50 Ways to Take Church to the Community

The Lewis Center is an agency of the Tennessee Conference. Here are its 50 Ways to Take Church to the Community. Herte is the link to download the PDF version.

Here is the text pasted:

Churches can no longer open their doors and expect that people will come in. Effective congregations go into the world to encounter those in need of the gospel. These 50 Ways provide tips on reaching beyond the walls of your church with worship, community events, ministries, and service.

Embrace an expansive concept of community

1. Learn to regard your community as an extension of your congregation. A church’s mission field goes beyond its membership to include all the people God calls it to serve. You are connected to individuals who never set foot in your building.
2. Know that what’s happening within the church — preaching, worship, music, Bible study — is no longer enough to attract people in an age when church attendance is no longer a cultural expectation.
3. Don’t sit in your church building waiting for people to come. Be prepared to meet people where they are.

Prepare spiritually

4. Acknowledge the synergy between the Great Commandment in Matthew 22 (love your neighbor as yourself) and the Great Commission in Matthew 28 (go and make disciples). Evangelistic outreach expresses our love of others.
5. Remember that Jesus primarily engaged people through everyday encounters, rather than in the Temple or synagogues. He fed people, met their everyday needs, and enjoyed the fellowship of others.
6. Express love and compassion for your community in big and small ways. Avoid judgmentalism.
7. Pray regularly for your neighbors and lift up community concerns.
8. Attend to the faith formation of existing members. Willingness to share faith and reach out to others develops as one grows in faith and discipleship.
9. Prepare spiritually for the transformation that creative, risk-taking outreach will bring.

Get to know the community surrounding your church

10. Review demographic data from public, private, and denominational sources, but don’t assume that statistics alone will tell the whole story.
11. Get out in your neighborhood. Walk the streets. Map the area, and record your observations. Note how the community is changing.
12. Assess community needs and assets. What are the needs of your context? Who are your neighbors, and how can you serve them?
13. Be attuned to where God is already at work in your community.

Listen and learn

14. Know that ministries that truly bless a community often arise out of conversations where you listen for the hopes and dreams of people in your community.
15. Interview residents of the community. Sit in a park, diner, or coffee house. Ask simply, “What are your challenges, hopes, longings and dreams?”
16. Get to know the major public officials. They are people with tremendous influence. They need to know of your church’s commitment to the community.
17. Involve many people from your church in this work. Hold one another accountable to the tasks of engaging and learning from others.
18. Discern clusters of issues and concerns that arise from these conversations. Ask what issues, suffering, injustices, or brokenness might you address.

Build authentic relationships

19. Strive for meaningful engagement with others, not superficial gestures.
20. Make sure you are reaching out to people for the right reasons. If your motive is simply to get them to come to church, people will see right through to it.
21. Maintain appropriate boundaries, and respect all with whom you engage.
22. Collaborate with others who are also passionate about the community. Don’t reinvent the wheel if you can partner with someone else serving the community.

Turn your existing ministries outward

23. Challenge each church group with an inside focus to find a way to become involved with the community outside the church. A choir might sing at a nursing home, or trustees could sponsor a neighborhood clean-up.
24. Extend recruiting and advertising for church groups and events to audiences beyond your congregation. For example, recruit for choir members in a local paper or community list serve.
25. Build relationships with those taking part in existing programs that serve the community, such as ESL classes, food pantry or clothes bank users, daycare families, etc.

Reach out through community events

26. Plan “bridge events” designed explicitly to draw people from the community by providing for them something they need or enjoy — block parties, free concerts, seasonal events, parenting classes, sports camps, or school supply giveaways, etc. Source: Get Their Name by Bob Farr, Doug Anderson, and Kay Kotan (Abingdon Press, 2013)
27. Hold these events off church property or outside the church walls in venues where people feel comfortable and naturally congregate.
28. Get the word out through a well-planned publicity campaign.
29. Encourage church members to invite their friends and neighbors. It is less threatening for them to invite someone to a community event than to worship.
30. Avoid explicitly religious themes: no preaching, prayers, pressure, or financial appeals that might turn people off or reinforce negative stereotypes about church.
31. Remember, the event itself is not the purpose. The purpose is to meet people where they are and build relationships. Mingle. Get to know people.
32. Have a well-trained hospitality team. Make sure guests are enjoying themselves and know their attendance is appreciated.
33. Gathering people’s names and information about them will permit follow up to those for whom it is appropriate.
34. Invite those who attend community events to another event — sometimes called a “hand off event” — planned to draw them into a deeper relationship.

Extend your congregation’s spiritual presence beyond church walls

35. Recognize that many “unchurched” people are spiritually inclined but apprehensive about attending church because they feel unwelcome, distrust institutions, or have been hurt in the past.
36. Pay attention to the heightened receptiveness to spiritual engagement around religious holidays such as Easter and Christmas.
37. Offer offsite worship services on special days, such as Christmas Eve, Palm Sunday, and Easter. Select familiar venues where people feel comfortable — parks, restaurants, parking lots, coffee houses.
38. Offer imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday in public places.
39. Partner with other institutions (such as nursing homes, hospitals, or prisons) or commercial establishments (restaurants, bars, shopping centers, or sports facilities) to offer worship services to their constituents or clientele on special days.
40. Plan creative outdoor events, such as live nativities or “blessing of the animals” services, to help make your church visibly present to the community in creative ways.
41. Hold your Vacation Bible School in a local park or recreation center. Canvas nearby neighborhoods to invite families.
42. Reach out to local media. Community outreach is often newsworthy, and reporters are often looking for religiously themed stories around the holidays.

Connect spiritual outreach to community service

43. Acknowledge that many served through feeding and clothing ministries, justice ministries, weekday children’s services, and other ministries of community service have no other connections with our churches.
44. Ask if these ministries inadvertently convey an “us and them” attitude or communicate that “you are not worthy of joining us.”
45. Identify aspects of church life, such as characteristics of the building or how people dress, that may make some feel unwelcome. Are there alternatives that may reduce barriers for some to enter?
46. Treat everyone as a person of dignity who deserves respect.
47. Extend genuine hospitality to those you serve.
48. Focus first on building relationships of understanding and trust.
49. Consider adding a spiritual or discipleship element to community service activities but without any sense of expectation or requirement. For example, have a service or study following ESL classes for any interested.
50. Seek to conduct each activity in a way that connects people to God and the church.

Contributors: Robert Crossman, Ann A. Michel, Kim Mitchel, and Lovett H. Weems, Jr.

What draws people to church services?

A Gallup survey reported just two years ago:

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Three in four worshippers say sermons a major factor in why they go

• Youth programs, outreach and volunteer opportunities also important

• Preferring to worship solo is main reason non-attenders eschew services

Belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque provides people with important social benefits that Gallup research shows improve personal well-being. While social benefits are clearly important to majorities of those who worship regularly, what most motivates them to attend is learning more about the tenets of their faith, as well as connecting that faith to their lives. Protestants, who have more control over their church leadership and flexibility in where they worship, place even greater emphasis on the quality of sermons than do Catholics, although both groups rate sermons highly.

Fulfilling these expectations could be critical in order for religious organizations to survive. But to expand their ranks, reigniting the interest of lapsed members should be a priority. Converting those who say they aren't very religious or who don't like organized religion may be futile. But churches and others may find some success with the message that worshipping in communion with others has benefits that can't be achieved worshipping alone -- addressing the No. 1 reason non-attendees give for not attending.

Much more at the link.

There is growing realization today that "attractional" church worship is not working in drawing people wither to long-term attendance or to personal commitment to Christ. "Worshiptainment," as we call it, is a failure in leading people to discipleship.

Commentator Jonathan Miltimore writes,

The poll made me wonder: When and why did music became such a prominent part of evangelical services? And are these churches missing out by focusing on music at the expense of other aspects of church life?

I suspect the former question might be linked to the increasing need for people in our culture to be entertained.

“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other," Neil Postman famously wrote in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death. "They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images.”

I’m not suggesting churches need to stop playing music. I’m merely wondering if dedicating nearly half of a church service to musical performances is the most efficient use of time.

One wonders if people in pews would not receive more spiritual nourishment from other church-led activities: An extended reading of scripture? Silent prayer? A longer sermon?

The Gallup survey corresponds to other research I have seen that reports that the fabled and much-derided Millennials are drawn to traditional or orthodox services far more than "contemporary" or attractional services.

I think the real bottom line is this: What are people finding, experiencing, and learning in a church that they cannot find in secular culture?

Pew Research has a lot more, "Why Americans Go (and Don’t Go) to Religious Services."

More Gallup commentary of these trends, "Church Leaders and Declining Religious Service Attendance."

The only cure for "Great Politics"

Peter Hitchens is the brother of the late Christopher Hitchens, one of the founders of the New Atheist movement whose book, God is Not Great, remains high atop the must-read list for atheists today. I myself read his non-religious works and columns eagerly and found them enlightening. C. Hitchens was indisputably a very smart man, engaging and witty.

Like Christopher, his younger brother b y two years, Peter, became an atheist. But he did not remain there. Years into adulthood, he came to confess Christ, published a rebuttal to God is Not Great and even publicly debated his brother a few times.

Here is his story:
How I found God and peace with my atheist brother: PETER HITCHENS traces his journey back to Christianity | Daily Mail Online

Being Christian is one thing. Fighting for a cause is another, and much easier to acknowledge – for in recent times it has grown clear that the Christian religion is threatened with a dangerous defeat by secular forces which have never been so confident.

Why is there such a fury against religion now? Because religion is the one reliable force that stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak. The one reliable force that forms the foundation of the concept of the rule of law.

The one reliable force that restrains the hand of the man of power. In an age of power worship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power.

He is right. As militant atheist Friedrich Nietzsche said, once God is dead, humanity will be in the service of Great Politics, which even Nietzsche knew would not be an improvement.

The point, rather, is that Nietzsche saw. However much he (usually) advocated what ought to be most abhorred, he at least recognized that true morality and Christian belief are siblings. Moreover, in tones redolent of Jeremiah he saw the consequences to civilization as a whole when its citizens lose their faith in God. For what will take the place of God will be only a passionate—and largely empty—politics:

For when truth enters the lists against the lies of millennia, we shall have convulsions, a spasm of earthquakes . . . the likes of which have never been dreamed. Then the concept of politics will be completely dissolved in a war between spirits, all authority structures of the old order will be blown into the air—one and all, they rest upon a lie; there will be wars the likes of which have never existed on earth. From my time forward earth will see Great Politics.

Such are the contradictions of atheism. With hope in progress gone, with the lessons of the twentieth century still unlearned in the twenty-first, with technology progressing, in Adorno’s words, from the slingshot to the atom bomb (a remark cited in Spe Salvi), with a resurgence of religiously motivated violence filling the headlines, all that the new atheists can manage is to hearken back to an Enlightenment-based critique of religion. But they find their way blocked, not so much by Nietzsche (whom, as we saw, they largely ignore) but by the ineluctable realities he so ruthlessly exposed. Not Nietzsche, but the history of the twentieth century has shown that godless culture is incapable of making men happier. All Nietzsche did was to point out that no civilization, however “progressive,” can dispel the terrifying character of nature; and once progress is called into question, the human condition appears in all its forsaken nakedness.

We are almost there, folks. This is why evangelism is the only critical task of the Church today.

We have to avoid the natural tendency to do withdraw into ecclesial shells, and rely instead on the supernatural authority and inspiration of God to go into the world and make disciples of Jesus Christ.

Mission focus

Here is the focus of the Conference for the coming year. Good areas, and I especially appreciate that it all fist on a single sheet of paper.

Deliberate witnessing planning

Below is a scanned PDF of the handout used at the evangelism training at Brentwood UMC on Jan. 18, 2014, sponsored by Bishop Bill McAllily. The presenter, as indicated, was Dr. Derrick Lewis-Noble. 

When I receive the Word format document of this handout, I will post it, too, or post a link to download it. You should be able to save the PDF below by using the "download" link in the bottom bar or by following the link below to the Scribd page. 

Long Handout Evangelism Training Jan 18 2014

Four stages of inviting

Most people go through four stages of inviting people to church, I think. Here are 4,000 words worth of visuals.

Stage 1: Church members who figure that everyone in town knows where the church is and can come if they want to. It's sort of like Yogi Berra said about declining attendance at ball games, "If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?"

Stage 2: Members become willing to invite, but don't want the existing nature of the congregation to change. So they invite only people with whom they are already comfortable - people they already know and who are are similar to them in education, income, lifestyle and age.

Stage 3: Members who realize that similarity with people they invite is much less important than whether the other persons are connected with a church already. These are members who want to be "fishers of people" but are not very interested in fishing in aquariums, or fishing for members of other churches. They know that unchurched people are whom Jesus said to take the Gospel.

Stage 4: At this stage, church members enthusiastically offer Christ with anyone whom the opportunity presents. If the others turn out to already be connected, that's great, and if not, they are invited.

Are we ready to reach unchurched people?

As we start considering what planning we need to do for our future, one thing we will need to face fully an a real, instrospective questions. One of them is, "Are we, as a congregation (including the pastor!) really ready to reach out to unchurched people and receive them into our wider church life?"

A definition is called for. People who write about evangelism generally refer to "unchurched" people as those who are not part of a Christian fellowship and never really were except perhaps very temporarily. As for people who were longer-term participants in a church but who do not presently attend, I have usually seen them referred to as dischurched. These are awkward constructions, of course, and places labels on people that they may not agree with or like. Nonetheless, I think the distinction is important.

Here are three articles that are relevant to this topic:

15 characteristics of today's unchurched person

How to reach unchurched people who think they don't need God.

9 signs your church is ready to reach unchurched people

Just takes a little effort!

Persistence:

 

Truth and Christian Faith

This is a slightly abbreviated version of my sermon yesterday. It is the first of a series on why and how Christian faith is founded on facts, not myth.

Christianity rests on a single claim. I call it the fulcrum of our faith. All of Christian faith is founded on the Easter proclamation, “He is risen!” Absent that, we got nuthin’.

And nothing is frankly what increasing numbers of Americans think we've got. On Good Friday, the respected polling firm Rasmussen Reports released a poll that showed that the number of Americans who believe that Jesus rose from the dead has dropped 13 percent since only last year. The poll question was the same this year as last, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead?” Last year, 77 percent said yes. This year, 64 percent said yes. Over the last five years, the drop has been steepest among teens and young adults. In fact, one-third of adults under 30 claim no religious affiliation at all (see "Growing Up 'None' ").

Of the 36 percent who did not affirm Jesus’s resurrection, 19 percent rejected it outright, a staggering 12 percentage point jump from last year. Seventeen percent said they weren't sure.

First Peter 3.15 tells us, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” Seems like we who know Jesus arose are not doing that very well.

And so my reasons for this sermon series. Christian faith is founded on historical facts, verifiable facts, facts that even non-Christian historians and scholars agree are true. And yet my guess is that only a very small number of typical mainline Protestant church members, including us Methodists, would be able effectively to recount and relate those facts and what they mean in a way that would at least move some of the 19 percent who deny Jesus’s resurrection to the group who at least admits the possibility.

I will be frank – what I seek to inculcate in my flock is greater conviction of the truth of the Christian proclamation that “Christ is risen, he is risen indeed.” Conviction is not mere agreement to a proposition. Conviction is a belief held so powerfully that it transforms the way we live. As Wesley explained, if we say we believe something but it makes no difference in the way we spend our time or our money, then it is belief without conviction. Conviction changes us.

Here is how I plan to proceed:

• I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that while interrogating Jesus on Good Friday, Pontius Pilate asked him what I think is probably the second-most-important question is the Bible: “What is truth?” This question strikes to the heart of the American church and that is what I will address today.
• Next Sunday I will talk about the Easter story itself and why it is solidly historical.
• On April 21 I will then do my best to recount the various alternative explanations that have been offered over the last couple of centuries claiming to show why the Easter proclamation is actually false, even if the apostles thought it was true.
• On April 28 my topic will be what the apostles meant by resurrection in the first place and what it has to do with us. On May 5 I’ll try to wrap everything up.

Now on to Pilate’s question. What, indeed, is truth?

Truth bears authority, so debates about what is true necessarily are also about what has authority. Here are some expressions we have all used in the contests over truth and authority:

•  “Nobody has the right to tell me . . .” (fill in the blank),

•  “The rule book says that . . .”

•  “I saw on TV . . .”

•  “Research has shown that . . .”

•  “The Bible says . . .”

•  “I read on the internet . . .”

•  “My feelings are . . .”

All these statements are claims of truth and authority. Christianity has a set of claims, too – many claims. There is at least one claim that is extremely offensive. We don’t like being offensive, especially in this sensitive era. The greatest social sin you can commit today is to offend someone’s nationality, ethnicity, educational background, political affiliation, what have you. We are nice people and we want others to think so. So in our commendable urge not to offend anyone we risk watering down the Gospel because we won’t embrace the offensiveness inherent in the Christian proclamation.

Frederica Mathewes-Green, a Christian writer, related that she was invited to appear on a panel in a secular setting to discuss spiritual nurturing in everyday life. She told the assembly that if you were raised in a Christian tradition, then explore it more and learn more about it. It will enrich your life. If you were raised in some other religious tradition, she said, explore and learn about Christianity anyway. Christianity is for everyone and its welcome transcends all earthly boundaries. After she finished, the panel’s moderator looked at her like a naughty kindergartner and told the group, “What Frederica meant to say was that there are many spiritual paths and all should be honored in the spirit of multiculturalism.”

“Wow!” she thought. “I had no idea that was what I was trying to say!”

This incident, she said, illustrates the most offensive part about Christianity. We make exclusive claims. We affirm some things and reject others. For example, we don’t say that whatever you believe is okay, as long as you are sincere. Sincerity does not equal truth. can easily be sincerely wrong. 

The offensive part of Christianity is not that we proclaim Jesus as our Lord, but that we proclaim Jesus is everyone’s Lord. Hindu, New Age, Jewish, Mormon, Moslem, Catholic or Protestant, capitalist or socialist, Asian or African or European, Indian or aborigine, atheist or pagan—it matters not what you think about Christ or whether you even acknowledge Jesus. Jesus is still your Lord and your eternity is in his hands whether you like it or not. (See, "Almost All Religions Are Exclusive.") 

So we try to avoid offense by saying that Christian living will make you a better person, or will give you peace or joy or any other side effect of Christian conviction. These may be true but they are also entirely uncompelling to non-Christians. The real message is simply that Christ preserves us for eternal life with God. We do not follow Christ just to be better or happier people, but to belong to God forever and lead others to belong also.

Nowadays religion is out, but spirituality is in. The difference seems to be that spirituality is highly individual and doesn't take commitment. So people claim they are seeking spiritual development but have no use for religion.

“That’s nice,” we reply. “You’re just seeking truth in your own way.” We sure aren’t going to offend anyone by telling them that if for this life only they are “spiritual,” they are of all people most to be pitied. That’s so intolerant and narrow minded!

Now listen. You can be as spiritual as they come without Jesus. You can be so cosmically conscious that the Dalai Lama looks a reprobate next to you. Spirituality is actually pretty easy. Just get a mantra and affirm yourself. But you won’t be any closer to eternal life with God than before.

Jesus said that if you know him, you know God. More than that, to know God you have to know Jesus. So when we try to proclaim the Gospel, we’re sort of stuck. We have a message that can be inherently offensive, Jesus declaring that he is truth in the flesh and that to get to God you have to go through him. We proclaim this message to a generation of folks who don’t believe there is any such thing as objective truth in the first place, and if there is it is certainly not religious truth, and they shun religion anyway.

At the end of every spiritual quest lies only oneself, just as empty and mortal as ever. We should invite the spiritual seekers to come on our journey and walk along the Jerusalem road with us. At the end of our walk is not us, but the cross of Calvary and beyond the cross is the empty tomb. From the empty tomb emerged not just some spiritually-enhanced version of ourselves, but the flesh and blood embodiment of what God promises us.

We need to think about how to communicate the Gospel to a generation that values visual imagery more than the written word. A generation that wants spirituality but not religion. A generation that is skeptical of any claim to truth and authority, especially religious claims. A generation that is less inclined to join anything than their parents. A generation that is busier than their parents were, and is much more likely to have only one adult heading a household. And we need to reach out to them without diluting the Gospel.

We are a people of the fact of resurrection, not persons of a proposition. We belong to the truth because we belong to the Risen One. Jesus is the truth and life itself. That truth will never change, but how we proclaim it must change. We cannot complacently just water our own garden while outside a drought desiccates the land.

So: What are the facts about Christian faith and why do we say they are facts? We’ll go there next week.

Faith retention rates by religion

Found this over at Alan Bevere's site:

It strikes me that only the two oldest Christian denominations, Catholic and Greek Orthodox, have anything like acceptable figures. And they both have clear standards and expectations of their members. We Methodists are not even retaining half. And almost every Christian denomination ranked lower than us has looser standards of faith and practice.

(I also wonder whether the source data also show how many Methodists, for example, stay active in the Christian faith, but in another denomination.)

Understand also that there is no functional, theological or philosophical difference between "nones" and "atheists." Combined, they retain the same percentage as Catholics.

Update: A lot more info about the study at Patheos, including these two observations:
The information comes from the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey — and there you can find a “Protestant” category.  53.9% of Americans say that they were affiliated with Protestantism as children, compared to 51.3% now — a drop of 2.5% in absolute value, or a decline of 5% proportionally.  Most of the loss has come from Baptists and Methodists.


Also, while there are more people joining the atheist and agnostic ranks than leaving, it doesn’t bode well for atheists that 60-70 percent of those who are raised atheist renounce their atheism.  If it were so compelling a solution over the long term, one would think the retention rate would be higher.

Bibles and bars

Yogi Berra is reputed to have said about a couple of events, "It's too coincidental to be a coincidence." So how coincidental that two days before we sponsor "Connect: A Meetup for Spiritual People" at Fairview's Detour Sports Grill, there is a front-page story in today's Tennessean, "Churches take their message to taverns."

Every Monday night, Uncle Charlie’s bar in Cheyenne, Wyo., hosts “Bibles and Beer,” a discussion that routinely pulls in people of all faiths — and an atheist. 

As many as 45 people have shown up, some toting Bibles. Some might have a drink; others stick to water. Some talk; others mostly listen. There are only a few ground rules: Avoid debate and stick to the text to be discussed that week. 

“There really is not a focus on drinking,” insists the Rev. Rodger McDaniel, a Presbyterian minister who organized the weekly gathering more than a year ago. “But at the same time, it is a much more relaxed atmosphere than in a church basement. If I put this on in my church, I don’t think we would have five or six people.” 

Across the country, faith is becoming bar talk. The trend combines the traditional religious charge to go where the people are with the reality that a lot of them are in bars. Organizers include those from mainline churches, those building churches and bar owners and brewers. Some are trying to push the model nationally, taking an ageless yearning for meaning and purpose to places where people often go to try to wash their worries away. 

“It is good to bring the word to wherever God is, and God is everywhere, and people are everywhere, too,” says Joe Beene, owner of the Drunk Monkey Tavern in the Tulsa suburb of Glenpool, Okla. Last year, Beene began live streaming Sunday morning services from Tulsa’s Celebration Church into his bar. “The people who come in here on Sunday mornings are people who want to hear the word but won’t go to church.”

More at the link. The last thing Jesus told his apostles to do before he returned to the Father was, "Go!" And the apostles went - over almost all of the Roman-ruled world at the time. They did not hang a sign outside the Upper Room saying, "Holy Spirit comes here weekly, join us."

According to the Tennessean's June 18 edition, about half of Nashville-area people are not affiliated with any church, and a large number of them self-identify as Christian. For too long, churches have been like Little Bo Peep, thinking, "Leave them alone and they'll come home." But that's not happening.

Meanwhile, the oldline churches intensify fiddling while Rome burns around them. I already wrote about the United Methodists' death throes. This morning an Episcopalian friend sent me the link to a WSJ op-ed, "What Ails the Episcopalians."

Its numbers and coffers shrinking, the church votes for pet funerals but offers little to the traditional faithful.

Far be it from this United Methodist to point out a speck in the Anglicans' eyes while ignoring the plank in our own. But it just goes to show how widespread the problem is.

This is a good summary, too.

 

 (Text's author unknown.)

 

Four words

"Go and make disciples."

Seems clear.

Thriving and declining churches

Below are notes I took at a Tennessee Conference sponsored workshop at Gallatin 1st UMC in April 2008. These points are penetrating and thought provoking! Whether one agrees with them or not, they certainly call for some serious self examination on churches' part. They also tie in with Session 7 of my series, "Why I don't want to come to your church."



You may view the document online here.

Why I don't want to come to your church, session 7

Index at bottom of this post.

Here are the slides for the third session of this series. You can also view the slides full screen.

• Introduction - five big reasons people don't come to church
• Session 1 - The State of the Church Today
• Session 2 - "I want to do my own thing"
• Session 3 - Christian faith is intellectually unsupportable
• Session 4 - There is evil in the world
• Session 5 - Christians are such hypocrites
• Session 6 - "I don't feel welcome or comfortable in church."

Why I don't want to come to your church, session 6

Index at bottom of this post.

Here are the slides for the third session of this series. You can also view the slides full screen.

• Introduction - five big reasons people don't come to church
• Session 1 - The State of the Church Today
• Session 2 - "I want to do my own thing"
• Session 3 - Christian faith is intellectually unsupportable
• Session 4 - There is evil in the world
• Session 5 - Christians are such hypocrites

Why I don't want to come to your church, session 5

Index at bottom of this post.

Here are the slides for the fifth session of this series. You can also view the slides full screen.

• 
  
  • Introduction - five big reasons people don't come to church
  • Session 1 - The State of the Church Today
  • Session 2 - "I want to do my own thing"
  • Session 3 - Christian faith is intellectually unsupportable
  • Session 4 - There is evil in the world

Why I don't want to come to your church - Session 4

Index at bottom of this post.

Here are the slides for the third session of this series. You can also view the slides full screen.

• Introduction - five big reasons people don't come to church
• Session 1 - The State of the Church Today
• Session 2 - "I want to do my own thing"
• Session 3 - Christian faith is intellectually unsupportable
• Session 4 - There is evil in the world