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Closing the Back Door (Part 3)
Jun132008 Filed under: Growing Strategies Author: tonyAfter sharing my thoughts on “closing the back door,” these were the final comments that Lindy, the editor for Outreach Magazine, offered on this topic.
Lindy: Great thoughts—I agree with them. And I think you’re right that most churches are focused on keeping people happy and not focused on reaching the lost. And I like your point about that being the No. 1 problem readers say they face.
I do think that 90% of the time, evangelism happens through relationships and that most churches aren’t doing a great job of making true disciples who sense the urgency to share their faith and tell friends, family, co-workers about Christ. While most churches focus on caring for the saved flock, I also know it’s those people who are going deep with Christ that are going to tell their friends about Him. That’s how I was told about Christ, and that’s how many of my friends and family became Christians.
So I do think there’s validity in caring for the flock and connecting them to the church but only if that care includes a call to be true disciples with the ultimate purpose of telling about and showing others the love of Christ. Maybe that’s what we need to focus on…
Tony: Sounds like you and I are in the same place. I agree completely with your last comments.
Now, what are your thoughts?
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Tony Morgan is a pastor and the Chief Strategic Officer at NewSpring Church where he develops creative solutions for communications, technology and NewSpring Ministries--the church's ministry that equips other church leaders.
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Tim Briggs
June 13th, 2008 at 9:07 am
I’m curious to know if you believe that “90% of the time, evangelism happens through relationships?” If so, how does NewSpring equip it’s people to harness these relationships to do evangelism? I know encouraging your people to invite their lost friends to church is one way but do you guys do anything else?
Jill
June 13th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
My thought is the same: soil. If the soil of the church is healthy and rich, then people far from God can come to know Him and relationships can take root and grow as well. Lindy’s focus on relational evangelism is spot-on. Environments that foster community (and discipleship) should see a multiplier effect in relationship-based outreach. At the risk of taking my metaphor too far…these relationships (the plant) should grow far beyond the walls of the church on Sunday. Think the library scene in Jumangi…
Michael Schutz
June 13th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Good thoughts, Tony. I was going to comment after the last post, but am glad I saw this one. I would have to agree that “closing the back door” is the wrong problem to try to solve. For me, churches designed to “keep” people are catering to a consumer mentality and missing the whole point of the mission.
The point about the people being the “missionaries” is an extremely important one. For me, any “discipleship” that doesn’t ignite a passion of “I gotta share this” in people isn’t fulfilling what discipleship could be. But I also think this is the fault of church leadership (I speak as a full-time Minister of Worship). If our model for outreach is pastor/leadership->unchurched (that is, the primary people who are connecting with “non-members” are staff through corporate worship or program events), we are always going to struggle in both discipleship and mission because the leadership will be trying to both the feeding of the members and the outreach. If our model is pastor/leadership->membership->unchurched, much more fruit will be borne because staff will actually have time to feed the members, who in turn will go and reach out by living as Christians in their vocations. (This is not to say staff should have no personal contact with the lost, quite the contrary, but that we should not be primary ones, because then our efforts are incremental, not exponential.)
I think it depends on what we are calling “caring”. For me, caring is not just catering to members’ perceived needs. It’s truly discipling them - baptism seals converts with the Holy Spirit, and then we teach them to cling to ALL of Jesus, not just what they think they want and/or need. And part of that is being 1 Peter 3 people - living with an obvious difference in hope and being ready to share the reason for that when people ask about it.
Jamie
June 14th, 2008 at 7:16 am
I have heard it said so many times, that we trust that the Holy Spirit will draw people to Salvation, but then we don’t trust the Holy Spirit to teach and disciple.
I met Jesus at NewSpring many years ago, and from personal experience, the only people that I have seen leave are “churched people”.
If people fall in love with Jesus at a church, why would we think that they would leave?
Its when people fall in love with the church, as soon as a song/program/staff position changes, or someone looks at them funny/someone sits in “their” seat, they are the people that I have seen fleeing for the ‘backdoor’.
If the church is INTENTIONAL about pointing people to Jesus, ABOVE EVERY OTHER AGENDA, then why even worry about who is leaving?
Jim
June 14th, 2008 at 8:03 am
The issue is that the longer the church person is a believer and is taught by “Christians” they need to be set apart from the world, the faster they lose their unchurched friends. The greatest thing you can do for a person is to introduce them to Jesus, no matter where you are in your walk. One of the problems “fat” churches have is that by setting themselves apart from the world, is that they have no unchurched friends. They go to church with their church friends, go out to eat with them, go over to their houses and socialize, all at the exclusion of the unchurched. The further a person is away from his day of conversion date, the less likely he is to have a circle of friends he is comfortable of sharing what he has found. Unless, of course, he is taught to do so. Another problem is that fat churches have lost their testimony. By that I mean the only thing God ever did in their life was 20 years ago. If you want to share Christ you are going to have something RECENT to share with someone that God did for you. If you can’t get excited about what God is doing in your life now, why should anyone else, especially the unchurched. Churches are dying all over this nation. Frankly they would rather die a slow death than to reach out to the lost and hurting. They are glad THEY matter to God (though I’m not sure how much at that point), and don’t want to change their focus. It is easier to give birth than to raise someone from the dead. That isn’t mine and I don’t know whose it is, but I can assure you, in this life it is true. That is why I now go to GCC. This is my third comment on this three part article. Thanks for sharing it with us.