Well, that time of the year is upon us. It's the Easter season and many church leaders are expecting lots of people to check out their churches. Many of us are spending a ton of money to put on a huge production. Will you reach our goals? Are you going to be effective?Yesterday, I read a blog by Tony Morgan that talked about reaching people at Easter. He pondered whether we're really reaching the unchurched. I've served in the church for over ten years now. During that time, I have never thought about this question. Are we really reaching the unchurched? I just assumed that we were reaching people who don't go to church because our auditorium was full.
Morgan maintains that we are probably reaching the churched and people who are already connected to our churches. I will have to pay more attention this Easter. I want to see if we're really reaching people who don't go to church. I don't want to be the kind of church leader who assumes that we're being effective because we have full auditorium. In my mind we're ineffective if we have a room full of people from other churches. Jesus didn't call us to recycle, he called us to disciple.
What do you think about Morgan's blog? Is he accurate in his assessment? How will you pay more attention to people who show up this Easter?
Reaching the already churched people is a good thing also.For example I really took in the true meaning of Easter last year for the first time.However I have been attenting church for 12 years.Now though I through God am able to spread the love of Christ to many.I agree with the idea of reaching the unchurched.I sat in a 3hour leadership meeting a couple weeks ago and wondered wouldn't it be more effective if the 80 people in the rOom prayed and went out evagalized.So even if we reached one person wouldn't that be better.Don't get me wrong I'm not knocking leadership meetings and I enjoyed it.I also support what t
ReplyDeletehe church was discussing and I understand preparing.I just wonder if we spend a lot of time making the church a better place for non believers when t
he non believers aren't in church(since this is type I do want to say I am in know way being negative,and I don't know a lot about running a church but I do know that I follow the leadership at church like the bible ask)God bless you and hope God blesses your Easter service-this is from troy but I am using my wifes blogger acct
In my opinion I think there is a good blend of both. I believe holidays like Easter and Christmas bring out the "holiday" Christians those who were raised in the church but don't attend now as adults. And actually those are the ones that I interact with the most at work and are the ones that I have invited to our service.
ReplyDeleteTroy,
ReplyDeleteI totally understand what you mean. However, when most church leaders talk about reaching people on Easter it's about reaching people who aren't already going to church. The faulty assumption is that all these 'new' people in the auditorium are people who don't already go to church. Morgan raised the question. He got me to think about who I'm really reaching. If the goal is a full auditorium then that's a win. If the goal is to reach people who don't already go to church then it's not a win. I guess it boils down to goals.
Personally, I'm not trying to reach people who already go to church. I don't want to shuffle people from one church to another. There are far too many people who don't go to church to recycle people from one church to the next.
By the way: I changed the setting for anonymous comments. You don't have to log in as Monica anymore. ;-)
Tina,
ReplyDeleteI agree but I would say that the people you interact with don't have a church home. Which would put them in the category of people we're trying to reach.