One missing ingredient

In today's churches there is talk about evangelism, about winning the lost, about reaching those who are unchurched but many times the people listening miss out on one key ingredient. Urgency.
If there is one thing I have grown to notice in all my work in high school sports. From my days as an athlete myself, to my times at Pedro with varsity football and my coaching times at St. Augustine High I have learned several things. But one thing I still try my best to learn is how to instill urgency.
For instance, just last night we played a district tournament game. It's a single elimination game where we win we play again, we lose, we go home. Well you can imagine that the urgency is there from the moment the girls start warming up. They are focused, stretching and throwing. They remain focused in the batting cages and on their way to the field. They even stayed focused during pre-game warm-ups and infield practice. Then the game started and we saw some good innings and then some not so good innings. We saw some great at-bats and some notso great at-bats. BUt, one thing became very apparent as the game went on and that is the fact that we were going to lose.
Here's what I witnessed, the seniors were playing as if they were fighting for their lives. The Juniors and underclassmen were playing a game. The urgency came from realizing that it may all end right there that night, at that game. And it did, we lost 9 - 3 and the seniors felt the reality of all their hard work, all their dedication slipping away slowly as the game progressed.
Why can't they play like that in the first inning of the first game? Why can't they perform that way all the way through? I don't know the answer to that, but I can say it is much like our evengelism movements in the church today. We don't feel the sense of urgency, especially in the lives of our young people.
JOhn 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
There's the battle tested most memorized verse in teh Bible. We know it, we share it but do we really look at that one word. "perish", we don't and we wait until those we care for, those we love are closer and closer to perishing before the reality of death pushes us to a sense of urgency. We need urgency more than ever in today's society. Young people get wrapped up in all sorts of worldly things that taint and make it tougher and tougher to reach them.
Every day we don't spend reaching the ones we love, they are slipping farther and farther away from God's grace.
Thanks for reading and have a great day!