The question I am asked most frequently when I preach is some version of “What can we do to bring new people into our church?” I usually tell them a story…
Early in my ministry a friend organized a workshop on church growth, led by the “Hour of Power” ministry, the Robert Schuller people. That was fine, except that he invited me and I didn’t want to go. All that possibility thinking. I turned him down. But he kept asking and I kept saying, no—until, just as in the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge, it was less trouble to say yes than to keep on refusing. I showed up at the workshop with the worst possible attitude. I positively wanted the event to be terrible so I could enjoy the pleasure of complaining about it.
To my surprise, the workshop was terrific, full of good advice and intelligent strategies for looking at the church and the surrounding community through mission – shaped lenses. I chiefly remember a set of statistics they provided concerning the reasons new people showed up in church. I no longer have the materials from the workshop but I believe my memory is substantially correct. They asked new attenders in churches of varied traditions in 40 American states and seven Canadian provinces why they had decided to come to their church. The answers were fascinating:
Because of mass evangelism: – 0.3%
Congregational outreach: – 3-5%
They liked the minister: – 10-12%
Because someone asked them: – 85%
Someone leaned over the back fence and said, “I’m finding help for my life in my church. Would you like to come with me next Sunday?” (“May I take you?” is more effective than “Why don’t you come?” in my experience.) The greatest evangelist in North America is not Billy Graham or his successors; it’s the person who will lean over the back fence and invite the neighbour.
When I returned to my own congregation, I preached a sermon about all this. I said, “I’ll never ask you to knock on doors. I’ll never ask you to hand out tracts. And I’ll certainly never ask you to stand on the street corner wearing a sandwich board that blares, ‘Repent! The end is near!’ But I will ask you to speak about the Christian faith with people with whom you have other important conversations.”
One person, a man named Andy, took that sermon seriously and in the next six months brought three new families to church.
In more recent studies the exact percentages vary but some version of “someone asked me” is always at the top of the list. I still like using the Schuller statistics, however, and as a guest preacher I remember using that image of “leaning over the back fence” again.
Shaking hands after the service, a young woman said to me: “Funny you should say that about the back fence.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
The young woman turned and pointed to an older woman, the organist, still seated on the organ bench. “Because that woman lives over my back fence and she invited me to this church.”
“Wow!” I responded.
“I told my husband, ‘We’re going to go to the Presbyterian Church.’ ‘Why in God’s name would we want to do that?’ he replied. ‘Because our neighbour goes to that church and I would like to grow to be the kind of woman she is.'”
If our words and our lives are both inviting, just maybe, they will come.
