Confidence

From the church's that I'm familiar with I'd have to say that confidence is where we lack. So many people are so comfortable in their little pew seats that they have learned to just sit back and relax. It may be more of an abundance of selfishness rather than a lacking in confidence, but with this situation I believe they run together. Not only are we so selfish that we can only think about our own needs and desires, but we also lack the confidence to even begin to reach out to people. I've seen such a lack of confidence that people won't even pray out loud anymore, and we go for the silent prayer so we don't make people feel uncomfortable. How in the world do we plan to share our faith with strangers and people outside of our congregations if we don't have enough courage to pray out loud or share our testimony in our own bible study groups? So what can we do? Like anything, I believe training in such areas of our lives need to be improved. Practical, simple, just go out and do it. An even better idea would be for the church to start a training course in evangelism where the members learn how to evangelize and then go out into the community and share the gospel, and hopefully the constant practice will turn into a lifestyle where we seize each opportunity to act and speak as witnesses, gifted by the Spirit, to the life changing events of Christ's power and grace in our lives.