It is a commonly known statistic that 85% - 95% of people who get saved were reached by a friend or relative.

We are confidently told that this teaches us what is the most effective way to reach the lost. We therefore need to build relationships with people before they will listen to us, etc. One of the implications of this teaching is that preaching the gospel (especially on the street) will only offend people and so we will not reach them. This teaching has a call to "wait to give an answer" which is the opposite of Jesus' command to "go and tell." What really teaches us what we should be doing is the Word of God and not human wisdom. There is a subtle move away from the authority of the Scriptures to that of faulty human reasoning.

This is an erroneous way of interpreting the statistics. What the statistics really tell us is what we are doing. They tell us that 85% - 95% of the time we are only reaching the people we cannot avoid. We are ignoring the rest - about 92-98% of the people. It shows us that we are dramatically failing to reach our generation for Jesus.

If we want to know what the biblical (and so the best and only) way to reach the lost is then we need to look to the scriptures and not to human wisdom. We are clearly told that we all need to go and preach the gospel (not just on the street). That is not comfortable because it costs us personally.

Are you willing to trust in the power and truth of God's Word and reject erroneous human wisdom?

1Corinthians 1:17, 21