WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT FOR MODERN DAY DISCIPLES OF CHRIST TO TEACH THEIR NEIGHBORS?

The Great Commission is a Great Threat to the most of our people.  Support missions?  Assist with VBS?  Join in prayer?  Yes to these and a multitude of other service opportunities.  But why is it that the vast majority of such a people can go for years without a twinge of action to teach the Word of God to their relatives, neighbors, and colleagues?

I think I have part of the answer. 

First let me say that I was among the group I question.  Thus, I have a concept to the answer.  I was frozen in fear.  It was easier for me to live in the guilt of neglect than it was to live under the threat of risk.  I'd rather fail not trying than to flop at fumblizational effort.  Sad; but that's how it was for this preaching school grad.

Today I believe that the reason so many just can't teach another is our doctrine has become such a mix of man and God that we can't sort the Truth.  Furthermore, we feel guilty for wondering if part of what we believe has come from man in the first place.  Thus, we hide in church works to avoid personal participation in the Great Commission.

Basically, our people can't explain why we do what we do from the Word because some of what we do doesn't come from the Word.  Communion every Sunday and only Sunday, no instruments of music, no choirs, men only pray and make announcements.  No testimonies and certainly not women if such is allowed.  No Holy Spirit allowed in many congregations. 

Trying to follow the N.T. church pattern except for those major things we claim have ceased.  We go by the Bible except for those things we can't actually turn to a verse to prove.  Thus....we would be better off to back off for what we staunchly believe in places finds the ice has already melted and we have already fallen through.

By the time we get done undoing what the early church did, our people are so confused we fundamentally give lip service to teaching the lost.  We know it ought to be done; yet for the likes of ourselves we can't figure exactly what that might look like and sound like.

While this may sound terribly rudimentary, I can tell you from successful experience that it is allowable and effective to teach another only that which you know for sure.  You don't need to be cornered by their sticky-wicket questions, nor do they need to be presented your sticky-wicket wanderings.  Let the Word speak for itself.  It does a wonderful job.

The reason we aren't teaching others personally as our belief system professes and our lip-service confesses is because we are too lazy to study the Word deep enough to find out where we got what we got.  To relax and let the Bible be the Bible is to gain the courage to offer the good news of Jesus without hesitancy.  He knows how to save souls.....still.