One of the most troubling trends in the American church today is the decline in evangelism. The most recent large survey I could find on evangelism was a Barna poll from 2013 that found that only 52% of Christians shared their faith with another person in the last calendar year. Given that the climate of American culture has become more divided and contentious in the past decade, I am certain that number has only declined since 2013.

It is not coincidental that the American church has shrunk since 2013. Take the Southern Baptist Convention for example. In 2013, the total membership of the Convention stood at 15.7 million people. In May of 2023, that number stood at 13.2 million members – a decline of 15% in less than a decade. There are a number of factors in play as to why membership has dipped but evangelism and natural church growth plays a massive factor in that.

We see that there is an evangelism issue in the church, but the question behind that reality is “Why are Christians not sharing their faith?” That was a question I wanted to get a sense of myself, so I asked my followers an open-ended question on both Facebook and X (the artist formerly known as Twitter), “What do you feel is the most significant factor as to why people in the church do not share their faith?” I received 48 total responses as to what were people’s roadblocks in evangelism.

I’m going to do a 4 part series around the evangelism decline we see in the American church. Part One (this article) will look at the top three reasons why Christians don’t share their faith. The subsequent 3 articles will deal directly with those three reasons and how we can move forward as a church in getting the gospel to the lost. So here are the top three responses I received as to why people don’t share their faith.

1) Fear

Of the responses I received, this was far and away the biggest obstacle in evangelism. Almost 38% of the responses that I received dealt with fear in some fashion. Some ascribed it to fear in general. Others described that they were afraid of looking foolish if they did not know how to answer questions that people might have in an evangelistic conversation. Others said their fear was tied to either others rejecting their faith or them personally because of an evangelistic conversation.

Here are a couple of responses on social media that pertained to fear:

“I think most church goers would say fear is the biggest reason…Maybe the times that we think about sharing, we get scared and back out. But I wonder how many times we should think about sharing and we don’t.” ~ Steven Nauman

“Fear of man. Worried about what people think of them.” ~ Stacy Damiano

2) Discipleship

Of the responses I received, about 23% of people said that the church’s evangelism problem is a discipleship problem. A lot of these responses revolved around the fact that people don’t know how to share their faith or what to say in order to get an evangelistic conversation started. Others say that they have never seen another person share their faith. The ignorance of the Great Commission resounds loudly across the American church. A recent Barna poll showed that 51% of regular church attenders had never heard the term “Great Commission.” Only 17% of those polled could explain what the Great Commission actually is. People aren’t sharing because they do not know that it is a matter of obedience to the call of Christ.

Some of the responses involving discipleship:

“As a pastor, I think it starts at the top down. I need to have regular rhythms of evangelism in my life if I’m to encourage and build up my people to do the same. We’re all guilty of this, but I’d submit that most pastors in America would have to think pretty hard to be able to share about the last time they shared the gospel to a lost person (not from the pulpit or at a church function).” ~ David Gaskins