Effective community outreach requires more than polished techniques. Meaningful outreach begins with a healthy attitude toward mission and the community.
—Myron Augsburger
A desire to minister to the community doesn’t automatically translate into effective community ministry.
A few years ago, an organization was planning a major youth outreach in Washington, D.C. They were going to bring 25,000 young people to Washington and turn them loose to evangelize. Some of us who minister in the inner city met and agreed to send a representative to Chicago to talk with the planning committee. We cautioned them about thrusting thousands of young, white suburban people into an inner-city setting of 70 percent blacks; the cultural barriers are enormous. As a result, they modified the program to develop a more relational approach.
What applies to grand mission projects applies especially to the local church. In approaching our neighborhoods, we don’t want to do something foolish or insensitive, but effectively to bring the healing and saving love of Jesus Christ.
Churches that seek to do this begin by asking two fundamental questions: “What should we be doing?” and, equally important, “What should we avoid doing?” Here are principles we’ve used to help answer those questions. Although our context is the inner city, the principles we use apply to churches in other settings, as well.
Attitude Check
Effective community outreach requires more than polished techniques. Meaningful outreach begins with a healthy attitude toward mission and the community. Here are three attitudes I consider essential.
• Serve others’ needs, not our own. As we mature in faith, Christians feel increasingly compelled to reach out to others. Sometimes, however, in our efforts to help, we end up merely satisfying our need to serve rather than the community’s needs.
Some time ago a young man came to me for advice about becoming an evangelist. (He knew I had worked in interdenominational crusades for twenty-five years.) As we talked, it became evident that he was more driven by his need to do evangelism than an interest in the people who needed Christ. So I recommended that he first become a pastor and get to know and think with a congregation. I felt this would teach him to think first of others’ needs, not his own.
Since our church wants to serve people in a way that truly will help them, we think it’s important to know firsthand the community to which we minister. Therefore, as I mentioned in Chapter 1, when we started in D.C., I met with other local church leaders. Then I introduced myself to thought makers of the community and joined various community organizations.
When Esther and I moved here, we immediately started getting acquainted with our neighbors. We tried to discover how we could encourage them and what we could learn from them. We not only built bridges of understanding, we also learned about community needs from the people in the community.
When in Tanzania a number of years ago, I read an article by a Roman Catholic missionary from France; it was entitled, “A Stranger in My Father’s House.” He told how he finally learned to serve people the way they wanted and needed to be served instead of the way he wanted to serve them. That’s our goal, as well.
We’ve also come to see that we cannot serve people without becoming concerned with all of their needs, both spiritual and physical. When we asked the question “How do we carry the love of Christ into our neighborhood?” we’ve discovered we have to do it with words of witness and deeds of compassion. That is the model Jesus gives us. And it is a necessary model if our evangelistic words are to appear sincere. I don’t believe in the old social gospel that reduced the Christian faith to good works. But I do believe in the gospel that meets people’s everyday as well as eternal needs.
• Have a marketplace mentality. A businessman in a previous congregation I served employed a number of people in his business. After reading Jesus’ remarks to the rich young ruler one day, he became troubled. He wondered if he should sell all he had, give it to the poor, and become a day laborer; or should he keep his business, remain a wealthy man, use his wealth to employ people, and serve the community by being a model employer, looking out for the well-being of his workers? In his case, I recommended the latter. So, he began taking a special interest in the children of his employees, arranging scholarships for their schooling, and he offered a profit-sharing plan for his employees.
Sometimes a church cannot offer formal programs that operate out of the church’s facilities or are subsidized by church money or personnel. But that doesn’t mean the church isn’t reaching out to the community. Often, its members are doing so individually and significantly. They initiate and sustain their individual ministries because of the encouragement and strength they receive at church. For example, one successful business executive in our D.C. congregation is a model of stewardship and witness. Although our congregation can’t take credit for his faithfulness, he nonetheless is an extension of the church’s ministry in the community. In fact, he has asked to be commissioned for his witness in business as others are commissioned for other forms of service.
By broadening our understanding of what constitutes church outreach, we get a better picture of the impact our church is having on the community.
• Don’t dump expertise; offer it. Esther and I came to Washington, D.C., after spending fifteen years in college administration. Some of our younger alumni who had been working in the inner city told me, “You can’t build a three-piece-suit church in inner-city Washington.” I answered that I might dress in old clothes and appear to be poor, but as soon as I opened my mouth, it would be obvious that I was educated and privileged. I was going to the inner city, I explained, not to be like the people there or to rescue them heroically. I was going simply because I cared. And because I cared, I would use the benefits of my training, expertise, and experience to help the community as the people there wanted.
The temptation for educated Christians working in poor neighborhoods, however, is to haul out their arsenal of knowledge and expertise to fix the problems. But I’ve noticed that when I do that, I slap other people in the face with my privilege. On the other hand, to hide my knowledge and connections under a bushel would be selfish; such expertise can help them.
I solve this seeming dilemma by offering my expertise and letting the people to whom I minister decide if and when and how they want to use it.
Three Keys to Effective Outreach
If our attitudes must be checked regularly, so must our actions. There are dozens of techniques toward more effective outreach to the community, but three stand out as key.
• Target the right community. There are three “cities” in Washington, D.C.: First, the federal government, made up of the people who work in the offices of Congress, the White House, the cabinet departments, and other federal agencies. Second, the several thousand business people who commute to the city during the day. Third, the Washington, D.C., from six o’clock in the evening until six in the morning, composed of the people who struggle to survive in the confines of the official city limits. Each of these cities has its own network and interacts only sporadically with the other two Washingtons.
We had to decide which “city” we were going to minister to. In our case, located as we are in the inner city, it was not a difficult choice. We chose to reach out to those who live and work in the city, not primarily the daytime commuters or ever-changing federal government work force.
Having chosen, we now can focus our energies and intelligently evaluate our work. When people ask, “Are you making an impact on Washington, D.C.?” we don’t have to apologize for not getting more bills passed in Congress, or for not having senators join our congregation. That has not been our target community. Instead, we talk about our work in the inner city and the community being formed among young professionals.
• Allow outreach programs to trickle up. We have a learning center with ten computers, and about forty neighborhood children come to use them every week. The learning center evolved from the vision of one of our church members. She and her husband, in watching the children of the area, began thinking about how they could be tutored. First, they enlisted people from our church who would be willing to tutor the children. Then, they went to the local school and asked for a list of the underachievers and started tutoring them evenings at the church. When these underachievers started achieving, the demand increased. At that point, a businessman gave us twenty thousand dollars. With it we bought computers, which we use with the students.
I could cite another half-dozen illustrations of other programs of our church that were started by concerned church members who felt called to meet a particular need. They formed groups to focus on a concern and then took steps to meet the need. That’s a process we encourage. In fact, only then will the congregational boards (elders and deacons) become involved.
Many churches, instead, wait for the administrative body to act first. Committees are assigned to carry out something the board has decided should be done. Or the pastor tells the congregation the six or seven things they ought to be doing in the community. Time and again, such projects go nowhere. That’s because (1) the people have no ownership of the projects, and (2) the ideas, often generated by those away from the front lines, may not meet the needs of the people they seek to reach.
Consequently, our elders don’t initiate outreach programs. Our usual pattern is to pray and wait for a concern to emerge from a group in the church. One person with a burden is not enough. But when others begin to show an interest in that ministry, the elders encourage them to develop a plan, recruit the people needed, and launch the ministry.
When I was commissioned to start our congregation, the secretary of the board with which I worked said, “Myron, you’ll need to let the body of Christ that emerges in Washington determine its own character.” That is exactly what we’re trying to do.
• Know thyself. A church that sincerely seeks to meet community needs is faced with a unique temptation: to do too much.
Sometimes, even when a group has banded together for a particular ministry, we don’t give them the go-ahead, even if the need is pressing. We’re concerned about becoming overextended and ineffective. Sometimes, we simply don’t have the funds to support the group’s ideas. At other times, we’re not sure we can staff a project over the long run.
For example, we’ve put our desire for a youth coffee house on hold. It would be designed for young people in both the church and neighborhood. It would be a safe place for them to gather on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings. If designed well (neon lights, nice furnishings) and adequately staffed, it would be popular and meet a community need.
We’ve gone so far as to check out facilities and locations. But if we took on the project now, we could not give it our best effort. We would end up with an inadequate facility and a poorly staffed, poorly funded ministry. We and the community can do without that.
We also have dreams about creating a dentistry clinic, a counseling center, and a legal clinic. All in good time, I trust. But as much as a church wants to help, sometimes it’s better to say no for a while.
Some people, of course, confront us because we’re not doing something for them. I don’t like to hear that type of criticism. But if our church is genuinely doing what it can, I can challenge the critic confidently.
One evening a young man came to my office. He accused me and the church of being racists. “If you were sincere about your religion,” he said, “you would …” and he produced a list of both personal and political demands.
When I could swallow no more, I said, “I’ve listened to you. Now I want you to listen to me.” After explaining to him why I was ministering in the inner city and what the church was doing, I said, “You don’t know me or this church or what we’re about. I wouldn’t have moved into this black community if I were a racist.” I suggested he forget the racist rhetoric and open his eyes to who his real friends are.
He didn’t know what to say, but finally he said, “You’ve got black blood in you or you wouldn’t understand me like that. I don’t know how much, but you’ve got some black blood.”
“Come off it,” I said. “Cut me. Cut yourself. It’s the same color blood. This isn’t about race, but caring.”
So, every time the community says, “Jump!” the church shouldn’t ask, “How high?” If it is sincerely reaching out to the community in some ways, it can say no to things it can’t do well.
The Pastor’s Role: Prod and Praise
If commitment to a mission project arises from the congregation, it doesn’t happen automatically. As a pastor, I am not able to do all of the outreach, but I am one of the main people who encourages it. There are three of us on the pastoral team who consider ourselves enablers of the congregation.
Preaching is an integral part of the process of finding a church’s niche in the community. It’s not that I tell our people what they should be doing—”Open a food closet!” or “Establish a drug clinic!” Instead, I try to present God’s Word and speak about the community in such a way that people begin to ask, “What should we be doing for Christ in this community?”
Second, I encourage people by pointing them in the right direction. When people or groups come to me with an idea for outreach, we help them find resources, encourage them, and pray with them.
Third, as a pastor, I give public support to outreach ministries. There are dozens of ways of doing this without dominating the process. For example, the pastors don’t give announcements about the progress or needs of a particular ministry; it’s much better if that sort of thing comes from the people involved in the ministry itself. But following the announcement, I will thank the person for the presentation and affirm the project. It helps the congregation support a project if their pastor supports it.
When and How to Work with Caesar
Sometimes as a church ministers to its community, it will run into government. Either the government is not adequately providing justice as it should (civil rights is the classic example), or the church needs the government’s help to provide a service (e.g., permits and/or funds needed to open up a food closet). In either case, the church has to work with the governing authorities to meet a human need. But how do we do that effectively?
Naturally, a great deal of the answer depends on one’s theology of church and state. Yet there are some practical principles we’ve found helpful that most Christians can agree on.
First, the church does not serve the state; we serve Jesus Christ. Therefore, we are not going to compromise our ethics or principles just to get a few dollars. The dollars aren’t as important as our integrity. I’ve seen groups expend great effort to get a grant and then have the shape of their program determined by that grant. Some are tempted to do unethical things to manipulate the source of funds to their ends.
We recently received permits to renovate a building for the Christian College Coalition, but only after countless delays and red tape. Some of our people speculated that a little payola would have greased the wheels of the bureaucracy. We know that other organizations have walked their projects through without the problems we encountered, but they may have made sure “a certain expense was covered,” which helped in processing the permit. There may have been other reasons for our delays, but the fact that we didn’t play this game may have been one. In the end, it cost us a great deal of time, but we maintained the integrity of our ministry.
Second, we can develop relationships and encourage dialogue with people with political power. Our temptation is to depersonalize government with labels and titles, to distance ourselves and stand back in judgment. But government is made up of people, and the better we know these people, the better we understand the constraints with which they live. And the better they know us, the more genuine our interchange becomes. As I’ve gotten to know some of these individuals, I’ve come to realize many people in government struggle to do what’s right. So, I don’t criticize them carelessly.
Third, sometimes we do need to confront officials. We hold convictions on justice and peace that sometimes compel us to speak. But when I confront officials, I don’t necessarily do it to get the state to do what I want. I simply want the government to honor and respect the consciences of those who hold different views.
As a pacifist I was opposed to the war in Vietnam. Yet while the war raged on, I didn’t write angry letters or publicly denounce the government. But along with seven others, I did visit senators and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to tell them our views about war. We made no impassioned speeches; we simply explained our position and quoted some passages from Scripture. We wanted them and President Nixon, who were talking about “peace with honor” at the time, to see that there was a higher honor yet. We also tried to show them that we spoke for a good number of the governed they represented.
We were not trying to create a pacifist government; the government has a right to have an army and protect its shores. But if our government is to be a government of all the people, it needs to understand the convictions of all of its people.
Some Seeds Fall on Good Ground
In our outreach ministries we often don’t see the results of our efforts. We don’t know what has happened to the family of six that came to the food closet last month. We don’t always know what pregnant teenagers finally decide. And sometimes we’re tempted to give up because we see the needy taking advantage of the church’s kindness.
It helps me, in such times, to remember the example of our Lord, who gave with no thought of return. I also remember that much of ministry is merely planting seeds. As in Jesus’ parable, some are going to fall on stony ground, and some will grow among weeds, but the sower continues to sow. Every once in a while, we see the seed sprout and grow and bear fruit. And that reminds me that God, indeed, is at work in our congregation.
A man came by the church building one evening just as I was ready to leave. He said he had just gotten out of prison and didn’t have any place to stay, nor any money. He didn’t want to go, as he put it, “knock somebody off” again to get what he needed. So I talked with him about his deepest needs. I told him about Christ, and we prayed together. Then I called a friend at the Union Rescue Mission to get him a room for the night. Finally, I handed him a five dollar bill and told him how to take the bus to the Rescue Mission. He looked at me in amazement and said, “You’re going to see me Sunday morning.”
Well, Sunday morning came and he didn’t show up. The next Sunday he wasn’t there, either. Six weeks went by with no contact from him.
Then one afternoon a knock came on the church door. As I opened it, my eyes fell on a man dressed neatly in a suit, a Tiparillo dangling from his mouth. He was the man I gave the five dollars to six weeks earlier.
“Preacher,” he said, “I’ve gotta talk with you.” He came in, bubbling with excitement. “I want to tell you that Man-Up-There is as good as you said he is.” He told me all about the job he had gotten. Then he said, “Tell me how to open a savings account. I’d like to get a car. And I’d like to get married someday, and …” I smiled as he rattled off his new dreams.
I see him from time to time on the street, and he is still doing well, still dreaming great dreams. Of course, he has a way to go. I’d like to see his faith blossom, for instance. But I remain hopeful. And I continue to cast seeds of the gospel his way when I see him. Who knows when and where God will cause that seed to bear more fruit?
Encouraging Target-Group Outreach
Pastors, particularly in these times of volatile change and complex situations, can help lay a foundation for effective outreach by establishing that, for the most part, methods are “up for grabs” in the church. We will encourage any honorable means to reach people for Christ.
—Frank Tillapaugh
We all want to reach the unchurched with the gospel, but most people who need Christ are not going to walk through the church doors, no matter how widely we open them, no matter how great our Sunday school, no matter how well-planned our worship service. That’s where target groups come in. Target-group outreach enables a church to touch the people who would not otherwise be exposed to the gospel.
A target group is simply people who share a common need or experience on whom the church focuses its outreach. Instead of broadly scattering the gospel to all “people without Christ,” target-group ministry aims its sights on one particular group of people with specific needs. If mass evangelism is like watering a garden with a sprinkler (which may waste some water and may not give each plant the exact amount of water it needs), target-group evangelism is like watering each plant with a hose (which not only saves water but attends to the specific needs of each plant).
Target-group ministry usually springs up when someone recognizes a need no one else is meeting adequately. This happened, for instance, in a church located between territories of the Bloods and Crips, gangs in the Watts area of Los Angeles. At times, as the gangs battled over turf, the neighborhood became a war zone. A 12-year-old girl from the church was the victim of a drive-by shooting. A stray bullet ripped through a window in her home, struck her in the head, and killed her.
In response to this tragedy, her parents moved from grief to action: they started praying with other parents for the protection of their children. Eventually they created a ministry called KOYA—Keep Our Youth Alive. They contacted local police for advice on effectively dealing with gang violence. They began discussing the best ways to improve the safety of their neighborhood. Soon unchurched families troubled by gang violence became involved and were pointed to Christ as these church people addressed their needs.
Then the parents learned that when police officers find gang members, they often discover 8- to 12-year-old “jeopardy kids” tagging along—kids in the pipeline to gang membership. So the parents began working with the Los Angeles Police Department to create a separate group to provide these children alternatives to gang membership—sports, big-brother and big-sister programs, and financial bonuses for staying in school. Out of one experience, then, two target groups were identified.
A group of church people recognized the needs of a special group—some churched, some unchurched—and by dealing with the need, they exposed the unchurched to the faith and works of the church. That is target-group evangelism.
The Targets Are Multiplying
When I came to Bear Valley Baptist Church in 1971, I began talking about target-group evangelism immediately. It took six years simply to develop the mind-set. We didn’t start a target-group ministry until 1977. But then several groups started at almost the same time—ministries to international students, singles, and street people.
Later, other ministries emerged to such target groups as unwed mothers, seniors, alcoholics, and mothers of preschoolers. Today, the number of groups churches are targeting is multiplying.
How do we become aware of the needs? In many cases, the media help us by identifying needy groups: the illiterate, the homeless, victims of abuse, AIDS patients, parents of runaways. In a few years, no doubt, we’ll be ministering to target groups that we’re unaware of today.
The diversity of groups desperately needing God’s grace seem to be expanding exponentially. Are these people reachable in the traditional church structure? In many cases, probably not. If we are going to bring the gospel to these people, we’ll need to find creative approaches. Target-group strategy frees people to do that.
Because of their varied origins, target groups do not have strict parameters in regard to size, scope or focus. They can consist of a few members reaching out to street people, a small group of professionals establishing a health-care clinic in the inner city, or a whole network of members providing day-to-day care and support for unwed mothers.
The methods and means will differ, but we’ve discovered several principles are strategic in making target-group ministry work.
What Pastors Can Do
The pastor’s main role is to develop a conducive atmosphere where target groups can spring up and flourish. Here are four ways I’ve tried to do that.
1. Focus on our freedom to create new ministries. Not only do I preach about the importance of outreach, I show the wide variety of means Christians have used.
I’ve told the congregation, “I find it significant that while the Bible deals extensively with the content of the gospel, it is silent about the techniques and structures of evangelism. We have an absolute and transcendent message, but Scripture seems to leave our methods more open than we sometimes think.”
The early church left us few records of its methodology. We have only a handful of clues about how those first groups worked things out. We know churches had elders and deacons, that apostles were sent out to preach and start churches, and that many were won by the example of Christian love. But we aren’t given “The Biblical Strategy” to reach the world.
Our people have been freed when they realize no policy manual has to be memorized. No one says a target group must meet weekly or that they must take minutes of their meetings or must hold elections. Those decisions are left up to them.
Pastors, particularly in these times of volatile change and complex situations, can help lay a foundation for effective outreach by establishing that, for the most part, methods are “up for grabs” in the church. We will encourage any honorable means to reach people for Christ. At times this will require the wisdom and oversight of the church board, as was the case when our singles ministry wanted to sponsor dances. For our Baptist church, that caused spirited, though healthy, discussion.
But the point is: nearly any method is open for consideration, even if we have to give it a hard look.
2. Give visibility to target groups. Pastors also can point people in the right direction and cheer them on. We can use target groups as positive illustrations in sermons and talk about their importance in informal conversations.
Throughout the year, we highlight every target ministry, giving the group leader three or four minutes during worship to explain the ministry.
We also run a “Did You Know” section in the weekly bulletin to alert our congregation to the needs of various groups. One member, who treats this as her ministry, canvasses all the target ministry leaders on what they would like to include in “Did You Know.” Perhaps the ministry to unwed mothers needs cribs, or the prison ministry is seeking a teacher on Tuesday nights, or the seniors are hosting a special lunch. This helps keep the church informed.
Our annual Celebration Sunday also becomes an opportunity to introduce all target-group ministries to the church. Some provide short slide shows describing their work and mission.
Of course, each target group needs plenty of publicity and is tempted to overuse pulpit opportunities. So we’ve limited the amount of time we spend giving announcements about target groups’ activities. In fact, our target ministries are allowed but one pulpit announcement when they are beginning. Following that kick-off promotion, they can make use of church bulletins, newsletters, or Sunday school time, but they understand we must restrict pulpit access.
At times, we have featured a Ministry of the Month. We briefly mention it during the service and set up a booth or table in the foyer where information and materials are distributed. All this helps get information out, without shortcutting the time allotted to teaching, preaching, and worship.
3. Support target-group leaders. Beyond giving visibility, we also need to provide a support system for target-group leaders. Sustaining these key people is an important function, and making sure those support systems are in place is one of the things a pastor can do. For instance, I recommend at least quarterly meetings for target-group leaders, one of them being an overnight retreat where they can support one another in collegial fashion. In addition, they also can look back over the past year and present their goals and vision for the coming year.
Target-group leaders usually lament their failures rather than recognize their successes. Their reports are often apologetic: “We could do better” and “We could use more help.” The refrain is almost universal. But the rest of the group helps the leaders focus on the good their ministry is doing. And my role, as pastor, is to keep reminding them that they are called first to be faithful. A ministry will ebb and flow, and periods of unusual success usually come only after failure and static times.
Sometimes cross-pollination between target-group leaders solves specific problems. The leaders of our unwed mothers’ ministry, for instance, shared with the group that they were concerned about their ability to offer child care for the new moms who were taking classes. It so happened that our street school had a child-care ministry already in place. They offered the service to the moms, as well. Problem solved.
4. Keep the climate safe and positive. Nothing destroys a healthy atmosphere faster than allowing target groups to use guilt for promotional purposes. We make it clear that no group is more important than another. No one is allowed to place “monkeys” on other people’s backs.
This means that I, as pastor, must be careful not to suggest that people give special allegiance to activities I’m involved in.
It also means that I explain from the pulpit: “If anyone comes up to me and says, ‘Pastor, our church ought to be doing such and such,’ I’m going to say, ‘Obviously the Holy Spirit has given you a special concern about this, and that probably means it’s up to you to do something about it.’ I try to be sensitive to what the Holy Spirit wants me to do, but I can’t possibly change my focus every time someone says, ‘Pastor, you should be responsible for this.’ So don’t feel guilty for not joining every ministry. We’ll be offering you lots of opportunities to serve. Find what God wants you to do, and do it!”
When people understand these ground rules, a weight comes off. It’s like parenthood: most parents feel a little guilty at times because none of us thinks we’ve done a good enough job with our kids. Likewise many church people feel guilty because they aren’t doing “enough.”
As pastor, I want to provide principles that relieve people of inappropriate, undeserved guilt and help them identify where they can contribute joyfully. I want to do more than run successful programs. I also try to create an atmosphere in which people can recognize needs and do something significant to meet them.
5. Provide guidelines for freedom and responsibility. Pastors can also encourage target-group ministry by establishing clear boundaries. When people understand the expectations, they are free to be creative within them. At Bear Valley we have four simple guidelines, which have helped us launch healthy target groups.
• Don’t ask for money. Waiting for funding from the church budget is a leading killer of good target-group ministry ideas. Not only does the ministry die before it’s been born, but so does the enthusiasm and creativity of the people eager to get started. That’s why we aim to penetrate a particular subculture with an effective target ministry without depending on church funds. Why let a tight budget (and what budget isn’t?) prevent ministry from happening?
So, if not the church budget, how do we finance these new ministries? Here’s how one of our target ministries creatively did it.
Ten years ago, some of our women wanted to minister to unwed mothers. The only such ministry they knew involved group homes where unwed mothers lived prior to giving birth. These operations required facilities, full-time staff, and substantial funding. Eventually, they began exploring ways to do this without substantial funding. They decided to invite these women into private homes rather than an institutional setting. The group sought out church couples with strong marriages and an extra bedroom who could handle the housing and support of an unwed mother until the birth of the baby. This not only made financial sense, it gave the unwed mother family care and the couple an opportunity for ministry in their home.
Since the inception of this ministry, we have directly housed or provided support for almost two hundred women. And it has been done with no budget other than the time and resources of a group of caring people.
• Run the ministry in its entirety. When leaders step down, the responsibility to replace them lies with the group. Since our church staff does not attempt to direct the individual groups on a day-to-day basis, the task of recruiting new members is best left to the group itself.
• Stay out of moral trouble. We let our target-group leaders know that they are expected to remain above reproach in their personal lives.
• Stay out of doctrinal trouble. Likewise, our target-group leaders know that their ministries must remain consistent with the biblical and doctrinal stance of the church. If one of our target groups would begin to champion a theological issue that differs from the church’s position, the church leaders would step in.
What a Pastor Doesn’t Do
While a pastor can play an important role in creating a climate conducive to healthy target-group evangelism, there are a couple of things I, as a pastor, definitely do not do.
First, as pastor, I do not assume responsibility for solving difficulties the group faces. No matter how tempted I am to step in and dictate a solution, it’s a better strategy to allow groups to resolve their own problems.
Our ministry to people involved in cults illustrates this point. The cults ministry was started by a strong, aggressive individual who targeted Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons for door-to-door evangelism. He and his team would attend events sponsored by various cults to pass out Christian pamphlets.
When the leader moved away, the rest of the group didn’t know what to do. They asked the pastors to provide leadership. After meeting with them and discovering they wanted more than our moral support, I explained that the pastoral staff couldn’t rescue them.
Some of the team members got angry: “Don’t you care about this ministry?” Yes, we did. But the resolution of their problems rested within the group. As pastors, we honestly didn’t have the time or resources to get involved. And if we did, it would create a dependence, which could loom large in the future. So despite the discomfort, both for the pastors and the group, we placed responsibility back on the group.
For a while the group languished; at times the members doubted they would continue. Eventually, however, one group member discovered that more Baptists enter cults than do members of any other denomination (probably because there are more of us Baptists), and that stirred the group’s imagination. They shifted their strategy from aggressive evangelism to education geared at stopping the flow of Baptists into cults. They enlisted former cult members who had come to know Christ and put together an excellent seminar. They presented it on Sunday evenings and in Sunday schools.
The group went through three phases: aggressive outreach, languishing, and educational ministry. Even though I preferred their initial approach, during their time of rethinking I left the decisions to them. If I’m not playing the game, I don’t call the plays. They needed a strategy based not on my interests, but on the group’s interests. They came out of that period having developed their own solutions and a ministry in which they could invest themselves.
This leads to the second thing pastors are not to do in target-group ministry: insist that groups meet certain standards of effectiveness. We all want to see successful ministries, and our temptation, when we see target-group ministries that are limping along ineffectively, is to step in and upgrade the program or terminate it.
The problem with stepping in, of course, is the expectation you create. And what happens when you have twenty target groups and each wants pastoral leadership? You can’t possibly give each the attention it needs.
The problem with terminating a faltering ministry is that many times success is built on the rubble of numerous failures. Healthy ministries usually have gone through a period of ineffectiveness before they ultimately emerge stronger and more effective. Often we see a ministry struggle and when given breathing room, turn things around with no outside help.
The key to accommodating target-group ministries successfully is to live with “relaxed concern.” I’m not callous; I remain concerned. But if God isn’t initiating a specific work in people’s hearts, I can and should relax.
Common Problems in Target-Group Ministry
Even though I’m sold on the value of target-group outreach, the strategy presents problems. Here are some of the difficulties and the adjustments we’ve made.
1. Church members can be uncomfortable with people “unlike us.” In the late seventies, our church sponsored a recovered homosexual and his wife. We housed them in a home we ran for street people, and they worked in our inner-city ministry of street witnessing. They also spent a few evenings a week in Denver’s gay bars, sharing the gospel, inviting people to the Genesis Center and to our church.
One Sunday I mentioned from the pulpit, “We have another street ministry at the Genesis Center, and one of their targets is Denver’s homosexuals.” After I said it, I could feel the fear ripple through the church: Oh my goodness, these people will be coming to our church!
Fortunately, at Bear Valley our strategy includes multiple congregations. We offer a variety of worship services and times. The people from the street ministry gravitated to the 5:45 P.M. Sunday service, which was less frequented by the typical, mainstream congregation members. Everyone seemed to be comfortable as a result.
But the larger question is how to assimilate people who are different. The problem of assimilation needs to be addressed from the outset of any target ministry. If a ministry is started, we assume those leading the ministry are also concerned with the problem of getting those people plugged into the life of our church. We expect these target-group leaders to develop their own strategies for incorporating people from their ministries into the life of the church.
2. Some target-group ministries are risky. In our litigious society, some target-group ministries bring with them the threat of lawsuits. Because of the possibility of accidents, violence, or emotional opposition, we have organized our riskier ministries under a separate legal umbrella. Bear Valley Ministries, Inc.
If a target-group ministry has a paid staff, if it has its own facilities, or if its activities create greater risk, then we place it under the second corporation. With paid staff, there is a greater chance of being sued than with a purely volunteer program. Our coffee house in downtown Denver fits this category. We have a pastor working in the neighborhood with street people, and we feel it’s wise to have the ministry under a separate board of directors and to have liability insurance to cover all the activities.
We operate our cult ministry under this arrangement, too—even though the staff is unpaid—because it’s a controversial and emotionally charged area. We also placed our wilderness camping ministry. Peak Adventures, under this umbrella because of the risks in backpacking and rock climbing. So far we have not had any problems with lawsuits over slander or personal injury, but we have seen other churches face legal proceedings because of such charges.
In our situation, this is the best solution for potential lawsuits. Naturally, every church will want to confer with its attorneys about its community and state laws to determine the best way to handle this threat locally.
3. Traditional ministries may feel target ministries are competition. Early in our experience with target groups, I made the mistake of pushing too hard to create a mind-set for target groups. For me, it was easy to become enamored with new ministries while taking older, foundational ministries (choir, Sunday schools, nursery) for granted. My sermon illustrations and my casual conversation tended to focus on the target groups. People wondered if I valued the children’s choir as much as the ministry to unwed mothers.
I quickly realized my error. Now I work hard to maintain balance. We try to give our target-group ministries and the more traditional, mainstream ministries equal emphasis from the pulpit and in our publicity.
4. Neglecting part of the gospel. In the past, our people have launched target-group ministries because they longed to save people’s souls. As the ministry develops, however, people become more concerned about meeting physical and emotional needs, and less about the spiritual. As pastor, my goal is to see both elements balanced in a whole-person emphasis.
Consequently, from the pulpit, in Sunday school presentations, at church meetings, through newsletters, and in conversations with ministry leaders, we talk about how we can bring “the whole gospel to the whole person.” We stress that we have good news for every facet of life.
In addition, I regularly ask target-group ministry leaders: “Are you including the whole gospel in your message?” or “Are you addressing the whole person with your ministry?”
The whole-gospel/whole-person concept is not difficult to communicate, but it must be addressed constantly as ministries mature. We cannot afford to lose sight of our evangelical purpose and mission by focusing on meeting physical needs. The message of God is good news for every dimension of life.
Ongoing Results
Target groups are effective. They provide a manageable way for Christians to meet the physical and spiritual needs of a specific group of people. The measure of success is not whether we have two or twenty or two hundred target groups. The question is whether we are offering the gospel to people in a way they can understand and appreciate.
I talked not long ago with some of the people who work with inner-city children in our street school ministry. This program offers kids who have dropped out of school a full-fledged junior high and senior high curriculum; they can earn not just a GED, but a high school diploma. The Marine Corps has been referring some potential recruits, who lack high school credentials, to this program.
Recently, nine students graduated, and three of them were entering the Marines. These students had gotten their diplomas, but some of them also had been introduced to Jesus Christ and prepared to live as Christians in the military.
To me, that’s success: nine kids had a need, we were able to help them meet it, and in the process they were introduced to Jesus. That’s target-group ministry at its best.
Copyright © 1990 by Christianity Today
