Evotional.com - Mark Batterson

I blogged about the "speed of faith" a few days ago. An NCCer had an interesting insight. She said that Engle, the guru who wrote about the process people go through before converting to Christ, said that the average number of "positive touches" people need to convert had tripled from nine touches to twenty-seven touches in the last twenty-five years. That means it may take three times as long for the average person to come to faith in Christ.

The implications are pretty profound. But the bottom line is that we've got to be more patient. Cold-turkey evangelism is even less effective now than it was twenty-five years ago. We've got to invest more over a longer period of time.

We're all about helping people find their way back to God. Some people are a long ways away. But we've got to be willing to put more miles on the odometer. We have to walk further and take longer because our culture has drifted further away from God. I think postmoderns need more information. And that's not all bad. It may take longer to make a decision, but it results in deeper convictions once a person has crossed the line of faith.