I recognize that not all of us may have the same abilities and talents in sharing the gospel. But I want to keep the heat on all of us for getting the good news out there.

We do live best in this world when we keep the next in mind.

We can't know at any given time how God will bless our faithful witness. So the apparent numerical growth of the church is never a good guide to how faithful we have been in evangelism.

We live in a time when people are increasingly skittish about evangelism - Christians and non-Christians alike. People are suspicious of evangelism, and misunderstand it, which contributes to our reluctance to share the gospel. When you add our fear of others' reactions as well as our natural laziness to the equation, it's not hard to see why we make such little progress in sharing our faith.

Christian proclamation might make the gospel audible, but Christians living together in local congregations make the gospel visible (see John 13:34-35). The church is the gospel made visible.

If you are not offending people, then you are not an evangelist.

Unfortunately, many of our churches calibrate their life to these nominal Christians. The predictable result is that you get fake, hypocritical churches that confuse the message of the gospel and make it hard for others who are trying to do genuine evangelism.