What Ever Happened to Evangelism?

We are living through one of the most significant shifts in Canadian culture.

In 2001, the Canadian census found that 77% of Canadians identified as Christian––just 20 years later, this number had dropped to 53%. During this same time, the proportion of Canadians who identify as not having any religious affiliation nearly doubled––from 1 in 6 to 1 in 3 Canadians.

If ever there was a time to engage our culture with the goodness and relevance of the gospel it's now.

But in the same year that census data revealed a plummeting of Christian affiliation, another report found that 65% of Canadian churches have not made evangelism a priority for the past several years and 55% of churches are not currently equipping congregants to share their faith.

So...what ever happened to evangelism?

Both the trends in Canadian religious affiliation and the lack of evangelistic engagement in our churches reflect a broader and deeper shift from Christendom to a post-Christian culture.

For nearly 1000 years, the Western world was shaped by a Christendom culture. During this time, most people identified as Christian, went to church, and shared many of the assumptions of the Christian worldview––even if they didn't have a vital relationship with Christ.

As Tim Keller describes, in this context, evangelism was relatively straight forward. Christendom culture had already given people 'dots'––shared beliefs in things like a personal God, a moral law, and the need for forgiveness––so evangelism was a simply a matter of connecting those dots by pointing people to Jesus.

But today, in our secular, post-Christian culture, those dots no longer exist for most people.

Although our culture has changed, many of the evangelistic tools and methods that were developed in a Christendom context have remained the same––only to become less and less effective as culture has changed.

So how do we faithfully communicate the unchanging gospel to a changing culture?

It's my goal to lean into this question as I work with local churches, chaplaincies, and other ministries whilst pursuing a PhD in Intercultural Studies with a focus on evangelism in a post-Christian context.