Thank you for putting words to what I have believed personally for several years. Really enjoyed the article and the insight.

Good article, Ed. Nevertheless, I'm getting a little tired of the hypocrite argument. It's getting very, very old. Personally, I think it's often a smokescreen and an evasion--people demanding virtues in others that they themselves do not have and will never completely attain in this lifetime. The very doctrine of progressive sanctification implies that there will never be perfection under the steeple. When the church "meets people where they are" and we wind up discipling folks who are "in progress" (like all of us are), you can't then look at their struggles and imperfections and label them hypocrites. And then, heaven help the church that actually takes its biblical responsibilities to discipline the unrepentant seriously, and they'll be labeled cold, harsh, legalistic, etc. We just can't win here. Whatever this magical thing called authenticity happens to be, it seems to be a whole lot easier to demand than deliver.

Good post, Ed. I confess that, when I saw the title, I thought, "uh-oh: this is about to be a train wreck." I was sure that you were going to tell us that we needed to shape our worship, our teaching, and our fellowship around what the unchurched tell us they would come to "see".

But you didn't do that-- instead, you did a good job of making the distinction about evangelistic efforts and missional thinking from much of the rest of the church's life.

And that is right-- because the church cannot, and we dare not, invite the unbelieving unchurched to shape how we worship God. We dare not determine what the content of our teaching will be based on their preferences. We mustn't set the trajectory of our fellowship and community together based on what they tell us is attractive.

Worship, teaching, fellowship-- indeed, most of the life of the local congregation-- is for BELIEVERS, not for unbelievers. There are ways that we can be hospitable to unbelievers without turning aside from our biblical values, and your research offers great insight into that. But we must never become shaped primarily by those who are not (or not yet) ingrafted into the Body of Christ.

Thank you for posting your column...I felt a lot of these things as well and it's nice to see research bears that out.

We are letting the lost tell us how to reach the lost? lol. What are we coming to? The Early Church preached the Gospel. They stood out in their culture. They were counter-cultural. They offered people something different than the world offered. And, they turned the world upside down.

Today, many Churches try so hard to be like the culture, and try so hard to not offend anyone, and try extra hard to please people; that they are nothing more than religious, Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil shows that meet on Sunday mornings.

We need the Holy Spirit to blow a fresh wind across the SBC and across the other Churches in our land. We need fire from Heaven to fall on us afresh and anew. We need to sincerely worship and seek after God, and have a fire in our hearts for the things of God. And then, we wont have to worry about fitting in with the culture, nor instituting programs to reach people, nor study the best ways to get young people to come to Church. When the people of God are excited about the things of God, and have a close relationship with the Lord, then we'll see lost people get hungry and thirsty for the Gospel.

We keep putting band aids on the problem with most Churches, instead of curing what ails us.

David

Great article. At Hope we recently tried to discover what the "needs" are in the community by asking people what questions they had. The amazing thing that we discovered is how little people trust the Church. They don't think that we have any answers and unfortunately they have a right to think that. For too long we were content to stay secluded in this community and simply sing our songs and not bring the light and the salt to a world that was in need. We were okay to put out old "religion" rather than the fresh relationship with Jesus that touches and impacts every aspect of life. I pray that as the Church we will be able to stay connected to Jesus and go where Jesus went-to those that were hurting and broken.

Thanks for validating the words I've been speaking and the desire of my heart to reach the vast numbers of young adults that hunger after a real experience with God and church.

I envision crowds, like those in Nehemiah 8, begging the leaders to read and explain the Bible.

They are ready. We must respond.

NEEDED: Leaders possessing personal and spiritual integrity willing to love and rub shoulders with the common people.

I look at it more as, studying the local culture. As a missionary the first thing we do is learn the language and start understanding the culture....how many people do this in the US? How many of us understand what the unchurched is thinking, how many of us understand how they view faith and the church? We should listen to the unchurched not so we can tailor our message to them but so can effectively connect with them in natural ways.
Grady

We need to listen to the questions they're asking so we know where to start the conversation. If their questions are at point C and the presentation of the claims of Christ with a call to repentance is point X, we have to move them through D, E, F, etc. to W, so we can then take the step to X. We have to be able to turn the talk toward the Gospel over the course of the conversation (or series of conversations). But if we try to jump from point C straight to point X, without showing them how Christ is the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life (of which their present questions are just a tiny part), then we risk losing their attention because they think the answer we are offering doesn't have any relation to their questions.

Great article. We should be sensitive those we serve. When we launched our church plant we were required to shift from all the traditional trappings of "church". We have zero choice in the matter. An important one being when we met. The only space we could secure on a Sunday was in the late afternoon. It forced us to ask a lot of hard questions about how to connect and serve our community.

One day while shopping at the grocery store I got into a conversation with a Catholic lady who had never visited our church. She was shocked at the fact we met only on Sunday night. " It's about time you Christian's figured it out! Most of us work six days a week. Sunday is the only day we have off... we want to sleep in... have breakfast with the kids... catch up on things... lord knows my husband has to watch football... church in the afternoon is awesome idea! Why don't more churches do that?"

It was a wake up call to this church planter. Many times we limit the influence we can make in our community by not listening to those we could be serving. God never said build it & they will come... but GO... and that wasn't a suggestion. Traction happens in lost communities when we listen to the felt needs of people and are willing to adapt our methods on how to serve them. Sometimes we must set aside our personal preferences and preconceived ideas of how things must be and listen to lost crying out for help. Simply put... we need to be BE the church.

Great comment Grady. I agree. I like the question.."Do the beliefs of the unchurched really have value?"

To respect someone's ideas is to honor them. Only then is the possibility of mutual conversation possible.

Allen, you said...To respect someone's ideas is to honor them. Only then is the possibility of mutual conversation possible.

Well said...thats why we spend months using language to investigate what our host culture believes and values. Same thing in the US. It's not about changing to be like them, fashioning our services after them (like our worship bands could ever compete with U2 and Coldplay). It's about understanding where they are so we can actually communicate with them, instead of at them.

You hit the bull’s-eye in the following statement you made: "sometimes people listen too much to the culture....Sometimes people over-contextualize. But, usually the ones who object to listening to the culture and contextualization are, well, the ones who often need to do both." That statement flowed seamlessly with the message in your's and Town's book, "Perimeters of Light."

I appreciate you maintaining your focus!

I believe you are right on target. I have taught College Students at Church for the last few years and what I have found is that they are disgusted with the inconsistencies among "religious" people.

They tire of the adults they see that preach one thing, but live out something entirely different.

Recently, one young girl in the group I teach got pregnant. She was a new believer and a member of the church.

When it came time to have her baby shower, the church leadership told her she could not have the shower at the church facility because she was not married and they were afraid of sending a message that having a baby outside of marriage was o.k.; however, they allowed a church member to have the shower in her home and even promoted the event in the church bullein.

The pregnant college student's response was that she thought the Bible taught forgiveness. She said, "I know what I have done is wrong and I have asked God for forgiveness and I know He has forgiven me." She went onto say that she didn't understand the decision of the leadership, but if they were trying to shun her, she didn't feel shunned by God and that is all that mattered.

Several questions come to my mind as I think about this situation. What is the church? Isn't it God's people? Were we not the church at the church member's home? What did Jesus do with the Samaritian Woman, the woman caught in adultery and Zacchaeus? Wasn't he accused of being a friend of sinners?

He met these folks where they were.
However,He never compromised the call to Holy Living. NEVER! After he offered the woman caught in adultery forgiveness, what did he say, "Go and sin no more!"

The College Students I've been teaching are so tired of the inconsistencies they observe and things like not having a baby shower for an unwed mother at the "church building", but allowing it and advertising it in a church members home are the very things that is keeping them away from "organized religion"

I am not an expert and have not spent a lot of time researching this generation; however, from my observation we are not reaching the younger generation. What we are doing isn't working, so I think listening to what they have to say is extremely important.

The issue isn't so much listening to the unchurch as much as it is an issue of: is the church willing to change to see more people come to Christ. I'm not saying to sacrifice sound, biblical doctrine. Hold on to that with all your might. But a comment was made that churches don't want to "offend" the world as if it were a bad thing. Think about this, how many "worldly" people did Jesus offend? He challanged them, he convicted them. BUt how many walked away angry? Compare that to how many religious leaders walked away from Jesus's teachings steamed about something. My take is this: Too many people are saying that the Gospel is to be an offense to a sinful world, but not enough churches are being offended by the Great Commission.

We SHOULD be listening to the unchurched.

If I'm not mistaken, it's referred to as "adaptation" in terms of purposeful people-groups (i.e., open systems theory--the principles of which God Himself established when He made Eve to accompany Adam) and is one of four main problems which must be dealt with very well daily in order for all purposeful people-groups to see better tomorrows.

If the church were a donut shop instead of a church, we'd be really good at listening because we'd be more afraid of going out of business. As local congregations, we seem to have little fear that we'll close the doors for a final time--but about 3000 congregations in the U.S. fail each year. Either God didn't know it was about to happen or He knowingly let it happen; He let it happen, obviously, as He was 100% committed to doing His part for evangelism of the congregations' cities AND was 100% committed NOT to do the congregations' part for evangelism of their cities. The "Go" part of what the Lord Jesus said as recorded in Matthew 28:19, He apparently really meant that.

Listening means learning the new bait needed for the same hook, for fishers of men. Trying to catch different fish with only one kind of bait probably is insanity.

Thanks Ed. This is very useful and I agree people need to be listened to. I am reading "Lost and Found" at the moment and finding that very helpful. Trying to adjust it to our Australian young people who are more unchurched in that many of them have never been in church. We are setting up a website to invite unchurched people to discuss their issues on faith, religion, church etc. Should be very interesting.