Why is it so hard to reach people for Christ?

This is going to get a little hairy, so hang on.

There is a problem in reaching people for Christ these days.
Really there has always been a bit of friction between non believers and believers. But I think the problems faced COULD be overcome! Here is the problem... Are you ready?



In order for us to reach the unsaved, we, ALL OF US, have got to stop being hypocrites.

When we all get into arguments over the color of the carpet and what color we think God would rather have, or how the chairs ought to be set up, or whether we should have chairs or if Pews mightn't be better, These are stupid arguments which are divisive and petty, people who see us acting like that are going to say, "why bother?" or "I thought their 'GOD' was supposed to be a God of love and here they are fighting."

On the other hand!!! We DO need to follow Christ fully.
(This is where we find DOCTRINE.)

We often will not agree on the important points of Doctrine, some even try to claim that Doctrine is divisive and "we all should just love each other and stop looking for ways to divide the church of Christ".

But this is a path to destruction.


Then, of course, we do not have a clear understanding of what is really in the Bible! We don't learn it or study it! We just pay lip service to it.

As for an example of hypocrisy; I can think of several...

We say that we follow God and we go to church EVERY Sunday to prove it. Then the rest of the week? Not only do we not follow God's word we rationalize WHY we don't!

We lie to people "oh but it is just a little white lie!".

We Steal! "oh but I needed it more and anyway it wasn't REALLY stealing."

We commit Sexual sins as in premarital sex, adultery or cohabitation. "but I had a really rough week and needed to let off some extra pressure, anyway how am I supposed to KNOW if s/he is the right one if I don't live with her/him first."

And what may seem biggest of all? We act like we are better or more important than everyone else while telling them that we are all servants of Christ.

I Knew a guy who was a good Christian. There was no doubt about his sincerity, there was no question about his walk with God. But he had a real problem with bringing people to God because he just could not relate to others.

One reason for this was because he was a nitpicker. you know the kind... He delighted in finding the Typographical or English errors in letters, He would jump on a single point in a counter argument and hound it to death ignoring the whole picture that people were trying to present to him.

In short he missed the forest for the trees.

People were driven away by his behavior! he had an undeniable ZEAL for the Lord. But he couldn't reach people on their level to tell them about it.
He even drove "Christians" a little batty.

He Might have seen himself as being like one of the judges or prophets of God in the Old testament, I don't know, but there were many who wouldn't listen.

Now for someone FOLLOWING Christ already, this is all well and good! We do need an Elijah, Samuel or even Paul to let us know when we are straying.
But for non Christians there is an attitude that says, "I will not listen to you spewing out about your, apparently, hateful GOD."

We need to reach these people ... differently.

The first thing we need to do is to PRAY for those who do not know Christ, those we are trying to reach.

Then we need to LIVE the life that we are supposed to be following, Show them how different it is and show them the peace that God gives us even in tribulation.

We need to Study God's word, ALL of it. And we need to KNOW it... I have seen and dealt with people who have truly had real questions about the faith. (I once taught a 3rd grade Sunday school class... they had LOTS of questions!)

In order to teach them I had to know what I was talking about. Even more so with evangelism!

People will always have questions, some of those questions will be designed to catch you out, to show the "silliness" of your "religion".

Other questions will be honest representations of struggles a person has with trying to understand, maybe something s/he was taught or heard conflicts with what they perceive the God of the Bible to be, maybe they saw too many Movies or T.V. Shows where Christianity was falsely presented.

In order to teach these people we need to know what the Bible says and we need to be prepared to answer those questions.
We ALSO need to be ready to speak up against the false teachers!

I know that I mentioned the problem with the divisiveness people see in the church BUT one really important point made in the Bible is that we must NOT associate ourselves with those who call themselves followers of Christ but don't obey/follow Christ.
Paul makes that very clear! (1 Cor 5:11)

When we relate to people (hang out with) who do not live according to God's word, we are saying to those watching, that the word I claim to believe doesn't matter as much as keeping my friends and hanging out with them.

We are then condoning sinful behavior.

And at that point the one you are trying to reach will say, " why should I listen to you? You do not have anything different let alone better."

So there you go, a few points of why it can be hard to reach others for Christ.

To review.
In order to reach people with the Gospel we need to...
Pray for those who are lost, and this is the most important step to begin with,
Live our lives FULLY for Christ removing all hypocrisy,
And KNOW what it is that we are talking about, through studying and learning the Bible.

And By the way, another good reason for learning the Bible and understanding it is, when you are talking to a "pastor" who is teaching a falsehood you can gently correct him, or know to find a place where the truth is taught.

O.K. Now you have this info... what are you going to do with it?