Grow Your Church from the Outside In
by George Barna (Regal, 2002)
Studying people who had and hadn’t attended church in the previous six months, researcher George Barna says unchurched people were more likely to be self-sufficient, logical, assertive, daring, and to have tasted all the Christianity they care for. Barna concludes that the church’s greatest enemy is not hostility toward Christianity, but apathy toward it.
“Most unchurched people figure they have gotten along just fine without church,” he writes, “and until someone gives them reason to feel otherwise, they will remain spiritually unattached.”
Barna’s most important discoveries reveal what does give the unchurched reason to care. Worship services, he found, are a poor attraction, and few care about programs. They are, in fact, more likely to be attracted by intimacy, authenticity, and a heart for community building.
Above all, Barna found, it’s not what a church does, or who its pastor is, but how its members care for one another that brings people into church. One pastor summarized, “People don’t want a friendly church, they want a friend.”
Chapters examine important considerations for drafting outreach strategy—including language (the word “lost” is offensive; they prefer to be called “inquirers”), advertising techniques, and follow-up—as well as the regional and demographic differences.
Any surprising finds? How about this: the majority of unchurched prefer churches that have fewer than 200 people, sing traditional hymns, and encourage children to be in the service with parents. I was also surprised by the 12 myths of ministry.
Barna does not present a model for outreach or innovative ideas, but he offers information to determine which models and ideas might work for you.
Drew ZahnStratford, Iowa
The McDonaldization of the Church
by John Drane (Smyth & Helwys, 2002)
I like McDonald’s. My wife accepted Christ at McDonald’s. I go to a megachurch some might call the McDonald’s of the American church. So I approached John Drane’s book wondering if I’d be swayed to an irreconcilable criticism of the way my church does things. Instead, I left hopeful about the future.
Drane draws from George Ritzer’s “McDonaldization thesis” regarding society’s development throughout modernity. Ritzer sees four values: efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. Our material goods and, increasingly, our relationships and desires are quickly manufactured and brought to the marketplace. We obediently walk through roped-off receiving lines, gobble up what’s put before us, and move on to the next entertainment.
Churches have grown over the last half-century by embracing values of size, spectacle, expertise, and efficiency, and have taken the attributes of a system-machine-package. An SMP can shepherd only so long.
Drane sees seven characteristic people groups, from traditionalists to hedonists, trying to find a place. Many fail to find it in church.
“We spend most of the time looking at the backs of other people’s heads.”
How can the church reshape itself as a home where Christ ministers to all types of people? Drane does not want to replace one SMP with another. No, he prescribes circumspection, plus a commitment to explore the essence and spirit of Christ’s call, and the resulting implications for the church in this diffuse culture.
David ZimmermanLombard, Illinois
Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.
