Big Churches Getting Bigger: The Reach Factor
Over the last several days, I’ve been sharing my thoughts related to continuing research that shows big churches are getting bigger. You can see the links to previous posts in this series at the bottom of this article. Today, I’d like to address “The Reach Factor”.
I get to work with churches across the country on a regular basis. Within those churches, there are ministries that combine to form a church. Not every church has “The Reach Factor”. And, it’s not unusual for every ministry within a church to share “The Reach Factor”. Many times ministries and churches lean towards “The Keep Factor”. That’s a completely different approach to ministry.
When churches value keeping who they have over reaching people outside the church and outside the faith, their thinking, language and actions tend to look like this:
- They program for people who already attend the church.
- They create environments that assume only Christ-followers will be present.
- They use insider language that’s confusing to people new to the church.
- They assume any growth that happens will be initiated by a heart-change outside the church rather than one inside the church.
- They never stop ministries because that might offend someone inside the church.
- They are slow to do something new because it might offend someone inside the church.
- They think it’s a choice between “going deeper” and “reaching the lost” when it’s actually both.
- They choose personal preferences over potential ministry impact.
- They make decisions based on who they’ll keep rather than who they’ll reach.
There are a couple of ways to know whether or not your ministry has “The Reach Factor” in play. One way to think about it is to pretend someone is just hired to fill a student pastor (or any other ministry role) at your church. If one of the key objectives in their first days on the job is to try to get people who have left the church to return, that’s a good sign your church or ministry is more about “The Keep Factor”.
Also, when I’m working with churches, I have them go through this exercise. I have them list every single ministry environment at their church. Then create two columns by that list. One column is called “Reach” and the other column is called “Keep”. They go through their entire ministry list and determine if it’s more to “Reach” people outside the church or “Keep” people who already attend the church. I’ve noticed that churches that aren’t growing tend to have an overabundance of “Keep” ministries. Healthy churches need to have “Keep” ministries to help people take their next steps toward Christ, but it’s not healthy when almost every ministry is a “Keep” ministry.
Oh, and one more test… How you emotionally react to this post is probably also a good sign of whether or not you have “The Reach Factor”.
From your experience, what are some other indicators that a church is more focused on reaching people than keeping people? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
__________
Previous posts in this series:
Big churches are getting bigger because they have cooler light shows and really dope fog machines and this draws materialistic christians from the other smaller churches. People can say they’re “reaching” people all day long but the statistics prove that the majority of the people that they are “reaching” are the already churched who want to hop to another cooler church.
A church that is more focused on reaching will not use the statement, “It’s the way we’ve always done it.”
Love this series Tony! Thanks for sharing this with all of us.
mark
I disagree with Organic Guy. It would help me if you could show the “statistics that prove” what you’re saying. The big churches I know of are reaching people who are mostly unchurched, usually in the 60-75% range while the churched transfers represent about 25-40%. 100% is unrealistic on either side and I think 75% is excellent. Small, traditional churches typically aren’t hitting that percentage and percentage-wise probably reach more churched people.
To me, that’s a bad, unfounded assumption that is sometimes made by proponents of other models (like house church) or when someone is looking for a reason to tear down other churches if their’s isn’t growing.
I’m not at a big church, by the way and I think all models that work should be used and can coexist together.
Always great to swing by your blog and see great stuff! You lend great value to this because of your experience and I think you say it well with your statement “going deeper and reaching the lost” it’s a bit of both. The reality is it’s hard to tell who actually has this down cold, really. I’ve been at a large church that was seeker friendly and really went after the lost hard, but weren’t aimed at going deeper at all. Now I’m at a church where we are seeker sensitive, it matters to reach the lost but priority to develop followers fully. Every church has their own vision, again, HOW a person reacts to this post says a lot.
I enjoyed it.
M_
Nick, please show me 1 reputable stat which shows that 75% of people in megachurches were previously un-churched. I attended 2 megachurches and I can testify 1st hand that out of 10 people that I talked to, 8 of them came from another church…usually because this church had better music/preaching/programs.
Without researching other studies at the moment, I’ll just point to someone’s church I know of. It’s not a mega church by American standards, but in Canada it would definitely be mega. 68% of their new attenders are not churched:
http://careynieuwhof.com/2010/12/are-you-actually-attracting-unchurched-people.html
Organic Guy, keep in mind that I said some big churches I know of, not all of them. Also, I said 75% would be excellent, but 60% would be better than the vast majority of churches regardless of size.
I have a copy of a study that North Point Community Church did asking questions to people who had been there 5 times or less, and Buckhead Church (a campus of mega-mega size), was reaching 57% unchurched people. In the heart of the Bible belt that’s pretty good.
The bottom line is, having “churched” people visit your megachurch, for good or bad reasons, is almost unavoidable. I think if you can be at least 50/50, then you’re probably in a healthy place and are having a big impact on your community. If a church of 5000 reaches 1000 new people one year, and 500 are unchurched, that’s great. Just like if a church of a 100 reaches 20, and 10 are unchurched. For many reasons like the ones Tony has mentioned, larger churches just seem to be doing it better….and they’re probably large because they do it better.