I believe that this post presents us with a wake-up call and challenge!

If churches were counting on people who automatically accepted or defaulted into the faith to become disciples for Christ, we were in more trouble than I suspected. Maybe we should take the position of Avis, the #2 car rental company (behind Hertz). Avis tries harder. So should we. It's time to take our church marketing and communication plans off of cruise control.

In the Great Commission, Christ tells us to "Go". Yet we live out the charge as if He said "Wait". Let's get to work.

Good.

I don't want a bunch of people to call themselves christian because that's the default...I want people to believe in Christ because they believe, I want them to make him lord because he is God.

A lot of people are tired of Christianity and church...we're known in too many circles by the things we hate and not the love we show.

I want it to be less about Christianity as a religion and about Christianity as a mark that I follow Christ.

What IS the default religion now? Or is there no "majority" default anymore?

Interesting post/observation/feedback! :)

Love the site, need to visit more.

I would be nice to think that this is the main reason we as a Church get lazy about outreach but I am afraid there is usually more involved. Laziness, self centeredness, and we dont even realize it. Just about all of us have been guilty at one time or another.

Dawn I think the default now is ME + I.

What's good for ME.
What makes ME happy.
What I choose.
How I want to live.

We now make our own rules in the name of freedom and tolerance.

And that's true for those in and out of the church.

Yeah, I'm with Michael on this. I can't think of anything worse than people being default believers in anything. If you haven't taken the step of working out why you believe what you believe than you're just like sheep following the crowd, and we all know what Jesus had to say about sheep*.

*This comment was in no way intended as a judgement upon sheep. I like sheep and feel that sheep's wool has made a great contribution to society.

There was a 20th century philosopher who said something to the effect of: you can't be Christian in a Christian state. (I'm totally blanking on who it was.) He thought to be truly Christian, you need to constantly ask yourself "What do I believe?" or "Do these core principals still describe who I am spiritually?"

I always liked this concept. For a long time I used to carry an index card in my purse that contained my core beliefs. It was stained, dirty, ripped and had a couple of items that were constantly being crossed off and then added again a couple days later.

It doesn't surprise me that evangelicals think that way, although I can't entirely explain why. Certainly for my parents believing the world was in a worse state than it actually is was something that reinforced their faith considerably.

My best shot at a more objective answer is this: Evangelism is a hard thing to do. Believing that your work is more important than ever helps a lot.

Also a small technical error with comment preview: I could not see any entry field for the anti-spam mechanism. I had to ctrl-c my text & use the browser back button to get here.