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Today we will examine the first of Carey’s signs that your church is ready to reach unchurched people.

Carey Writes:  [the first sign that your church is ready to reach the unchurched is] Your main services engage teenagers: I've talked with many church leaders who want to reach unchurched people who can’t understand why unchurched people don’t like their church. They would be stumped until I asked them one last question: do the teens in your church love your services and want to invite their friends? As soon as I asked that question, the leader’s expression would inevitably change. He or she would look down at the floor and say ‘no’. Here’s what I believe: if teens find your main services (yes, the ones you run on Sunday mornings) boring, irrelevant, and disengaging, so will unchurched people. As a rule, if you can design services that engage teenagers, you've designed a church service that engages unchurched people.

Is he really advocating that we should want our main church service to be so shallow, and superficial that a narcissistic teenager would actually enjoy coming to church?

Maybe, but I think his point is that we should re-think who it is that attends our largest gatherings.

Freshman lectures at college have the largest attendance, as the course work gets more technical, more detailed, more advanced, the class sizes get smaller and smaller.

In the church we tend to do the opposite.  We offer intro level stuff in small groups, and intermediate and advance stuff to our largest audience.

Fixing this does not mean that we water down the message. Scripture is clear that the spiritual menu consists of both milk and solid food. I may prefer a good steak, but I will not deny the nutritional value of milk.

I will deny the nutritional value of Kool-aid. 

But what if the mature crowd were to gather, not because they want a steak, because they have a deep desire to carry out the great commission:  Go into all the world and make disciples.

What if this group of Christians, fully capable of grilling solid food in their own back yards all week long, comes together each week intent on using their combined gifts to reach those who do not yet know Christ.

This group of people would remind you that salvation requires that we deny ourselves and follow Jesus. 

Jesus, whose life they are trying to imitate, gave up the comforts of heaven and took on the nature of a servant, for the sake of an unchurched world. 

Thus, to them, aiming to engage on the level of the teenager no longer seems stupid, shallow or superficial.