Is Your Church Ready to Reach Unchurched People?

I recently read a blog post by Carey Nieuwhof entitled "9 Signs Your Church is Ready to Reach Unchurched People".  I found the article thought provoking, and I'd love to dialog about what Carey wrote.  My plan is to re-post one of his 'signs' each day for the next 9 days, so that we can talk about them one at a time.  I'll give my thoughts; I am hoping that you'll post your own.

So let's start with the introduction:

Carey writes:  Almost every church I know says they want to reach unchurched people.  But few are actually doing it.  Part of the problem stems from the fact that many churches don’t really understand unchurched people (here’s a post on 15 characteristics of today’s unchurched person).

And part of the problem is that our model of church is designed to reach and helped churched people, not unchurched people. Churches haven’t embraced change deeply enough.

So you can say you want to reach people all day long. You can teach about it every week. But if you haven’t designed your church around ministering to people who don’t go to church, you might as well be preaching that you want to lose weight while eating a triple cheeseburger.

Your model simply doesn’t match your mission.

So how do you know that your church is actually ready to reach unchurched people?

Carey challenges us to make sure that our model matches our mission. Before we can do that we have to know what our mission is. 

I think the popular word for this is "alignment". If the people or more importantly the leadership of a church is out of alignment (ie they don't agree on their mission) then they will never be able to agree on a model.

Carey writes that it is a "problem" that "our model of church is designed to reach and help churched people not unchurched people" 

But is that really a problem? 

Certainly our mission "as the church" should be to reach those who do not yet believe, but when we come together "for church" is it wrong to focus on helping the people who are actually attending?

I think it comes back to the question of alignment.  Are the members of the church united around one purpose for coming together "for church".

I've heard the following ideas on the mission of the church:

• "The church is a hospital for sick people."
• TRANSLATION: The church is where you bring people who need to hear the gospel, and need to be loved.
• "The church is where the sheep eat."
• TRANSLATION: Christians meet at church to get equipped to go out and reach the world around them.
• "The church should be all things to all people so that by all possible means we might save some." 
• TRANSLATION: We do a little bit of everything so we have something for everyone, because everyone belongs in the body of Christ.
• "The church is the body of Christ."
• TRANSLATION: Our mission is to be as united and as Biblical as possible.
• "The church is the hands and feet of Jesus."
• TRANSLATION: We specialize in meeting the physical needs of the world around us.

Carey's blog presupposes that we have at our core a desire to reach "unchurched".  And I would champion the argument that you cannot know the God of the Bible, and live a life that disregards those that do not know Him.

But what does it mean to reach them? 

Do we want to take "unchurched people" and make "churched people" or do we want to make "disciples"?

 

Do our churches have a definition of what a disciple looks like?

Are we disciples?  

Do we need God to do something in us before he can do something through us? Or if we unite around a mission of disciple-making, will we find ourselves progressing as disciples? 

What is the purpose of dozens, or hundreds or thousands of us meeting together? 

Should our gatherings be focused on what happens outside the walls of the church, or should what happens outside the walls of the church be focused on what happens in our gatherings?

Should these questions be posed in an "either/or" way or a "both/and" way?

These are the questions I’m hoping you’ll walk through with me.