February 10, 2003

Not all who sit on church pews know Jesus, evangelists contend
___By John Hall
___Texas Baptist Communications
___ARLINGTON--If you're looking for someone who needs to make a personal commitment to Jesus Christ, look on your pew at Sunday worship.
___That was the advice of two evangelists who spoke at the Conference for Texas Evangelists Jan. 27.
___About 50 percent of regular church attenders have not made a personal faith commitment to Jesus Christ, according to statistics quoted by Jeff Meyers, a Bedford evangelist.
___"We need to come to the harsh realization that we step into a mission field every time we meet in a church," Meyers said. "We're religious, but we're lost."
___Many pew-sitters go through the traditional motions and gain knowledge about God without having a personal relationship with him, concurred evangelist Malcom Ellis of Colmesneil. These non-Christian pew-sitters may not know how to take the next step in their spiritual journeys, he said.
___"For the most part, most of what is done in the name of religion is nothing more than word," Ellis decried. "For too long, we have been unwilling to live up to the fact that it is more than word.
___"I long for the day our worship services become spiritual incubators where women and men can feel the heat of the flame of the spirit of God."
___There is hope for those who sit in church services but haven't become believers, Meyers said. It was the "religious people," he said, whose lives were changed at the "Super Bowl" of evangelistic events, Pentecost.
___A church must prepare for such a revival for it to occur, Meyers declared. He urged believers to bathe worship services in prayer. And church leaders should make sure deacons have made personal commitments to Christ before trying to reach the entire congregation, he said.
___When the congregation has been reached, the church will experience full revival, he added. "Pentecost didn't happen spontaneously. It happened because they were of one accord."
___Church leaders should not expect to produce a revival in the church just by calling an evangelist, Meyers said. "The role of the vocational evangelist is not to come to your broken jalopy and do a major overhaul in four days."
___Revival results from the persistent preaching of Jesus' sacrifice for the sins of humanity, he said. "If you preach the gospel, the Holy Spirit will convict them."

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