The Most Dangerous Lie of All Time: Someone Else Will Do It

Last week, I asked you to do something uncomfortable. I asked you to look in the mirror and tell me the truth about the quiet ways we fool ourselves.

Almost 300 of you took the Spiritual Honesty Check-Up—twenty questions about the subtle things we’ve made peace with. Not the big, obvious sins. The everyday ones that don’t make headlines but slowly erode our impact.

You didn’t hold back. And what you shared stopped me in my tracks. In twenty years of measuring spiritual growth, this may be one of the most important things I’ve ever seen.

First, the good news—and it really is good. You are one of the most committed groups of believers I’ve ever surveyed. Ninety-six percent of you stand firmly on salvation by grace through faith in Jesus. Nearly three out of four are in God’s Word every single day. If Bible reading was the finish line, most of you crossed it long ago.

But here’s what hit me hard.

The strongest response in the entire survey came to this statement: “I assume someone else is better suited to help people follow Jesus.”

Nearly one in three of you—29 percent—marked that an 8, 9, or 10 out of 10: “Very true of me.”

Let that sink in. One out of every three committed, daily-Bible-reading believers has quietly decided that making disciples is somebody else’s job. And the numbers back it up. While 74 percent of you are in Scripture daily, nearly 40 percent disciple someone only a few times a year—or never.

We're growing. We're not reproducing.

For two decades I’ve been telling ministry leaders that America doesn’t have a truth shortage—we have a follow-through shortage. I used to think that the  problem lived “out there” with the casually committed notional Christians. Your answers tell me it lives right here, among people who love Jesus and love His Word but have somehow accepted an exemption clause on the Great Commission.

I don’t say this to shame you. I say it because I’ve been there too. There are still days I feel inadequate, days I wonder if I’m the right person to speak into someone’s life. But I’ve also lived long enough to know this: the harvest isn’t waiting on perfect people. It’s waiting on available people.

The church has tried fifty years of sermons, conferences, and programs to close the discipleship gap. Your survey shows the needle hasn’t moved much. The highest-scoring item overall was this: “I consume Christian content more than I actually practice what I already know.” You told me that yourselves.

So I’m not coming to you with another program. I’m coming with an invitation.

For twenty years I’ve believed the real answers aren’t in a researcher’s office—they’re in the honest experiences of ordinary believers willing to tell the truth. You just proved that again.

Now I need your help to solve it.

Respond below or email me at arnie.cole@bttb.org and tell me two things:

1. What actually holds you back? Skip the nice Sunday-school answer. Be gut-level honest. Is it fear of being asked something you can’t answer? The fact that no one ever discipled you, so you don’t even know what it looks like? Does “discipleship” sound like a job for paid professionals? Tell me in your own words.

2. If you’ve ever helped even one person follow Jesus, what made it possible? What broke the barrier for you? Somewhere in this family are people who crossed that bridge. The rest of us desperately need to hear how you did it.

I will personally read every response. My team will study them. And over the coming months, we’ll take what you share—along with the work we’re doing at the Center for Scripture Absorption—and turn it into something the church has never had: a real, tested, practical answer to why believers who know the Word don’t give it away… and what actually moves us to start.

Remember you are not just a name on a mailing list. Honestly, you folks are one of the largest honest-answer research communities in American Christianity, and you’ve already shown me you’ll tell the truth.

The harvest isn’t waiting on someone better suited. It’s waiting on us—figuring this out together.

Someone else isn’t coming. But we don’t have to do this alone.

Reply today. I’m listening!

P.S.I hope you'll join me next week on Spiritually Fit Today. My good friend Rick joins me and shares his story about loss, healing, caregiving, and how God can bring purpose and hope even when life doesn't go as planned.