People, Visitors, Guests, and Newcomers!

I was thinking today about all the new methods that are available to us to attract more people to our church.  Depending on where you turn, you find people walking “across the room” (Bill Hybels), going to “fish” (Andy Stanley), washing cars for free (Steve Sjogren), or finding a “purpose driven” life (Rick Warren).

So what works?  What doesn’t?  How do we know what’s best for us?  The answer is they all do and they all do not.  What?  That’s right.  None of them work but all of them do.  Same goes for the recent trend of playing secular music in our worship venues, dressing down, being “missional” (I thought all churches were missional?), or being the Jesus version of Starbucks. (I prefer Peets as you all know).

Understand, I use many of the newer methods of outreach, discipleship, and worship in our church plant here.  I’m not opposed to any of these methodologies but I see a real danger in building our churches on them.  What ever happened to working it out for yourself?  Finding what works FOR YOU in your context, with your gifts, in your worship setting, and doing it with excellence should be our goal.  Our people are uniquely gifted to do what it is God has called them to.  Do we spend enough time with them to allow them to excel in their calling (training them for the work of ministry) or do we just plug them into a pre-determined program with pre-determined results?  Does that work for everybody?  No, it doesn’t. 

I see the benefit of figuring out what our outcomes should be and setting up a simple system of ministry flow designed to achieve those outcomes.  This is basically the method espoused in Thom Ranier’s latest book “Simple Church” which I thought was one of his best works.  I totally agree as I’m sure many other church plants and existing churches do as well.  The real danger I’ve seen in several circles is the steps within the ministry flow.  Programs if you will.  Many are just replicating the above mentioned programs which all have merit but may not work within a specific context.  Perhaps they all do and they are just being led by leaders who are letting the material run itself.  BIG DANGER.  You know what I’m talking about.  Step One says this so we do it until Step Two and then we do something else.  But what about the person who’s found Step 1 1/2?  Whoops.  That’s not in the book so it must not be right.

I see a great benefit in using others’ successful material if church leadership takes the time to personalize and change it to fit their methods.  A Christian Church in my area did this recently with their takeoff on Warren’s “40 days of service”.  They crafted their own logo, banners, cards, etc. for everything.  They based a sermon series around it and they had many new families come to visit and many stayed and enlisted in several service projects they are having here in the late spring.  I asked the youth pastor who is a good friend of mine if anyone caught the similarities between the two and he said nobody even broached the topic with him.  I think this is a great example of how a church took material and made it work FOR THEM in their context.  I know of other churches who’ve used the same material verbatim out of the package with the same 15-20 people who’ve always helped doing their jobs again.  No success!

It’s the people who are going to make or break these ideas.  How are they gifted?  Are you crafting an action plan designed to maximize their strengths while avoiding your inherent weaknesses? (Marcus Buckingham anyone?)

I pray your outreach to the lost is blessed and that lives are being changed in the process.  Otherwise, we’re just drawing a crowd.