians have come across some of them, like Campus Crusade for Christ, The Navigators, Overseas Missionary Fellowship International, etc. These organizations are spending millions of dollars for their ministries. The crucial question is: Have they successfully fulfilled the great commission? The answer of Barrett and Reapsome in the book I cited is that they are nowhere near the target of fulfilling that great commission.
Why? A sizable amount of the donations they receive goes into meeting their personal, family and social needs instead of being spent for the spread of the good news.
Notice the websites of these organizations, they have a button for donations. Almost all of these organizations think that the donations contribute to the spread of the good news. If we investigate this carefully, the opposite is true. Those donations hinder the spread of the good news. I learned this the hard way.
There is the mentality even among Christians that organizations can do more than individuals. If one person can tell 10 other persons about the good news an organization of 100 persons can do more than that one person, maybe more than 100 times. They tend to forget that after a while the purpose of that organization will be to maintain itself in existence.
The only practical solution I see in this is for individuals who are convinced of fulfilling this great commission to work and earn something for the explicit purpose of funding their ministry, like what Paul of Tarsus did.
The objection we often hear is that the minister of evangelization or evangelism would be more fruitful if he devotes all his time to the ministry and others enable him to do this by giving him their tithes or love gifts. But as we can see this objection is not really valid. A greater percentage of what is given to this minister goes to his personal, family and social needs, instead of being spent for the spread of the good news.
Removing This Obstacle
If we are going to be really serious in spreading genuine Christianity we have to give all that we earn to this task, saving only a little amount for our sustenance.
When Christians are spiritually awakened from their centuries’ sleep in missions we shall have an ever widening spread of genuine Christianity among us. It is indeed a long overdue time for spiritual awakening.
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Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:
http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities
http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health
http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us
http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet
Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.
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