Thursday, March 24, 2011

Do We Really Need Another Church Here? Part 1

When you have to drive by churches to get to church, and yet 94% of the population is unchurched some questions come to mind. Is the church experience no longer valid? Does the church experience need to be reinvented? Has church in the traditional sense become a relic of the past? The answer, I believe, to all three questions is no.
Our community has every style of church imaginable. Small churches and large, contemporary and traditional, hip and formal. If you have a personal preference in worship style you can find it here. So the issue isn't relevance. And many churches in this community are as innovative as it gets in reaching out to the community to encourage attendance. So what's the problem and how will starting another church help?
My experience is that our community has thousands of people who simply will not darken the doors of a church under any circumstances. Which is not to say that they are not open to hearing the message of Christ, they just are highly antagonistic to the idea of church. Nor do their feelings about church invalidate the worth, necessity, and joy of traditional worship, they just want no part of it. Community outreach undertaken in order to bring them to church simply won't work.
So what can we do? I believe a little misdirection is in order here. Bring the church to them just don't call it church. I'll pursue this later in more depth

2 comments: