After speaking in Tulsa a few weeks ago about ministering to 20s & 30s I realized that we have a gaping hole in our ministry. Here is the realization – our outreach is still inreach. What I mean by that is this, we have grown a ministry out of retaining and reclaiming people who were already Christian at their core. We have not done a good job at all of converting people from the “none” category to Christian faith. In other words, we really haven’t done outreach very well at all.What we have done well is providing an atmosphere for people to come and connect to discuss and live out our faith together. We started with the people who were already there (at the time a small number) and then slowly started reconnected people back in. The group has grown but not by evangelizing unbelievers to faith. The group has grown by reclaiming and retaining those who were already Christian. There are a few exceptions to that but as a whole that is the situation. That is all well and good and needed. I praise God for that success but it doesn’t reflect the full mission of the church.
How do we go about evangelizing outsiders? The next post is coming right up on moving from being passive to active in our evangelistic efforts. I would love to hear your thoughts.
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I would say this is, largely, true of church planting as well. Church plants have given a healthy place for the already-churched and de-churched to reconnect with Jesus and develop a meaningful faith. But they have largely failed at the task of converting the un-churched.
By beginning at attempting to reclaim the wanderer who has left his first love, we may be starting at the most difficult place. It seems to me that many of those who wander (not all by any means) do so because they are disillusioned with the focus of the congregation as a whole. It is more difficult to bring such people back than to bring someone new into the fold when they emphasis is on Jesus instead of the church.