Members in attendance at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Annual Meeting were taken to task by a Texas pastor who said they have been spending too much time talking to the wrong community of people.

Pastor John Meador said Christians need to stop talking about the gospel with others who are soaked in the gospel and start spending our time taking the gospel to the people who are starved for its good news.

“We’re not getting the gospel into the fields of America, we’re abandoning them and the reason for that is because our army has fled. We have no heart for the captives,” Meador said.

Meador said Americans need to stop thinking that evangelization and witnessing are for missionaries in far away parts of the world.

“The soul next door is as equal as the soul on the other side of the world,” he said.

Meador said that Christians need to realize a passion for everyone.

“What’s it going to take for the concept of your unreached neighbor to become totally intolerable for you?” Meador asked.  “I don’t even know sometimes if we’re capable of that kind of anger or if we’re so tempered by the complacent apathy of our culture that we don’t feel this anymore. You and I have to come to the point where we spread the Gospel because we can’t take it anymore.”