Church Planting Easter Lessons
I heard on the radio that in the past 20 years, 20% of the people who attended church regularly have stopped and have no interest in coming back. Add to that number the people who don’t attend and we are now in a season where the minority of Americans find themselves on a church campus over a weekend.
As you know, the First Coast Network team is in Nassau County to try and discover a new path forward in reaching our community. We began with Jesus and looked deeply into the New Testament Church in Acts. If you want to see what we learned, just look at our core values as found at www.firstcoastnetwork.org The purpose of this blog is to share what I learned about even modifying elements of past attempts to reach culture at Easter.
(Side note: I know that some of what was done this past weekend had an impact on someones life. My post is not to diminish that. What remains, however, is the undeniable fact that we are not keeping pace with population growth or those leaving our congregations.)
This past Easter we met at Peters Point Park for Easter worship. The type of service was modified. The time was modified. The food was modified. However, at the end of the day we were still a group of Jesus-followers getting together on Easter and no one we invited was able to show up. To be clear - it was not their fault. All of our attempts at changing the Easter gathering did nothing to impact the belief in the mind of the ones entrusted to us by the Holy Spirit that it was still an Easter Sunday gathering.
Let me put a few things in a bulleted list for what I personally discovered among those we are trying to reach…
People are more interested in Jesus than you know.
People are less interested in your church than you want to admit. They are less interested in Easter than you want to admit. Some of my co-workers were annoyed that they had to work harder due to the absence of Christians on Easter Sunday. It soured them to faith in Jesus.
People don’t care about your programs, events or tweaks to what you used to do, when you do those events or what you give them as a gift if they show up. Those work for the churched, not the unchurched.
People start off suspicious of the church organization you are a part of. If you don’t deal with that, they won’t ever attend.
People won’t attend if they don’t first have a relationship with you outside of the location where you already meet - work, front yard, gym, soccer field, etc. They will make as much time for Jesus as you make time for them.
Using our programs and services, even creatively modified ones, won’t reach the majority of the unchurched. This is why we keep loosing ground. Local congregations who want to reach the unchurched need to seriously evaluate what they are willing to do to reach the unchurched.
Contemporary vs. Traditional; Egg hunts or not or when or how big; dressed casual or dressed up; none of it can or should replace the one thing that I am finding matters more than anything else…
Your table & your time
Remember, people are interested in Jesus. People who are passionate about Jesus spending time around a table with those who are interested in Jesus is the way of Jesus and the early church and that didn’t happen in a church building. This happened in homes in the community. Nothing the organized church does on Sunday, even Easter Sunday, will have an impact until those who follow Jesus start spending time / eating with those who do not yet have a growing relationship with Christ.
What is next on the First Coast Network radar? We recognize it takes time to earn the trust of those we are called to serve. We have and will continue to spend time / eat with those God has entrusted to us. We do not have the power to save people. Only God can save so we will love recklessly and without judgement those whose lives are a mess and who need a friend.
So, who are you calling today to set a time to have coffee together or to have over to grill burgers? That simple, repeated action will change someones life. It is what Jesus did (metaphorically) and it is where the good news begins.