Based on extensive polling of our target audience (I asked my daughter) and market research (I googled it), we are adopting a new evangelistic strategy. Effectively immediately, everyone should sell their practical vehicles and replace them with custom conversion vans - modeled below.
This should really help us reach out.
Down the street from my house, they are building a Lowe’s. This would not be a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that we already have a Loew’s. We also have two Home Depots, three Wal-marts, two Targets, three Hannaford’s supermarkets and at least fifty Dunkin’ Donuts. (I’m not kidding either).
Why do I care about another Lowe’s? Because we already have one. Why, I asked myself, do we need yet another home goods store? Don’t we have enough? Won’t people just drive to the other one? That got me thinking about churches, and that (as they say) is a dangerous thing.
We live in the middle of a triangle that contains most of the people in New Hampshire. If you look at a map of New Hampshire and find the towns of Nashua and Salem (both are on the Massachusetts border) and then locate Concord north of both, you can draw the triangle I am speaking of. That tiny bit of the state is where almost all the population can be found. The population of the entire state is only 1.3 million, and 515,988 of them live inside that triangle. (That’s 40% for your math geniuses.)
An interesting phenomenon has occurred in the last thirty years or so which has facilitated the growth of the megachurches that now dot the North American landscape. The suburbanization of the large cities in the nation and the development of a commuter mentality have been part of the development of the megachurch but not the only contributors. The Hartford Institute for Religious Research has compiled a list of over 1,300 Protestant churches with an average weekly attendance around or greater than 2,000 people. By size, the top ten are:
Included in the list are Grace Community Church (John Macarthur, 7,500) and the Campus Church of Pensacola Christian College (5,500) as well as Mars Hill Church in Seattle Washington (now about 7,500).
If you take the time to peruse the websites of these churches, you discover that they are mostly located in the suburbs of these large cities like Houston and Chicago. Some are between two larger metropolitan areas (like Saddleback Church), but few are inside cities.
Beyond that, most have a membership that is spread out over a large geographic area. People generally live within a circumference of twenty to forty miles. Since megachurch buildings are generally located within easy highway access and with adequate parking, people are willing to travel – even those who might be attending for the first time.
When you look at smaller local churches, you would assume that the geographic dispersal would be much smaller, but such is not the case.
Our church, composed of approximately 50 people, is spread out over a seemingly enormous space.
What does this mean? It means that the average family in our church will drive 12.73 miles one way to our worship gatherings on Sundays. The reality is that when I checked the traveling times using Google Earth, I found that only four families lived within a reasonable walking distance (less than 3 miles).
Now, this is all fine and good for people who are already Christians and are interested in church. They come to our church because of doctrine or music or preaching or even programs, but they have a bias toward this. They will travel a greater distance than an unchurched person would ever think of traveling.
In fact, established Christians will tolerate a great deal when it comes to a church. They don’t mind poor parking conditions or an uncleaned auditorium. They don’t care what color walls are (unless the color is being debated in a business meeting). But what would people who do not know Jesus think? They might travel twenty miles to visit a megachurch worship service (to the right), but what would motivate them to join a group of 50 who meet twenty miles away?
Whether we have good doctrine or not matters, but if our church is not accessible to people who need to hear the message of Jesus, then it is useless.
So the challenge before us is simple. How does the local church think regionally? How should we adapt to this phenomenon to continue to make an impact for the kingdom?
The article is Ed’s, but the new word is mine.
PREACH + PLAGIARISM = PREACHIARGISM
It is an epidemic in my opinion. There are a lot of pastors who are so busy doing everything except studying God’s Word that they rely on others’ messages.
There’s nothing wrong with vision casting or leadership or management or going to conferences, but the Apostle Paul said:
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, [Ephesians 4:11-13, ESV]
And when confronted with all the other things they could have been doing, the apostles told the church:
And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” [Acts 6:2-4, ESV]
This tells me that there is something wrong if a pastor/teacher/minister is more focused on any other aspect of “church” that he has to short change preaching. We all rely on each other as resources, and certainly we can borrow from one another from time to time, but I think we do a great injustice when we borrow wholesale from others because we don’t “have the time” to do the necessary preparation to preach.