How many are coming to Christ?

Its been a long time since I attended church services ( still looking for a church ). I remember when I used to go, there were many people that would come to the altar and give their lives to Christ. I assume that many of you go to church. Have the amount of people coming to Christ increased, decreased or stayed the same. I ask this question because I see so many ungodly people in my daily walk. Is it more difficult for ministers these days to lead people to Christ, especially young people, they don't seem to be interested in Christ. What do yo think?

At our church lots of new people come all of the time - most of the services seem to have new people in them - so much so that the church has set up a welcome lounge for new folks who want to know more about the church.


But even better, a significant number give their lives to Christ. The church holds a course called the Alpha course where non-christians can attend in an informal, non threatening atmosphere and ask as many questions as they want and chat generally about life. We also have several evegelism services a year and run discipliship courses, as just becoming a christian is only the start.

We usually have 2 -3 baptism services a year and a good dozen or so people are baptised at each one.

God is good indeed

In many churches, the same people come to Christ every week. In their minds, they are just repeating the initial time they came, so they remember it. That influences the count of people you see coming up in those churches.

May we advance the question a little: How many have not backslidden? How many have become meat Christians instead of milk Christians? How many have taken their place in the Kingdom of Priests? I think one of the reasons so many people can't find a church: we get them to come for salvation, and assume we are done.

Miri, the last time I looked at alpha course (6 years ago) it prepared people for ministries in the church. That is good, but there are only so many of those. Does the course prepare the people for world-changing?

Hi - yes the course the church holds basically gives none christians - those who want to ask questions and those who are seeking, a chance to really get to grips with the Christian faith and ask the whys, hows, does God exist, what about evolution etc and everything else. But there is no strings attached and people are free to walk away if they want.

It has been a real blessing and there is absolutely no pressure on any one to become involved with our specific church if they do not want to do so. There are also follow up courses for people if they want to attend - discipliship courses for those who do give their lives to christ so new christians are not just left to get on with things and to encourage them to grow in the Lord.

The church is also involved in things such as Teen Challenge, Christians against poverty whereby people who are in debt and struggling financially can turn to the church for help and support to help them get out of debt, and something called Street Angels whereby trained volunteers from local churches go out in the town centre on a night time and ensure people who are parting and attending night clubs are safe i.e. if a woman gets a bit drunk, or is on her own - they ensure no harm comes to her etc.

The ethos of the church is about the whole person and not just about getting someone to come to Christ and then full stop.

I think it makes a difference as we have 5 pastors each with a specific role (one being an evengelism pastor) there are also qualified councillors on the staff.

But having said that only God can give the increase, but praise God for his amazing work and the way lives are transformed.

Just to let you know I saw this post, Miri, and that what you describe is what I saw 6 years ago. Teen Challenge I know very well, the other two groups sound like a good step into the world. Do you ever see people rising up through these group ministries and ready to organize new ministries on their own? To me, that is the great test of "getting saved". Not the prayer, not even the better life caused by following Jesus for years, but the empowerment to change things.

Hi yes - in the year 2000 - various words sort of phophesies were spoken over the church and we are gradually seeing them becoming a reality.

Some of these are :-

This fellowship will be a place to which people from other nations will come and return again, strengthened and empowered by the Holy spirit.
(currently we have people in the church from over 40 different nationalities - some have been students, many have been people who have come to the uK looking for work - or for various other reasons).

This fellowship will see its borders extended both physically and influentially.
(The church is bursting at the seams - we have been looking for a new place for a few years and things are now coming together which will hopefully see us start to bulld a new church building within the next year or two - Two primary schools in the area we will be moving into, have asked the church to take over their after school clubs which is just amazing - they came to ask us, we did not approach them).

This fellowship will be a place of in-gathering and a place of sending forth.
(Several missioneries have gone out from the church - including to India, Europe, Africa and other places - some have joined Wec - others have gone to countries they are familiar with as they have felt called to set up a specific ministry there of their own. At the moment a strong link is being developed in Nepal and some groups of people have gone out there to get to know varous communities, which has included them forging links from climbing to base camp on Mt Everest!).

The Street Angels, Christians against Poverty and various other things have all come out of people in the church who have grown and approached the leadership to see if they would be willing to support them in something they feel they have been led to do. The missioneries have all gone out with the support of the chuch. The christians against poverty is especially seeing a lot of "fruit". God moves despite the economy!


We are currenly a city centre church - earlier this year the church approached a "Costa Coffee" shop - in the city centre following an idea from a new Christian who is a professional musician; and now an agreement is in place where one sunday evening a month, the church puts on a music evening coupled with a short message to people who go to the coffee shop.

The management who are not christians love it - as it brings in loads of customers, they even promote it. Imagine that non christians promoting a christian venture! Everyone benefits and importantly the church builds relationships with the people and the word of god goes out.

I suppose there will always be people who will just go to church on Sundays and for various reasons this is all they can or will do. But it is good that for those who want to get involved in things, who have somethng they feel God is calling them to do - that the leadership are more then willing to listen to their ideas and encourage people to go out and do gods will.

As for me - I play the saxphone and sing in the choir and am part of the worship team.

I have also been involved in various other things. I went through a season where I had lots of opportunities to speak to Taxi drivers about God and was able to give out bibles and prayer with many and I did think at one point that this might be something I wanted to pursue further - but the door seems to be closing on that for now.

There is the possibility of something else rather large looming on the horizon - but i think i need more prayer and careful consideration as to how much my involvement could be in this. It will probably be on a small scale to start off with, unless God has other ideas.

This all sounds wonderful. I just noticed you are in the UK. I have heard that there is next to no church attendance there, like 1-2% of the population. If that is beginning to change, that may explain the sudden growth. After all, a 1/2% increase of population is 50% increase in a 1% market, but in America where attendance is 16%, it is only a 3% increase in market. Are there many churches like yours? I am also surprised to see alpha course and the term "choir" blended with treasuring of prophecies and worship team. In an inner-city church, these types of things are maybe 1 in 10 here in the USA, 1 in 50 overall.