I’ve come to the realization that mass evangelism is becoming increasingly less effective. I know that’s not exactly an earth-shattering revelation. It has become fairly obvious, at least here in the United States. In 1994 I attended my first open air evangelistic crusade in Raleigh, NC—the evangelist was Franklin Graham, and his father Billy made a special appearance on the final night of the event. It was huge! Over 20,000 people attended. If you’re Gen-X or older, you know the routine. There was opening music from a Christian rock band. (Franklin was considered much edgier than his dad back in the day.) Then there was a stirring sermon with an invitation to come down to pray with a counselor and commit your life to Christ. Many people became Christians or renewed their commitments to Jesus. Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, and Catholic churches (and every other Christian denomination) came together to make sure the event was a success. For this wide-eyed college student, it was a pretty awesome sight to behold.

Times have changed. You don’t see big crusades as much nowadays. 21st century ministries and churches rely more on festivals, concerts, and community outreach extravaganzas to reach the lost. And even those events aren’t as explicitly evangelistic as their predecessors were a generation ago. While many churches still do some form of the altar call, more seem to be moving toward relational and small group evangelism as the primary strategies for bringing people to Christ.

Why is that? The Gospel certainly isn’t less true than it was in the heydays of John Wesley, Charles Finney, or Billy Graham. And we know people generally aren’t less sinful now or less in need of mercy and grace. Has wholesale evangelism really become less effective, or are we just doing it wrong?

I think it’s some of both, but it’s definitely harder nowadays to get through to a lot of people, so one on one evangelism has become critical. I’ve come up with a few reasons why I believe that’s the case.

There’s too much noise. In 2012, everywhere we go, there’s a screen with virtually an infinite amount of entertainment and information choices competing for our attention. And many of us tend to gravitate toward the people and ideas we’re most comfortable with. As society has become increasingly unchurched, the odds of a nonbeliever wandering into a gospel crusade or church are much smaller now. And unless they’re up at 6am flipping through basic cable channels, the likelihood of bumping into Joyce Meyer is less also. Truth be told, evangelism has always been about relationships. The Franklin Graham crusade in the 90’s relied on people bringing their nonchristian friends and relatives to make it work. But back then, you could often see results by dragging someone to an event and letting someone else preach the Gospel to them. It’s not as easy now, partly because—

People are more cynical and skeptical. This is closely related to the noise factor. When more people are saying different things, their perceived “authority” gets diluted. Consider how this has played out in the television news industry. In 1994 there were the three big network newscasts and CNN. While some would say those outlets often exhibited an ideological or partisan bias, most people viewed them as somewhat authoritative. I’ve even heard the three network news anchors of earlier eras half-jokingly referred to as “the voice of God”. Now that there are two additional big cable news channels and many other specialty channels, people can choose their news and opinion to match their own political views. But not without a price. When the news can be served any way you want it, people start losing faith in the news. It’s the same with religion. When it comes to finding out more about Jesus, many nonchristians are more likely to respond to someone they know well and respect than some stranger or televangelist.

We’re in an age of personalization. Companies like Facebook and Google target ads to individuals now. Broadcasting was the way to reach people in the past; today it’s narrowcasting. A principle for evangelism applies here: knowing people is a key to reaching them. The better you know someone, the easier it is to have an impact on the decisions they make. (Yes, there are exceptions. It’s still quite difficult to evangelize family members. But that’s another discussion altogether.) Bottom line: We’re more likely to be effective witnessing to someone in our circle of influence than to complete strangers.

People need follow-up. John Wesley and the early Methodist movement understood this—but many of us don’t. That’s where the Methodist class meetings originated, and it’s part of the reasoning behind the church small group movement today. But without the personal factor of friends inviting friends and holding each other accountable, the odds of new converts falling through the cracks increase tremendously. No one would deliver a baby (or many babies) and leave them alone without care and nourishment. Yet we somehow manage to do that very thing in the spiritual realm every day with new believers.

Finally, there’s the prayer factor. From my observations, prayers that are more specific seem to be more effective and get the most defined answers. This is true for prayers related to evangelism and personal growth as well. There’s a big difference between praying for generic “people” to come to Christ and praying for “my friend John” to come to Christ. For one, we’re going to be more passionate about praying for individuals, and even more so when we’re close to them. Passion is a key to prayer. I’m convinced that even when mass evangelism has been successful in the past, much of that fruit can be attributed to people praying for individuals.

Mass evangelism won’t go away, it will evolve. But one-size fits all evangelism is long gone (if it ever really existed at all). Now more than ever, we can’t depend on celebrity preachers, our own pastors, or even viral online videos to do most of our evangelism for us. Some plant, some water, and God makes the seeds grow. And then some get to see the harvest. Truthfully, evangelism has always been a group effort anyway. It’s just becoming more apparent in the 21st century.

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