Recently, we were in Branson, Missouri, on vacation. As is our custom, we visited the local congregation of our faith group. It was a traditional building from the 1950s–1960s era. The pews were in two straight rows, and the auditorium could seat 400 or more. The songs, attendance, and giving numbers were posted on wooden boards at the front. Announcements included one for a “gospel meeting” and another for an area-wide church council. It was mostly gray heads, except for the occasional visitor. I noticed the attendance was around forty, and the “outreach” being described seemed built on methods that no longer connect well with today’s culture. That stirred a sad feeling in me.

I have been thinking about the status of evangelism in congregations today. As I look at my current congregation, it is apparent our church culture is one of “pastoral care,” not one of overt local evangelism or intentional disciple-making. We were grateful for fifteen baptisms last year, yet they were all relatives of members. And though our congregation has a relatively young membership today, will we, by default, look like Branson in time if we do not become more intentional soon?

Martha and I have been interested in personal evangelism since we were first married. Our first methods centered on using charts to help us tell the Bible story. The setting was normally a meal and a lesson in our home. Our charts assumed those we were studying with already believed in God and accepted the Bible as truth. The lessons primarily gave an overview of Scripture. Most people in that era went somewhere to church. So, the unstated emphasis was often to correct doctrinal error more than to focus on Christ Himself. We tried to correct that by creating a separate chart on Christ’s life. The result was converts who understood what one needed to do to become a baptized believer and to adopt what we believed was correct church worship and organization. Later, I came to realize many converts were being drawn to “church” more than to the personhood of Christ.

We did personal studies ourselves and taught Personal Evangelism Training ( PET ) classes. We even helped create Advanced PET training material and formed Evangelism groups from those actual teaching others. We met monthly to share stories and needs. It great to see people gain insights they had never considered.  We really enjoyed the meal fellowship time as well.

Besides explicit evangelism, in the 1970s we were also engaged in learning group dynamics, goal setting, and strategic planning. This was reinforced by similar professional training where I worked as an engineering manager. After moving to McKinney, Texas, in 1978, it wasn’t long before the congregation asked me to serve as an elder. My focus turned toward ministry organization. Putting in place multiple organized “ministries” was the emphasis of that period, and training teachers to facilitate group discussion using group-dynamics principles became a major priority.

Over time, those same principles reshaped how I thought about sharing the gospel—locally and in missions. I began to see that listening well and asking the right questions often opened doors that a quick presentation of propositional truth did not.

When Martha and I moved to Oklahoma to help begin the Engineering Program at Oklahoma Christian University in 1986, we had another primary goal: to engage in foreign missions. We had learned that when seekers read the Scriptures, asking questions and listening carefully was often more productive than simply stating propositional truth. Thus, we were fortunate to be included in the early years of the Let’s Start Talking method. In this method, those who desired to practice English were invited to do so using a simplified version of the Gospel of Luke. We typically met in a neutral, non-threatening setting, one-on-one, sitting across from each other. The Word was the teacher for the readers, and we workers were the illustration. The Holy Spirit did the conversion. We came to understand that understanding and conviction often grow as a person reaches a conclusion “on his own.” This mattered then—and it still matters today.

Many years of missions followed, both in Oklahoma and after moving back to “The Place” in Texas in 2002. By this time, the U.S. culture had changed. For example, traditional Christian concepts were no longer commonly accepted. A number that stopped me was this: an “evangelism” indicator for our faith group had declined from a peak around 1950 of 60% to a low near 25%. Congregations had become largely pastoral, with little in the way of a clear local evangelism framework or culture.

If I look across most congregations in my urban area, they are filled with gray heads. This points to three concerns: first, a lack of retention of youth and young families; second, a lack of evangelism—or even a workable framework for evangelism; and third, for those who do care about outreach, it can feel easier to send money to sponsor foreign missionaries than to engage locally. Explicit congregational cultural change, along with training for evangelism or disciple-making, remains rare as a congregational priority. What can be done about this decline?