By Robin G. Jordan
A denomination that has a serious commitment to the spread
of the gospel and the furtherance of the Great Commission will not tie itself
to the kind of unbiblical teaching and practices, type of church, style of
worship , and approach to reaching and engaging the unchurched as has the
Anglican Church in North America. The local ACNA church envisioned in the
catechism and the rites and services of the proposed ACNA prayer book closely
resembles the conventional parish church found in the Anglican Church of Canada
and the Episcopal Church in the USA. It is organized around the pastoral and
sacramental ministry of one or more priests assisted by one or more deacons and
lay assistants. It is a type of church that requires a high expenditure of
money and human resources to establish and maintain. While it may be the type
of church to which a segment of the Anglican Church in North America is accustomed,
the segment which is largely comprised of former Episcopalians, it is not the
type of church that will enable the ACNA to effectively spread the gospel and
to further the Great Commission.
The number of such churches that the Anglican Church in
North America can plant and sustain is limited by the availability of money and
human resources. Other factors that place a cap on the ACNA’s multiplication of
this type of church are its doctrine and worship style and size of the
population segment to which they appeal. From what may be gathered from
research data the size of this population is not large and may be shrinking.
In order to flourish this type of church requires its own
building and parking lot. The real estate prices and unfriendly zoning laws in
some areas may limit the ACNA’s multiplication of this type of church.
I am involved in guest ministry at a growing evangelical
church in western Kentucky. Its average Sunday attendance exceeds 500 people
and it has launched a second campus in a nearby community. Its two Sunday
morning services have just about reached 80% capacity. It also has a high rate
of baptisms and a burgeoning children’s ministry. To experience continued
growth, it must multiply services as well as campuses.
Just as the traditional worship of the type of church in
which the Anglican Church in North America is investing its future has limited
appeal (less than 1% of the population in my particular region of Kentucky) so
does the contemporary worship of this evangelical church. While it appeals to a
far larger segment of the region’s population, it does not appeal to
everybody—not enough for them to change their Sunday routine and to attend
church. This is one of the limits of the attractional approach to reaching the
unchurched. What a church using this approach offers must be attractive to
those it is seeking to reach. Eventually the attractional church will reach the
limits of its capacity to attract people. This evangelical church has not yet
reached that limit with some population segments but it appears to be reaching
it with others.
How then does a church reach and engage people who are not
attracted to what the church has to offer? One way is to become better
acquainted with these people, not by trying to get them to come to church but
by going to them, getting involved in whatever interests them.
If the church sponsors an activity in one of their areas of
interest, the focus should be on the interest. The aim is to create a “safe” environment
in which Christians and non-Christians, churched people and unchurched people,
can do something together that they enjoy doing or is otherwise meaningful to
them and in which they can get to know each other.
By “safe” I mean safe for non-Christians and unchurched
people—“no bait and switch.” The activity is not sponsored for the ultimate purpose of giving a gospel
presentation to those who attend, distributing tracts to them, engaging them in
spiritual conversations, or inviting them to church. Many non-Christians and
unchurched people will shy away from church-sponsored activities for this
reason. It may be necessary to downplay the church’s sponsorship of the
activity and conducting the activity at a location other than the building in
which the church meets. .
Rather than trying to attract people to its Sunday
gatherings, a church that adopts this approach focuses upon being the people of
Christ in the community, doing life with its people as well as together. This
approach may eventually lead to spiritual conversations. But they will occur
naturally within the context of relationships and will not be forced or
contrived.
One of the challenges that modern day Christians face is
that they suffer from an image problem. Becoming more involved in the lives of
non-Christians and unchurched people is an important step in overcoming this
image problem and acquiring a more favorable image in the community.
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