Anyone who has spent any time doing street evangelism knows how discouraging it can be at times. A book I’m reading by Ken Ham and Brit Beemer entitled Already Gone: Why Your Kids Will Quit Church And What You Can Do To Stop It helps us to better understand just why evangelism in America is like pushing water up a hill.

For this book 1,000 people in their twenties who used to regularly attend church–as kids and teens (including Sunday school and youth groups) but who no longer darken the door of a church–were polled on the various reasons they no longer attend. Those polled were asked 78 questions in all but one of the more revealing responses came from this question:

Do you believe you are saved and will go to heaven upon death?

Of the group who never attends church: 58.7% said yes.

Of the group who attends church on Christmas and Easter only: 72.2% said yes.

Perhaps this sheds a little light on why it is so difficult to reach the “churched” and “unchurched” with the true gospel of Jesus Christ. You can’t convince a sick man to have an operation if he fails to recognize his illness.