Challenges in Evangelism

I don't expect this to be a very deep post, but I'm going to solicit some suggestions and/or raise these items up for your consideration, at least.

At Higher Ground this year, I believe it was Mr. Ward who said that the church is intended to be a converting machine and - for many reasons - what should be a well oiled mechanism, it is very much in need of an overhaul. By that, I don't mean switching to "new" things to draw people, rather getting back to things that we (collectively) have let fall into history.

I regularly listen to a few different baptist "pastors" expound the ideals of christian living. Stacey mentioned a very good lesson she heard on parenting, and we purchased the mp3. He is way off on pushing the idea of "total depravity" but some of his other points were very sound (too much emphasis on the "loving God" and not the "God of purity," too much of the "God is my friend" and not enough of the "Wrathful God of judgement"). One obvious contradiction is that he presented that children are born with the "inherited sin of Adam" but until they're old enough to believe, they can't be saved (of course this contradicts some other calvinist points, but that's another discussion) so the very children that Jesus tells us to be like will burn in Hell because they can't choose to follow Christ (!) That doesn't make a ton of sense to me.

What I was thinking is that some of his principles for training our children should be applied in general evangelism. I am really convinced that the reason we aren't helping grow the body of Christ is because:

1. Our culture has watered down/misunderstood sin.
2. We haven't helped people understand the severity of sin and its consequences.

So, what do you think? I'm going to list a couple of "groups" of folks we might focus on teaching/studying with and look for suggestions on how to best approach any of the individual or collective groups.

1. Our Children
2. Irreligious (those who do not actively practice/espouse any particular belief)
3. "christian" folk
4. Non-"christian" religious folk (muslim,hindi,buddhist, etc...)
5. New converts (I think this is one of the biggest areas where we drop the ball!)