10-knowing-whom-you-can-best-reach

10

Knowing Whom You Can Best Reach

The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah.”

John 1:41

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples.

Matthew 9:10

Even ^a casual reading of the New Testament will show that the Gospel spread primarily through relationships. As soon as Andrew heard about Christ he went and told his brother, Simon Peter. Philip immediately contacted a friend, Nathaniel.

Matthew, a tax collector, held an evangelistic dinner party for other taxcollectors. The woman at the well told everyone in her village about Christ. The list goes on and on.

I believe that the most effective evangelistic strategy is to first try to reach those with whom you already have something in common. After you’ve discovered all the possible target groups in your community, which group should you focus on first? The answer is to go after those you are most likely to reach.

As we’ve already discussed, every church is best suited to reach certain types of people. Your church will have an easier time reaching some kinds of people and more difficulty reaching other kinds of people. And there are some types of people your church will never reach, because they require a completely different style of ministry than you can provide.

Many factors cause people to be resistant to attending your church: theological barriers, relational barriers, emotional barriers, lifestyle barriers, and cultural barriers. Although the first four barriers are very real, in this chapter I would like to focus on the cultural barrier. The people your church is most likely to reach are those who match the existing culture of your church.

Who Already Attends Our Church?

How do you determine your church’s culture? Ask yourself, “What kind of people already attend our church?” This may

discourage some pastors, but it is the truth: Whatever type of people you already have in your congregation is the same type you are likely to attract more of. It is unlikely that your church will attract and keep many people who are very different from those who already attend.

When visitors walk into your church, the first question they ask isn’t a religious question, but a cultural one. As their eyes scan the room full of strange faces they are unconsciously asking, “Is there anybody here like me?” A visiting retired couple looks to see if there are any other older folks present in the congregation. A serviceman looks for anyone else wearing a uniform or who has a military haircut. Young couples with infants immediately scan the crowd to see if there are other young couples with babies or small children. If visitors find other people in your church that seem similar to them, they are much more likely to come back again.

What is the likelihood of a church full of retirees reaching teenagers? Not likely. How about the likelihood of a church made up of military personnel reaching peace activists? Highly unlikely! Or what’s the likelihood of a church composed primarily of blue-collar factory workers reaching white-collar executives? It’s possible, but don’t bet on it.

Of course, as believers we must want and welcome all people into our church family. After all, we are all the same in the eyes of God. But remember, the fact that a church may be unsuccessful in reaching certain types of people isn’t a matter of right or wrong, but a matter of simply respecting the

wonderful variety of people God has placed in the world.

What Kindof Leaders Do We Have?

The second question to ask when figuring out who your church can best reach is, “What is the cultural background and personality of our church’s leadership?” The personal characteristics of your leadership, both paid staff and lay leaders, have enormous impact on your church’s ministry. Leaders cast long shadows. Many studies have shown that the number one reason people choose a church is because they identify with the pastor. Don’t misunderstand this: The pastor does not attract first-time visitors, but he is a major reason visitors come back (or don’t). When visitors identify with the pastor, they are far more likely to return.

If you are a pastor, you must honestly ask yourself, “What kind of person am I? What is my cultural background? What kind of people do I naturally relate to and what kind do I have a harder time understanding?” You need to do a frank analysis of who you are and the type of people to whomyou relate best.

While I was a college student, I served as an interim pastor in a small church made up almost entirely of truck drivers and mechanics. Since I have absolutely no background or ability with mechanical things, I had difficulty holding an intelligent conversation with many of the members. Even though I dearly loved those folks, I was a fish out of water and they knew it. They were very polite to this young preacher, but I wasn’t at all what that church needed. They needed a leader that

matched who they were.

On the other hand, I feel right at home with entrepreneurial businessmen, managers, and professionals. In fact, I’ve noticed that they are attracted to my ministry. It’s nothing I planned, it’s just the way God wired me.

I deeply believe that God has uniquely called and shaped each of us in different ways to reach different types of people. You can reach people that I will never be able to reach for Christ, and I can probably reach some whom you can’t relate to. That is why we are all needed in the body of Christ.

If God has called you to ministry, then who and what you are must also be a part of that plan. You don’t minister in spite of yourself, but through the personality God gave you. You were shaped by God for a purpose. If he has called you to be a pastor, that means there must be people somewhere in the world whomyou can reach better than anyone else.

There are two principles to remember when seeking to discern God’s direction for your ministry.

You’ll best reach those you relate to. The easiest people for you to reach for Christ are those who are most like you. This is not to say you can’t reach people unlike yourself. Of course you can. It’s just harder. Some pastors relate best to highly educated intellectuals, and other pastors relate better to simple, common folk. Both groups need Christ, and both need a pastor who understands them and loves being with them. Your

greatest contribution will occur when you match your target. Then you can have an impact by being yourself.

Second, as a leader you’ll attract who you are, not who you want. When I started Saddleback Church I was twenty-six years old. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get anyone over forty-five to join our church; the congregation pretty much matched my age group. It wasn’t until I added staff who were older than I was that we began to reach senior adults. Now, as I enter middle age, I’m having to add younger staff to relate to those younger than I am.

Sometimes because pastors want to reach a certain target group, they aren’t realistic about who they are. I knew a pastor in his fifties with a farming background who decided to start a church to reach “baby-busters” because he’d seen another church do it and it looked exciting. The church failed miserably. He later confided, “I just couldn’t connect on their wavelength.”

An exception to these two principles occurs if you have been given what I call the “missionary gift.” The ability to minister cross-culturally requires a special gift, an ability from the Holy Spirit to be able to communicate to people with backgrounds very different fromyour own.

The apostle Paul obviously had the missionary gift. His upbringing made hima “Hebrew of Hebrews” (see Phil. 3:5), yet God called him to plant Gentile churches. I know some pastors who were raised in rural areas but minister very effectively in

the inner city. I’ve also seen some southern-born pastors who have been greatly used by God in northeastern cities. But these gifted pastors are the exception to the rule.

Explosive growth occurs when the type of people in the community match the type of people that are already in the church, and they both match the type of person the pastor is. But if the members and the pastor don’t match, there will probably be just an explosion without the growth! Many church conflicts are caused by mismatched leaders. Placing the wrong type of leader in a church is like mismatching jumper cables on a car battery—sparks are guaranteed to fly.

There have been many times I’ve seen pastors who are having a hard time ministering to people in their communities because they don’t match them culturally. The problem is not dedication, but background! A godly man in the wrong place willstill produce only mediocre results.

Personally, I have no doubt that there are many parts of our country where I would completely fail as a pastor because I’d never match the culture. God made me to minister exactly where I am. The changed lives in our church family prove it.

Sometimes the wisest thing a pastor can do is to admit that he doesn’t match the church or community and move somewhere else. A number of years ago Saddleback started a new church in nearby Irvine, California. A friend of mine moved from Atlanta to pastor it. He had started a church in Atlanta that had grown to over 200 in attendance, so I knew he had the

gifts needed to be a church planter. After about eight months, the new church in Irvine had still not gotten off the ground.

I asked John what he thought the problemwas. He said, “It’s obvious I don’t fit here. This area of Irvine is composed of wealthy, middle-aged couples with teenagers.”

I then asked him, “Who do you think you could best reach?”

John replied, “I feel I can reach young couples with preschoolers and young single adults who are out on their own for the first time. I understand their problems.”

“Then we need to move you to a section of Huntington Beach!” I said. We moved John to Huntington Beach, started over with a new church, and within a year his church was running over 200 in attendance.

I have another friend who pastors an African-American congregation in Long Beach, California. He came to see me one day very discouraged by the lack of growth in his church. I soon discovered that he didn’t fit the educational level of his congregation. He had several advanced degrees and a very sophisticated vocabulary, but most of those in his church and community were barely high school graduates. His speaking style was turning people off. After discovering that there was an entire community of professional African-Americans living about four miles away, I suggested that he resign from his current pastorate and start a church in that part of Long Beach. He did exactly that and two years later reported back that the

new church had over 300 attending each Sunday.

If you are a pastor struggling with a ministry “misfit,” and you don’t match your area, you know exactly what I’ve been describing. You’ve probably had a gut feeling about it all along. Don’t feel bad. It’s not a sin that you don’t fit a particular area. Just move! If God has gifted you and called you into ministry, he has a place that’s just right for you.

What If Our Church Doesn’t Match Our Community?

Often communities change, but the makeup of a church doesn’t. What do you do if you’re serving in a church that doesn’t match the community?

Build on your strengths

Don’t try to be something you’re not. If your church is primarily made up of elderly folks, decide to become the most effective ministry to senior citizens that you can possibly be. Don’t try to become a baby-buster congregation. Strengthen what you are already doing and don’t worry about what you can’t do. Keep doing what you’ve been strong at, just do it better. Chances are that there’s a pocket of people in your community that only your church can reach.

Reinvent your congregation

Reinventing the congregation is when you intentionally change the makeup of your church in order to match a new

target. You completely replace all the old programs, structures, and worship styles with new ones.

I want this to be very clear: I do not advise this! It is a painful process and may take many years. People will leave the church due to the enormous, inevitable conflicts. If you lead this process, you will probably be vilified as Satan incarnate by older members unless you’ve been there longer than everyone else. I have seen this done successfully, but not without an enormous amount of persistence and willingness to absorb criticism. It takes a very loving, patient, and gifted pastor to lead a church in reinventing itself.

Don’t even consider this option in a church with over one hundred attenders unless God tells you to. It is a road to martyrdom. However, if you are in a church of fifty people or less, this may be a viable option for you. One advantage for the small church is that it can be completely transformed by having just a few families leave and a few new families join. But the bigger a church gets, the less likely you’ll be able to do this.

Start new congregations

This third option is the one I love to recommend. There are a couple of ways to start a new congregation to reach a new target in your community. First, you can add another worship service with a different worship style in order to reach people that are not being reached by the current style of your worship service. All across America, churches are beginning second and even third worship services in order to offer options and

increase their outreach.

A second approach is to actually begin a mission, which you intend to become a self-supporting congregation. Starting new congregations is the fastest way to fulfill the Great Commission.

You may remember being taught in your high school biology class that the primary characteristic of biological maturity is the ability to reproduce. I believe the same is true for the church, which the Bible refers to as a “body.” The mark of a truly mature church is that it has babies: It starts other churches.

You do not have to be a large church to start new congregations. Saddleback Church started our first daughter church when our church was just a year old. Each year since then we’ve started at least one new daughter church. As I mentioned in the last chapter, by our fifteenth anniversary we had started twenty-five other churches.

Recognizing Spiritual Receptivity in Your Community

Jesus taught in the Parable of the Sower and the Soils (see Matt. 13:3–23) that spiritual receptivity varies widely. Like different kinds of soil, people respond differently to the Good News. Some people are very open to hearing the Gospel, and others are very closed. In the parable of the sower Jesus explained that there are hard hearts, shallow hearts, distracted hearts, and receptive hearts.

For evangelism to have maximum effectiveness, we need to plant our seed in the good soil—the soil that produces a hundredfold harvest. No farmer in his right mind would waste seed, a precious commodity, on infertile ground that won’t produce a crop. In the same way, careless, unplanned broadcasting of the Gospel is poor stewardship. The message of Christ is too important to waste time, money, and energy on nonproductive methods and soil. We need to be strategic in reaching the world, focusing our efforts where they will make the greatest difference.

Even within your church’s target group there will be various pockets of receptivity. Spiritual receptivity is something that comes and goes in people’s lives like an ocean tide. At various times in life people tend to be more open to spiritual truth than at other times. God uses a variety of tools to soften hearts and prepare people to be saved.

Who are the most receptive people? I believe there are two broad categories: People in transition and people under tension. God uses both change and pain to get people’s attention and make themreceptive to the Gospel.

People in transition

Any time someone experiences major change, whether positive or negative, it seems to create a hunger for spiritual stability. Right now there is enormous interest in spiritual matters due to the massive changes in our world that are making people frightened and unsettled. Alvin Toffler says

that people look for “islands of stability” when change becomes overwhelming. This is a wave the church needs to ride.

At Saddleback, we’ve found that people are more receptive to the Gospel when they face changes like a new marriage, a new baby, a new home, a new job, or a new school. This is why churches generally grow faster in new communities where residents are continually moving in than in stable, older communities where people have lived for forty years.

People under tension

God uses all kinds of emotional pain to get people’s attention: the pain of divorce, death of a loved one, unemployment, financial problems, marriage and family difficulties, loneliness, resentment, guilt, and other stresses. Fearful or anxious people often begin looking for something greater than themselves to ease the pain and fill the void they feel.

I make no claim to immaculate perception, but based on fifteen years of pastoring I offer the following list of what I believe have been the ten most receptive groups of people that we’ve reached out to at Saddleback:

• 1. Second-time visitors to the church
• 2. Close friends and relatives of new converts
• 3. People going through a divorce
• 4. Those who feel their need for a recovery program (alcohol, drugs, sexual, and so forth)
• 5. First-time parents
• 6. The terminally ill and their families
• 7. Couples with major marriage problems
• 8. Parents with problemchildren
• 9. Recently unemployed or those with major financial problems
• 10. New residents in the community

A possible goal for your church might be to develop a specific program or outreach to each of the most receptive people groups in your community. Of course, if you begin to do this someone is likely to say, “Pastor, I think that before we try to reach all these new people we should try to reactivate all the old members that have stopped coming.” This is a guaranteed strategy for church decline! It doesn’t work. It usually takes about five times more energy to reactivate a disgruntled or carnal member than it does to win a receptive unbeliever.

I believe God has called pastors to catch fish and feed sheep, not to corral goats! Your inactive members probably need to join somewhere else for a number of reasons. If you want to grow, focus on reaching receptive people.

Once you know who your target is, who you are most likely to reach, and who the most receptive people in your target group are, you are ready for the next step: establishing an evangelismstrategy for your church.