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Outreach

Networking in the Digital Age

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Missionaries to Sweden Visit with 2×2

2×2 has an unusually broad reach for a very small congregation. Our blog has made amazing things happen.

A local reader introduced friends of hers who are missionaries in the far north of Sweden to 2×2. They became regular readers and contributors.

They have been back in the states for a few months and asked to meet us.

The four of us had a lovely afternoon sharing mission stories.

Sweden is a traditionally Lutheran nation that has over the years become somewhat secular. Religion is respected, the churches are open, but large sanctuaries are far from filled.

Sound familiar?

Their mission centers on house churches. Many denominations use this concept in America with success. The church we visited with the largest attendance was a Presbyterian Church in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia. There were well over 200 at worship. We noticed in their bulletin that they had invitations to several house church meetings during the week. Two of them were in our neighborhood!

There is something attractive in the concept. Large gatherings can feel overwhelming. People lose the intimacy so important to faith-nurturing.

Lutherans have never been particularly strong on this idea, stressing the corporate nature of church even as their numbers steadily fail. It might be worth considering.

2×2 has some experience. We met in our homes for the first year and a half after being evicted from our property by the Southeastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. We enjoyed the experience but it was difficultt to have any outreach or influence. We felt isolated from Christian community—which was the whole idea behind locking our doors. In isolation, we were expected to disappear.

We took to the idea of visiting churches with enthusiasm and our Ambassadors enjoy our visits.

So much of Lutheran attention centers on property and there are advantages. A church property is like a large billboard—a visual presence in the community. But if anything good is to happen inside that property, it is up to the people to nurture it—and that often happens best in small community. A dichotomy!

So it was interesting to talk with people who use the house church concept to reach individuals and thereby begin building Christian community.

So far, 2×2 has concentrated on building community with its web presence. That, too, is an interesting experimental mission — uncharted territory, really. We’ll take all the ideas we encounter to see what might be most effective for today’s faithful.

09 May 2013

Understanding Your Congregation

In this series on branding, we’ve talked about the benefits of considering your regional body and denomination in your branding efforts. We are about to discuss branding your congregation for outreach.

But before we do, let’s talk about the benefits of branding your congregation and its mission for your own members.

People join churches for many reasons. Often they are selfish!

  • They want to be comforted.
  • They are looking for peace.
  • They are looking for companionship or like-minded friends.
  • They need help with their marriage or with raising their children.
  • They just want to feel better about themselves and their relationship with God.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these reasons.

Nevertheless, the Bible is pretty clear that more is expected of us. The role of church leaders is to accept people as they are and nurture their faith so that they reach beyond their personal spiritual needs and become a force which helps others find reconciliation with God and His people.

The branding strategies that you create for outreach will help your members bond in mission. It is worth the effort for no other reason.

Branding is about perception and how your members perceive themselves influences their ability to minister.

2×2 has adopted a mission to visit other congregations and learn from them. One small church we visited, clearly a family-sized church, was practicing branding. Every week they stood as one people and recited their mission statement. It had become part of their liturgy and part of the fabric of their corporate life. They didn’t have a flashy logo, grand advertising or signage, but among themselves they knew who they were and what they were about. Their self-confidence showed in their ability to welcome visitors.

Take time to work with your people to understand their expectations. This is not a 30-minute exercise. It’s takes some time to reach below the surface of people’s thinking.

This is a failing of professional church evaluators. They come to a congregation and schedule a meeting or two. They talk with the people who will show up for such a meeting, and may have an axe to grind. This is often not a representative group. The outside evaluator doesn’t know that! Their reports quote the observations of these few people. They often come out looking  selfish to outsiders. If the evaluator had taken the time to get to know the speakers, they might realize there were serious life challenges that justified a selfish outlook.

Outside consultants, especially when they are working for the denomination, not the congregation, do not take the time to do more than scratch the surface of congregational life. It is up to your congregation’s leaders, both professional and lay, to lead your congregation in self-examination.

Only then can you write your mission statement, design a logo, create an evangelism strategy or implement branding for outreach.

10 Oct 2012

Involving the Church or Engaging the Church

A recent blog written for nonprofits addressed the difference between involving supporters or engaging supporters. Read it. It applies to faith communities.

Congregations have levels of involvement.

  1. Attendance at functions.
  2. Attendance at worship.
  3. Involvement in education.
  4. Support with offerings.
  5. Greater support with offerings.
  6. Participation in worship (reading the lessons, taking the offering, communion assistance)
  7. Participation on committees and governing boards.

And then we come to outreach, a most fundamental reason for gathering together in Christian community.

There are levels of involvement here, too. Many congregations never pass levels one and two.

  1. Attendance.
  2. Support with offerings.
  3. Active support to raise money. (Bake sales, car washes)
  4. Support of social service agencies. (Walk-a-thons, Charity runs)
  5. Assisting organized charities or social service agencies in events (helping with a building project for Habitat for Humanity, traveling to disaster areas to help with clean-up)
  6. Active involvement in a cause (running a day school, organizing a food pantry, visiting a prison, cooking and delivering meals to the homebound)

This last level reaches the highest level of commitment—hands on engagement in ministry.

In the Church, we often settle for coins in the coffer when sweat on the brow is better stewardship.

It’s the difference between involving people in ministry and engaging them. It may make the difference in the vibrancy of your congregation.

Think about it! No one talks about their offerings. People talk about the things they actually do! What a great way to tell the story!

How might your congregation engage your members in ministry?

photo credit: Plan for Opportunity via photo pin cc
13 Sep 2012

Transforming Congregations: Changing Attitudes

Discovering Our Target Demographics

Imagine this common scenario.

Your congregational leaders are meeting with representatives from your regional body or with paid consultants. You are part of the “congregational study” process.

Part of congregational studies is to examine demographic data. 

Now, listen for the words that will be used. It will be something like this: “Which group of people should we target.”

Our relationship with our community is defined with predatory language. TARGET.

The most common — almost universal — outcome of this discussion is “Let’s target families.” All churches want families. Our Ambassador visits reveal that few are achieving that goal.

In our mind’s eye, we still see families as Mom, Dad and a bunch of children to populate our Sunday Schools. We see income, we see longevity of relationship. These are the things the Church wants for its own survival. When we think in terms of targets, we reveal our self-interest.

Today, families are in disarray on one hand and inclusive beyond any old-fashioned measure on the other. Families are not a well-defined target!

What church goes through the congregational study and decides to TARGET the elderly, the poor, the immigrants, the homeless, the unemployed, or people with special needs? These are not populations with expendable income. Most are members of families but that’s not exactly what we are thinking when we define our goals.

There are congregations with inclusive ministries worth mentioning. Prince of Peace in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., for example, is developing programming for families who have members with autism and developmental delays. Their ministry did not grow out of the “congregational study.” It stemmed from a teaching/preaching series.

When we start to think of segments of our community as “prey,” we cloud our vision of God’s total Kingdom.

When we narrow the focus of ministry, we become, unconsciously unwelcoming to everyone else.

Redeemer experienced this once some 30 years ago. We asked our regional body for advice on dealing with people who were finding their way to our door from the state psychiatric hospital in our neighborhood. The answer we received was, “That’s not the synod’s emphasis (target) right now.”

Church people see ourselves as welcoming. If we are to be truly welcoming, we must adjust our attitudes and stop approaching our neighborhoods for what they can do for us, but for how we can serve them.

When they walk through our doors, they should not get the “once over” to see if they fit our ministry’s target demographic.

Every person who enters a church has a story. Every church should make some effort to learn something about that story before they leave. Then we will understand the demographics of our neighborhoods!

photo credit: emiliokuffer via photo pin cc

06 Sep 2012

New Year’s Resolutions for the Hospitable Church

As a people, Americans have become suspicious and xenophobic. We live in a world that recommends background checks and fosters credit checks for simplest of reasons. These attitutudes are bound to manifest in church life.

But church life should be different. We should be welcoming the people with spotty backgrounds. Christ died for them! The least we can do is welcome them into His church!

Most churches describe themselves as friendly. Some church web sites describe themselves as “truly friendly.” Many churches post a generic sign “All Welcome.”

Friendliness, however, is a beauty that can only be measured by the eye of the beholder. If visitors to your church leave feeling they were wallflowers, observers of friendliness, it is not hospitality.

Redeemer Ambassadors visited 38 churches in the last 18 months. We have experience as recipients of church hospitality. We think this is an area of church life that needs to be addressed.

Hospitality, once part of the fabric of American life, no longer seems to come naturally. It may have to be taught and nurtured. Even pastors, whom we presume received training in evangelism, seem to be awkward in greeting church visitors.

Some churches have assigned “greeters.” But the gauntlet of greeters characteristically do little more than hand you a bulletin. We suspect that visitors are rare in some congregations and that leads to a bit of rustiness.

In several of the churches we visited, the pastor disappeared after the service and did not greet people at the door. At times the pastor was present in the fellowship area but stood along the wall and waited for people to come to him/her.

While some pastors pointed us to guest books to sign, most never introduced themselves to us or asked our names. After 38 visits, only one pastor followed up with a phone call after our visit. Another returned a call when one of our ambassadors called him.

Some churches seemed to have fellowship going on somewhere else in the building. The congregation disappeared quickly after worship, failing to invite us to join. In many cases, people walked by in the narthex and never made eye contact. In one instance, when we approached them and asked a simple question such as the location of a restroom, they responded, “Oh, we thought you knew someone here” or “We thought you were here for the baptism.” Assumptions block hospitality.

The number of churches/pastors who exhibited true hospitality are so few as to be memorable to us. We suspect that if others were greeted the way we were in these churches that they would return. Here are a few efforts we remember and appreciated as visitors:

  • When a pastor personally invited us to fellowship, accompanied us and introduced us to a few people (one church visit).
  • When a pastor asked if he could meet with us sometime during the week (one church visit).
  • When a member took the time to give us a tour of their church and told us something of their history (three church visits).
  • When a lay member sent us a handwritten thank you note for our visit (one church visit).
  • When a member sat next to us and pointed things out in the bulletin (one church visit).
  • When we left knowing at least one member’s name (a few times).
  • When members of a church offered to help us (more than just pray) and followed through (three church visits).
  • When a member engaged us in extensive conversation that was about us as much as about them (six visits).
  • When congregation members prompted the worship leader to introduce visitors (two visits).
  • When a pastor asked us to join their congregation (one church visit).

Here are four easy resolutions your church can make in 2012 to become a more welcoming, hospitable church:

  • Make sure each visitor knows the name of at least one church member before they leave.
  • Make sure each visitor is addressed by name before they leave.
  • Make sure each visitor receives a direct and specific invitation to a church activity. It can be next week’s worship or some other event. Most people report that they became involved in a congregation because someone invited them! 
  • Contact your visitor within five days of their visit with a phone call or greeting card. Make it as personal as possible.
29 Dec 2011