Outreach looks different depending on which side of the pulpit you spend Sunday mornings. In my last pastorate, one of our young men met me for a hamburger one night, and after some chitchat said, “My wife and I are going to start looking for another church.”
I asked why.
“You’re emphasizing your plan for outreach too much. You need to pay more attention to the needs of those who come to church on Sunday morning.”
With difficulty I kept from shouting, “Are you telling me we shouldn’t focus on reaching out to people who don’t know Jesus?”
Because he was a committed Christian, his comment baffled me. I assumed every conscientious Christian was either passionate about the Great Commission or at least took vicarious satisfaction from a church and pastor who were.
The next day, as I recalled my preaching and leadership over previous months, I recognized how some could take offense, not at the Great Commission, but at how I wanted to go about the Great Commission. I had designed a seven-step strategy for evangelism and persistently urged everyone to get on board, causing some attenders to feel their individuality inhibited. I realized that I could have easily forestalled the resistance-if I had only known.
As a pastor with Matthew 28:18-20 and compassion for unbelievers motivating me, I’m prone to feel right about everything I do. I’m inclined to think, If they argue with outreach, they’re arguing with God. But evangelism stirs up all kinds of feelings and opinions. To successfully coordinate a church in outreach, I found it vital to know both what the unchurched-and the churched-think. We needed to be on the same page.
This survey would have helped me, but of greater value would have been a survey of my congregation. If you want to know more about your church, you may want to devise your own research tool, or take advantage of the CTi research team, which is making their services available to individual churches to conduct the same survey used in this report. If you are interested, write John LaRue, CTi Research, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, IL, 60188.
-Craig Brian Larson
Copyright © 1991 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
