By C. Thomas Wright
How do churches reach the unchurched in their community?
Michael Lindsay, a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow in the department of sociology at Princeton University in New Jersey, said it all starts with understanding the unchurched.
He pointed to a recent Gallup Poll that found 44 percent of U.S. residents are unchurched. Someone is classified as “unchurched” if he or she is not a member of a local faith community or has not gone to church in the last six months outside of special occasions like funerals and weddings, Lindsay said.
“It is interesting that only 9 percent of people in the United States have no faith tradition at all. But these secularists are hard core and their influence is growing,” he said. It is important that church leaders understand the top three concerns of those who do not attend church, Lindsay said.
Fifty-nine percent said “organized religion is too concerned with organizational concerns,” while 39 percent said “churches are not concerned enough with social justice causes.”
“The unchurched think we focus on the wrong things,” Lindsay said. “They think we look inside more than we look outside the church. The best public relations we have had in the northeastern United States has been the response of Southern Baptists to the Sept. 11 attacks. The people saw us giving and caring with expectation for nothing in return.”
Pastor Benny Still and the congregation of First Baptist Church, Grand Bay, in Mobile Baptist Association have been actively involved in disaster relief ministry since Hurricane Katrina devastated many parts of the Gulf Coast. Still has seen the unchurched respond to churches that “have shown people we care about their physical and spiritual needs.”
The third concern voiced by 28 percent of the respondents was that the morality being preached by churches is “too restrictive.”
An important observation is that 90 percent of those who came back to church were invited by someone in person, Lindsay said. Seventy-nine percent were invited more than once. Women are more likely to return than men, and married couples are considerably more likely to return than singles. Blacks are much more likely to respond favorably than whites or Hispanics.
Lindsay said Christians could reduce the unchurched population by 25 percent just by developing an active plan to personally invite people to attend church, he said.
“Personal relationships are more effective than mail outs or phone calls,” Lindsay said.
Twenty-five percent of the unchurched said they “found other interests which led to less time for church-related activities.” And 16 percent said the “church no longer helped me find meaning and purpose for my life.” This reveals a weakness in applying the truth of the gospel, not a weakness in the gospel message, Lindsay said.
The age most stop attending church is between 16 and 24, he said, noting that churches need to help youth see the importance of remaining involved. It also shows the importance of effective church programs and outreach to young adults. Only 25 percent of that group started attending church again at a later time.
Brantley Bonds, Baptist campus minister at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, said churches can reverse this trend by involving students in community and missions. “Community entails getting to really know one another,” he said. “Churches that form meaningful relationships with this age group and show them Jesus’ love will earn their trust and respect.
“Get them involved in something bigger than themselves (missions) and they will stay involved,” he added.
Surprisingly, 17 percent of the unchurched left after they turned 50, Lindsay said. The research indicated, however, that those over 50 would respond favorably to being invited to return to church and trained for places of responsibility.
He said churches “need to reach people at ‘hinge moments’ in life,” such as a “change in family structure, recent college graduation, nearlyweds and newlyweds and families with young children.”
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