In my experience of life as part of an evangelical community I have noticed something of a disconnection between the stated beliefs of the church and the actions of individuals. As we have seen above this is not a static phenomenon; changes take place as people travel through different seasons of their life.
If we were to take a survey of the beliefs and actions of most evangelical Christians, I am confident we would find that the name 'evangelical' does not readily translate to a drive for adherents to either engage in evangelism or invite their friends to church.
I am not sure that in sociological terms the church is that different from other community groups in this regard. When one is a member of a group, there are all kinds of things that you personally will make allowances for; the odd behaviour of certain individuals, rules that you don't feel completely confident in vocalising, etc. You, as an individual member, put up with such things but you don't feel completely confident enough to invite others to witness such things.
This is a generalisation and I haven't had the opportunity of running a survey but I would suggest that what we have is a private evangelicalism, which itself is an oxymoron. I would suggest that most of our congregation members are comfortable to belong to the church, but would be horrified if some of the things that we believe were known by their wider friends and family.
I don't say this to apportion blame; I am in also a private evangelical many ways. It is all part of the compartmentalisation that takes place in post-modern life. Modernity offered communities of people whose lives were intertwined at many places; work, home, social gatherings, sports, church, pubs, clubs, local shops. Post-modern life means that most of us in the UK have very few social connections with our neighbours.
In this environment it means that we are likely to have several unconnected social groups, one of which is the church. This is what I mean by private evangelicalism; church is one compartment of our busy lives.
The usual methods used to evangelise one's friends often results in a loss of friendship
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