Reaching a Distracted Audience

What could be the greatest challenge for evangelism?

Gaining a distracted audience.

People are willing to be engaged. Many have an interest in spiritual matters, but when you start talking about the hope we have in Christ, they will typically shrug their shoulders and reply, “Well, that’s nice for you. I worship God in my own way.”

Does this sound familiar?

A distracted audience just doesn’t have time or interest to dive deeper into God’s Word. Church is treated as just another dish on a smorgasbord table of spirituality.

Reaching a distracted audience may require an unsettling witness. This doesn’t mean to start using an aggressive approach but recognizing that a message of salvation found only in Christ can be an unsettling one to give and to hear.

It starts by recognizing a key source of our distraction.

We live in a smart phone world.

We often enter a room and find people more prone to engage their phones than the people around them.

And l confess that I struggle to maintain a healthy screen balance in my life. I am easily distracted when I have a moment alone to immediately check my phone.

Perhaps it’s not about learning how to engage the culture that is so important but disengaging ourselves from its influence.

I embrace opportunities to help congregations find ways to engage their community, start a conversation about Jesus, and point people to his Word both personally and digitally. However, becoming an unsettling witness is a disruptive one. It means uplifting what is sacred, holding on to the absolute Truth, and consistently point to the risen Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life.

A gospel ministry that gathers unabashedly around God’s means of grace, embraces the sacred wonder of an Almighty God. When we walk outside the doors of our church and homes, there is a boldness and power of a redeemed life that radiates in our words and actions. It’s the life of Christ in us.

While we live in a world that darkens with unbelief, a light in Christ will shine brighter. An appropriate methodology for believers to spread the Word, may be twofold:

1. While inviting people to hear God’s during worship, we can also point people to God’s Word digitally.
2. While the light of Christ shines brightly within us, we can be prepared to give an answer for the hope we have in Christ when somebody asks.

Gaining a distracted audience requires a disruptive witness. It may seem daunting, but we are discovering it’s clearly possible to reach people that are deemed as being unreachable.

It’s a great day to be God’s messenger.