Page 5 - Discipleship Ministries Student E-Book

II Cor. 3:5 “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is
of God.”

II Cor. 3:18 “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the
same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

Gal. 2:20 “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me: and the life
which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for
me.”

John 15:5 “I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth
forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do nothing.”

Phil. 1:6 “Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it
until the day of Jesus Christ.”

The Church is not doing the Job!

It has been over 2000 years after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ,
God’s Son, the Messiah, who died and rose again to become the first
fruits of eternal life for all who put their faith in Him. But it seems
that the percentage of those who put their faith in Christ is
decreasing year after year. Statistics tell us there were about 7.2
billion people on earth at the beginning of the 21st Century (2000).
Of these about 2.4 billion are professing Christians. The largest group
is that of the Roman Catholic Church with about one billion
adherents; the second largest is the Greek Orthodox Catholic Church;
and the third largest is Protestant Christians (of all denominations). All together these represent about
one-third of the earth’s population (about 2.4 billion).

However, these statistics don’t tell the whole story. Most Catholics (Roman Catholics and Greek
Orthodox Catholics are counted simply by being born into Catholic families and most have very little
faith in Jesus Christ as Savior. The same can be said about most Protestants. Evangelical Christianity
seems to be very much in a minority in our present world.

Decades ago, on a Sunday morning, church doors were opened and the sound of a multitude of feet of
boys and girls, men and women could be heard entering church sanctuaries. Voices were raised in
hymns and prayers as “the faithful” gathered for worship. Today churches are rapidly becoming
redundant… treated as if they were not needed any more. Times change…. footsteps lessen or cease…
and buildings find themselves being put to other uses or bull-dozed to create apartments and parking
garages. This disuse follows the sorrowful pattern of dying spirituality, not just in Europe but in America
and other parts of the world.

Sarcastically, due to failures of the church it is sometimes referred to as the “Great Omission”. Billy
Hanks Jr. and William Shell write, “Historically it is difficult to discover why the simple plan which
worked so effectively in the early church ceased to be used in later generations . . . The challenge of the

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