The British evangelist Rico Tice said recently that one of the big changes in the past 5-10 years is that it used to be the ordinary Christian’s ‘job’ to get their friend to come to church. Then church took over. Good preaching, quality music, a warm invite to an evangelistic course… the church staff could take it from there.

But no longer. Now, Rico says, we bring someone to church, the church staff preaches the gospel well, hopefully chat to them afterward… and then hand them back to us. And the follow-up is our job because it’s going to take more than a carol service once a year to get someone raised in post-Christendom to sign up for a course like Christianity Explored or fill out a form asking to know more.

No, it’s up to us to ask what they made of the message of the service, or which line of a carol they sang particularly made them think. Up to us to ask them what they make of the idea that that baby was God himself, and up to us to ask whether they’ve ever considered the claims made by the baby once he’d grown up.

Taken from a post by Carl Laferton. Read more of Carl Laferton’s post on The Good Book Company blog here.