Sign Post 4

Carey says that the 4th sign that your church is ready to meet unchurched people is that, "4. You’re good with questions." 

HE clarifies by saying  "This one’s still hard for me. I like to think that every question has an answer. I think one of the reasons unchurched people flee churches is they feel shut down when every question they ask has a snappy or even quick answer. They will find answers, but you need to give them time. Embracing the questions of unchurched people is a form of embracing them."

Do you have all the answers?  Most of us don't, but most of us do have answers that satisfies us.  Interestingly enough, our answer may be VERY different from the answer that the Church down the street has.  If we care about theology at all, then we probably picked our church because that's where we found the most satisfying answers t our big questions. I don't know about you, but some of the questions that I have about faith are BIG.

When faced with big questions, it can be tempting to find a satisfying answer, and accept it, rather than to dig into it and think critically about it.

It is one thing to have searched the scriptures and be confident in a biblically based answer to a difficult question.  

It is another thing entirely to say "because God says so" without having a clue where in the Bible it says so, or how the answer is in keeping with the character of God.  

An uninformed Christian, especially who insists they know the answers, can do more harm than good when it comes to reaching the lost.

We are called to make disciples, which means being disciples.  We are told to teach people to obey everything Jesus commanded us. That means we need to know what he commanded... And I highly recommend where he said it, the context in which it was said, and how it is in keeping with the character of God as described in the entirety of scripture. 

Until we are willing to do this, we won't be able to go into all the world and make disciples.

Sign Post 3

Carey’s third sign that your church is ready to reach unchurched people is  Your attenders are prepared to be non-judgmental. 

"Unchurched people," he writes, "Do not come ‘pre-converted’. They will have lifestyle issues that might take years to change (and let’s be honest, don’t you?). Cleaning up your behavior is not a pre-condition for salvation, at least not in Christianity. What God has done for us in Jesus saves us; not what we have done for God. Is your congregation really ready to love unchurched people, not just judge them? One of Jesus’ genius approaches was to love people into life change. If your people can do that, you’re ready to reach unchurched people.”

This doesn't come naturally to me, maybe because of the bubble in which I grew up. (see Sign Post 2)  

Early in my ministry the church I was serving was positioned right next to "Job Corps" a place where people who struggled with conventional education could get job training. The place didn't have a great reputation, because some of the residents had been 'sentenced' to attend Job Corps as an alternative to serving jail time.  

A new Senior Pastor came on board and thought Job Corps would be the perfect place to go to grow our student ministry, much to my chagrin.   

"Culture shock" would be a mild way of describing what happened when you took a group of 12-16 year old church kids and combined them with a group of 16-24 year old people who had never seen the inside of a church.  As a 20 year old who had grown up in a bubble, I was WAY out of my league. Being overwhelmed only fed many of my stereo types of unchurched young adults.

Needless to say that a little more strategic planning might have made for better ministry.  Very few people, shared the pastor's vision for reaching the students at Job Corps.  Even though the bulk of the heavy lifting ministry fell to me, I was one of those who wasn't catching the vision...  But I did learn a great deal about judging a book by it's cover, and about letting people grow before asking them to change.  And in my next church, when the kids with the pink hair and lip piercings came through the door, I was determined to have a different attitude, and we had a very different outcome.

I’ve tried to steer clear of talking about my current church while discussing Carey’s sign posts.  But I have to brag on them just a little. 

One of the first things I noticed upon coming to church was a guy in his 40’s to 50’s with a bright pink curly Mohawk sitting among a see of suits and ties.  Observing him you could tell that he didn't feel a bit out of place, nor was he treated differently.  When a giant, purple haired, biker-looking guy showed up and sat in the front pew week after week, he was embraced and loved, even when he threw up during a service…  The folks at my church may generally look and act a certain way, but they don't judge other books by their covers.

I believe my church also does a good job letting at not expecting people to act like Christians until they actually become Christians, and even after they decide to follow Jesus they are allowed to ‘grow up’ before being expected to ‘clean up’. 

This doesn’t mean that sin is ignored.  It just means that you don’t start pruning before the seed has taken root, and had some time to grow.  

Sign Post 2

Carey's second sign that your church is ready to reach the unchurched is that "People in your church actually know unchurched people."

This one was a blind spot for me for a VERY long time.

Growing up I went to Christian School, and went to church.  My friends all came from one of those 2 places.  Now I work in an office full of Christians and I go to church, and most of my friends come from those places, other than that I am with my wife and kids

It is hard to be evangelistic when you live in a bubble, like I do.

I used to say that it was a matter of calling.  Some are called to plant seeds, and some are called to water them.  I shrugged of any discomfort with the lack of personal evangelism in my life by telling myself that I was called to water seeds.  Practically speaking, this meant that someone else brought them to church and I took it from there...

I compartmentalized the disciple making process.  Saw it less like a result of deep relationships and more like an assembly line.

To be sure we all have different roles to play.  God uses us as a body, and we all have different functions in the body.  A young man from our youth group recently decided to follow Jesus. His journey began when he saw the difference in two young ladies who made that decision a year earlier.  Curious about the changes in their lives, he asked them lots of questions.  When they didn't know the answers, they asked me questions, and shared the answers with him.  Eventually he came to a small group where one of our volunteers talked with him, then he had a conversation with one of the students he met at the small group, and during that conversation, made a decision to follow Jesus.  This is a beautiful picture of the body of Christ.  All kinds of different parts doing their work, resulting in eternal fruit.

A vital part of that process was two young ladies knowing an unchurched person.  They were light, in the world where God had them.  They lived out the scripture that tells us to "live such good lives among the pagans that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father who is in heaven".

We are told that a vital part of evangelism is to live our lives among the pagans.

So what do we do when we realize we are living in a bubble?

Well for me the answer is a wife who really understands this need to know and live among unchurched people.  She is intentional about making sure that we have people in our lives who aren't part of the bubble.  She gets uncomfortable in the bubble that is so natural for me.  Living among the unchurched is one of the big reasons she started working outside the home again. It if wasn't for her, this would have remained a major blind spot in my life.

If you find yourself in a bubble, I don't presume to know what specific steps God wants you to take.  I do know that  if we don't make knowing unchurched people a priority, then aren't really making the great commission a priority.

Sign Post 1

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.