I'm not usually very good at actually reading the magazines I get. They sit on my coffee table for weeks and then get thrown in a pile in my closet. I just happened to open my "Rev!" magazine today and came across an interesting article titled, "What Do the Unchurched Want?" I have always struggled with traditional ideas of evangelism and church growth and what not so I found some great thoughts I wanted to share....
When you work in a church there's a lot of talk about why people come, why the stay and why they don't stay. There's a lot of speculation about what draws people to connect to a certain church over another. A lot of people think it's the music. Others think it's a great sermon. Others think as long as people are friendly, they will come back. Well for a new book, the Barna Research Group interviewed thousands of "unchurched" people and found some interesting things about this. 1) People won't remember the topic, much less the key points of a sermon the first few times they visit. 2) People don't come to church for good music. If they want music, they'll turn on their ipod. What they are looking for is "something unique and of value that justifies changing their habits of avoiding church." They don't understand worship but they can experience the presence of God. And truly experiencing God's presence, even though they might not be able to describe it, will usually cause them to want more of it. The other thing is that people can sense when a church is truly a community and not just a group of people fulfilling their duty. "The unchurched want to experience love - from God and people - and if they feel that in the church environment, they'll return. If they don't sense it, they're history - probably forever...."
After that George Barna shares some things he would do to reach people outside the church. He talks about how people aren't very likely to "accept Christ" in a church service. That is something more that comes out of personal relationships. So one of the key things he would do is gear worship services exclusively to those who love Christ. If a person who doesn't typically attend church wanders in, it's better for them to be blown away by the presence of God, commitment of the people to that presence, the passionate worship taking place and the sincerity of the people regarding knowing God more deeply. The goal of worship is worship, not evangelism. (Great book on this topic: "Worship Evangelism.")
Another point that really hit home for me was this: "I'd shift the strategy from training people in the steps we think will lead people to Christ to empowering people to just be real." He goes on to talk about how nonbelievers are more impressed by a good friend who truly loves Jesus and lives like he/she does than a by a well-intentioned debator who wants to argue everyone into the kingdom. He suggests that we stop looking for ways to manipulate situations to interject God and Scripture (and invitations to church - my addition) into conversations to accomplish our goals. People know when we are real. This has by far been the hardest thing for me about being a part of a church. Always being told that I should be looking for ways to get people to church. I always feel like I'm supposed to have this ulterior motive to building friendships with people. Like I meet someone in the store and try to be nice to them but I better find a way to tell them about my church in the meantime. I'd rather just try to live like Jesus and love people the best I can and hope that God's Spirit takes care of the rest.
The last point he makes I thought was a great one since I'm a kid's pastor...He says "I'd focus the majority of our outreach resources on children, not adults." He talks about how the majority of people are converted even before reaching their teen years and that it is much more effective to reach kids and empower them to reach out to their families than it is to target the families.
Anyways, just some good thoughts...
No comments:
Post a Comment