Most evangelical churches today sincerely desire to be friendly.
Most evangelical churches today believe that they already are friendly.
Most, in fact, believe that theirs is the “friendliest church in town,” and, of course, as a statistical reality, most have to be wrong about that.
Most believers believe that their church is “friendly” because they themselves experience warm friendship every time they walk in the door, and that’s wonderful. What they don’t realize is that their ongoing experience of Christian fellowship is not necessarily enjoyed by their guests.
In completing my soon to be published, Revitalization Playbook (ChurchSmart Resources), I came to a fresh understanding of the assimilation – the “getting people connected” – challenges we’re facing at the beginning of 2024. But facing the challenges also opened my eyes to the unprecedented opportunities before us as people who have the Word of God in our hands and the Spirit of God in our hearts.
Today we’ll zero in on the assimilation challenges caused by factors within the people we want to reach. Next week we’ll consider the challenges that arise from within our own hearts, as followers of Jesus in 2024.
Challenge #1 – Broken Legos – Families aren’t what they used to be. This is a well-discussed, well-documented subject, so I’ll simply point out that Americans in the 21st century do not stay in their home areas or maintain close family ties like they used to. The Norman Rockwell American family is long, long gone.
Many rural American churches, in particular, are dying, in part, because their continued existence, for decades, depended upon younger generations staying on the farm or at least in the area. It was assumed that the church would be pleasantly packed-out by the next generation of Johnsons and Petersons. This has now become the exception, rather than the rule. The Johnson and Peterson kids are spread all over the world and rarely return to their home church, even for Christmas Eve.
Instead, Americans are increasingly urban or suburban, disconnected and lonely. When they do show up at a church, probably because they have one or two young children with them, they don’t even know how to connect. They want to, but in many cases, the social skills just aren’t there.
In the 1990s, pastor, sociologist and author Leith Anderson helped us understand that people are like Legos: we only “Lego up” with a few other Legos before we are relationally maxed out. Only the extreme extrovert – or the individual who has worked hard at developing social skills – transcends the Lego principle.
Meeting the Challenge of Broken Legos – Putting it as succinctly as possible, as the people of God, we have been called to offer what I call the welcome of God – based on the warm embrace of the prodigal son by the extraordinary Father of Luke 15. Without God’s Spirit we don’t have a chance at making this work, but we are not without God’s Spirit, are we?
The welcome of God, done well, means that our guests will walk to their cars after our services knowing that if they so choose, they can find real friendships in our church.
Challenge #2 – The Fear Factor – Next week I’ll write about the ways in which church people are afraid of unchurched people, but let’s face this first: Unchurched people think we’re scary and they think that our churches are scary.
- They’re afraid of our politics.
- They’re afraid our services might be “weird.”
- They’re afraid we’ll judge them for their appearance.
- They’re afraid we’ll look down on them because of their immoral lives.
- They’re afraid they’ll have to make an all-or-nothing commitment to the church.
Meeting the Challenge of Fearful People – Obviously, our challenge is to allay the fears of those who walk through our doors. This doesn’t mean that we have to renounce our political views, design our services to entertain non-Christian people, alter our convictions on Biblical morality or renounce our commitment to follow Christ wholeheartedly. It does mean that we sincerely welcome our guests in whatever condition they come through the door.
Even more importantly, long before people who are far from Christ enter our doors, we must be rubbing shoulders with them in our workplaces, clubs, neighborhoods and extended families, sincerely communicating the love of Jesus, Monday through Friday, as long as it takes. Fear allaying people create fear allaying churches.
Challenge #3 – Depersonalization & Cynicism – Most of us have “had it” with the ever-increasing coldness of our society. We are ordering food from computers in the lobbies of fast food restaurants. (Really?) We go on-line and can’t find a phone number we can use to call customer service. If we do locate the number, we can’t get a human being on the line. If we do get a human on the line, it’s usually someone in another country. We are so tired of being treated like this, but we are also so used to it.
And then there’s the cynicism. Hardly anyone believes in hardly anything or anyone anymore. Brand loyalty is gone. Pastors are not trusted. Churches are not trusted. Everyone in authority is seen as a potential abuser.
Meeting the Challenges of Depersonalization and Cynicism – The implications of this for churches are significant. Some larger churches deliberately make no effort to reach out to their presumably fearful, mistrustful guests, assuming that if they are interested in the church they will show up at the welcome center and claim their free coffee mug.
I think this is a tragic, missed opportunity. I couldn’t believe my good fortune last week when an actual customer service person seriously, sincerely, took up my cause of getting a refund for the hotel room I was too ill to stay in on Christmas Eve. It was amazing.
When people walk into a church and are sincerely and warmly welcomed by someone who learns their name and where they live and where they work, they are astonished.
On the other hand, even the warmest greeting from a pastor on the platform “just doesn’t cut it.” What our guests want is real greetings from real people who show a personal interest in their lives.
This is not beyond our ability to achieve. Yes, the majority of your church attendees will probably never do this, no matter how much you talk about it in sermons (and you should). But a sizeable group, in almost any evangelical congregation, will welcome some basic training in offering the welcome of God and will delight your guests with what they see as your church’s welcoming touch.
