Sundays are for Football...

The following is an excerpt from Reggie Joiner's book "Zombies Football and the Gospel"

I don't think most churches should simply stop doing what they are doing. 

Twenty-five percent of people are coming.  A lot of churches are doing great work with a host of people.  And a lot of people are happy about it.

We love our churches, and people who love church need churches they love. - All 25% of us.

I am just wondering about the rest of the people... The 75%

Not the people who will show up at church one day, but the people who will NEVER show up.  Either they left or they never came to begin with...

Don't miss this shift.  25% of people will be in church this Sunday - the rest think Sundays are for football.

What if you stopped counting the people who come to your church every Sunday and started counting the people in your community who don't?

Don't count those who attend, count those who are absent.

What were we going to do about them?  We are great at doing church for people who already go to church and even for those who will go one day.  But what can we do to connect with the people who will never go?

They think Sunday is for football.
or they are among the 15% who check "none" for religious preference (it is up from 8% in 1990)
or they are among the 35% who have to work or travel on Sundays.
The 75% who will never have the desire to walk into a building on a bright Sunday morning to listen to a band, or a choir, or a sermon.

Jesus said to leave the 99% to go find the one, maybe we can stop thinking about the 25 long enough to brainstorm ideas to reach the 75%.

Have we forgotten how to be missionaries in our own communities?

Every Sunday, we pass people who will never go to church with us or with anybody else.

Is our primary goal to get them to come to a building from nine to noon on a Sunday?  Is there only invitation to the Gospel going to happen because we ask them to stand up in front of a room full of strangers?

What if church, the way we have defined it, will never work for them?  It may work for 25 out of 100, but what about the rest? As far as they are concerned, Sundays are for football...