I want to thank all of you who were able to read and share your ideas on my first post! I know I have been blessed by the conversation, and I hope that all of you have too.
Continuing our conversation on Get Their Name: Grow Your Church By Building New Relationships, Farr/Anderson/Kotan next tackle the big question of "why". Why do most Christians rarely share their faith in Jesus Christ with other persons - especially persons who are not yet followers of Jesus Christ?
The authors of the book suggest that the mainline church hasn't done a good job of defining and practicing evangelism over the last five or more generations, at least evangelism understood as connecting persons to God through Jesus Christ in a vital, dynamic, personal relationship of faith. Farr/Anderson/Kotan (who I will now shorten to FAK in my blog posts) share the following statistics (note: where they received these statistics are not clear):
Generation born 100 years ago
80% connected to God through church
If Protestant, vast majority connected to older established churches
Generation born 80 years ago
65% connected to God through church
If Protestant, majority connected to older established churches
Generations born 60 years ago (Baby Boomers)
35% connected to God through church
If Protestant, majority NOT in older established churches
Generations born 30-40 years ago (Gen X)
Less than 20% connected to God through church
If Protestant, strong majority not in mainline Protestant church
Generations born 10-20 years ago (Millenials)
Less than 10% connected to God through church
If Protestant, vast majority not in mainline Protestant churches
FAK suggests that the reason for this drop in connection for the last five generations is because mainline churches have understood evangelism as reconnecting disconnected churched people who come through our church doors - we are waiting for people to arrive who are already Christian but are disconnected from a church home.
Even knowing our heritage as United Methodists, we pastors sometime assume that people may be Christian, and are only looking for a church home, as opposed to someone who has never been to church. I remember having lunch with Bob Farr several years ago, and he shared with me how he engaged strangers to find out their faith background. When she came back to check on our table, Bob asked our waitress, "Do you have a church home?" Our waitress replied that she did have a church that she attended. I wonder, though, where Bob would have gone with the conversation if she replied, "No, but I've never been."
Questions for all of you reading this post... What are your thoughts on how Community UMC engages in the practice of evangelism? Are we "building relationships with people we don't know," or are we more interested in "reconnecting disconnected churched people who come through our church doors"? Because... there is a decrease in the number of churched people... and an increase in the number of unchurched people.
Engage!
We have to show folks how Christ matters today in their lives, for their families, their morals, their finances, their future.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing John. In subsequent posts, I will be sharing ideas from FAK's book that point to ways that we can show people how Christ matters.
ReplyDeleteI think it can be both, and should be both. If disconnected people happen to wonder in, are we doing a good job of connecting them? Are we building relationships with them? Statistically, 1 out of every 4 visitors should return and become active in the church. I haven't tracked this, but I've seen many come once or even several times and then they disappear. I have to ask myself - what are they seeking that we are not providing? And, are unchurched people seeking something different than disconnected, formerly-churched people? I wish I knew the answers...Julie Gibson
ReplyDeleteI think that you raise a good question, Julie. Are the disconnected and the unchurched looking for the same thing? I would think so...although, the unchurched might feel more uncomfortable in their first time experiences than the disconnected because the disconnected at least have some kind of worship/church experience. The unchurched might feel a little bit more out of place and lost. That is why your leadership of worship is so important (and you do it well, by the way). Telling people when to stand/sit/pray/how to take communion/etc. is all important in making the unchurched feel comfortable and confident that they are "doing things right" in their worship experience.
DeleteThanks for both of your replies (Julie and Erin). Your responses point to a need to discern a way to evaluate how relational connections are made within and outside the church.
DeleteThis question is hard because it is really hard to know what our members do outside of the church walls in their everyday life. However, if we were to just try to guess based on the fruit, it might suggest that we aren't doing such a great job. Part of me thinks that some of the reason might be because people are unsure how to share faith in every day life. When I think about evangelism, I think of sharing two stories---(1) THE Story that is found from Genesis through Revelation that explains the broken world and need for redemption and (2) Our own redemption stories and how they fit into the first story. This might be too much of a generalization, but most Christians that I have encountered in the work place are great at talking about their own stories. But they struggle to then engage a conversation that shares God's plans, purposes and redemption. I'm not sure if this is because they are not confident enough in their Bible knowledge or if they are just afraid that they will offend others.
ReplyDeleteMy next post will begin to share some ideas of how we begin to share our story that includes God's plans, purposes, and redemption in an incrememtal kind of way. Farr/Anderson/Kotan talk about elementary/mid high/high school/college evangelism, which is their category of sharing faith through service, sharing faith in small groups, sharing faith in worship, and sharing faith with the unconnected. Stay tuned....
DeleteI do not believe we can ignore the correlation of the statistics from the original post to the rise of technology and expansion of available information and outside influences. As people are able to access more information and are inundated with various opinions on the "reality" of God they have become more "self" reliant and have drifted away from church. This, along with the ever expanding busy-ness of life, does not allow people to think they have time for anyone else's faith life.
ReplyDeleteWe are a society of convenience and instant gratification and these influence how we approach evangelism and how those being evangelized perceive the results. For me, a relationship with people is a slow process. We have to take time to build a relationship from the bottom up slowly learning about someone. Who they are, their interests, their goals, etc. It is not something that happens over night and also requires us to be vulnerable to someone who may be a total stranger. Building a relationship like this requires patience and perseverance that a lot of folks do not have or are unwilling to share.
Likewise, the person coming to church has to be approachable and willing to enter into a relationship, at least on some level. We expect people coming into CUMC to talk to someone right away and start building, what we hope, is a long lasting relationship. This might scare some people off, especially an unchurched person who really does not know what to expect and suddenly may have a well-intentioned person at their side asking all kinds of questions. Or they look around and see a table with a whole lot of stuff-to-do wondering if they have to participate in these things to be a part of the church (CUMC or anywhere). This becomes a double edged sword when trying to get people involved without overwhelming a newer person. Then there is always the people who catch fire and want to do everything. We work very hard to not let them burn out while still involving them as much as possible.
To Erin's point and questions. I believe it is a lot of both. People do not believe they understand the Bible enough to share with others. They feel they have to be some type of scholar and have all the answers immediately to any question. Again, instant gratification is required and "I don't know" is an unacceptable response. Rather than "You know, I am not sure. Let's explore the question together." I wonder if this isn't part of what Julie is pointing out with people being around for a few weeks and then simply disappearing?
Thoughts...
Thanks Brian. A phrase that I heard in your reply and I've heard in several is people "coming to church" and expectations for them and for us. In future posts, we'll stretch that a bit to talk about what it means for the "church to go to them".
DeleteMy answer to the question is that we--as a church--do precious little in the way engaging in the practice of evangelizing. I think Erin's response above kind of proves that point: "This question is hard because it is really hard to know what our members do outside of the church walls in their everyday life."
ReplyDeleteWhile true that we do not know what individual members do outside the church walls, we should know what we are doing AS A CHURCH to reach beyond our walls. And at the level of the church as an institution, I'm hard pressed to think of any intentional, systematic and persistent efforts to proactively reach out to those in our community and invite them into a relationship with Jesus Christ.
There are some specific instances in which we have been more successful, largely around an individual's efforts and personal networks (e.g., VBS this year). But are there any such systematic efforts in general? Any intentional investment in helping individuals grow in their comfort of inviting people to church? Any intentional effort in giving members something worth inviting people to?
Ultimately, most of the invitation needs to happen through individuals. But are we doing everything we can as a church to make it easier or more worthwhile for individuals to make those invitations? Are we doing everything we can to understand why those who disappear do so? Are we doing everything we can to evaluate what we are doing? How we are doing it? Why we are doing it? And whether any of those reasons line up with reaching those outside the church? Those too are acts of engaging in evangelism.
Yes, I believe there have been some efforts and some good intentions, but I don't think we can, as a church, claim fully to "engage the practice of evangelism." And if we don't as a church, why would we expect that our individual members would?
You ask some very good questions Mike. Thank you.
DeleteAs a member of Community for quite a few years, how might you begin to answer some of those questions. For example... How might you answer "Is there any intentional effort in giving members something worth inviting people to?"
First, I'll turn the question around (hey, I'm a professor--it's what I do): For how many of our on-going ministries do you hear people regularly say "Wow, this is so awesome I can't wait to tell my friends about it and invite them!"
ReplyDeleteAnd if they do, is it a program that is designed to connect people into a pathway of discipleship or just a fun event (like Carols by Candlelight, for a seasonal example)?
In most churches, including ours I think, people are 'satisfied' with the experience and opportunities; but they stay more because of their social connections than because the program itself is so compelling. If they become sufficiently dissatisfied, they may leave. If they don't develop a social connection, they leave. But they do not do a lot of inviting because they do not perceive that what their guest would experience is so compelling that the guest would be positively effected--social connections aside.
There may be intentional effort--and in a few cases (Four Square as it was originally implemented perhaps, for a recent example) those have been somewhat successful. But based on the evidence we have of inviting behavior, one can only conclude that if there is intent, most often there remains a sizable gap between intent and effective execution. And I'm not sure much reflection is done on why that gap persists.
Thank you for your challenging reply, Mike. This is a challenge to all of us who read this post, who are, indeed, responsible for those experiences and opportunities that people seemed to only be satisfied with.
DeleteThere are two populations in the church that may shed a different perspective - those who are new visitors/members, and those who have moved away from Community.
In my Coffee with the Pastor sessions, when I speak to those whose primary exposure to our church has been through worship and perhaps a program like Vacation Bible school, an adult small group, or a mission ministry, I hear nothing by excited comments about the church and what they love about Community. It makes my day to hear those voices, because they experience CUMC in a way that I can't always see when I'm "in the trenches" as pastor.
I've also had three opportunities this past month to engage three families that have moved out of state. In each case, these families tell me that they have yet to find a church that is "as good as Community" (their phrase).
I share these perspectives with you, as I invite all of us to engage others in our church, perhaps beyond our own social connection zone, to find out what it is about Community that keeps them around even if experiences are not "wow." Perhaps there we might find something that we can invite people to be a part of.
Let's keep ourselves and all leadership at our church in prayer as we discern and do what we can in Christ to provide for an exciting and compelling church.