How Can the Church Still Reach People?

I am constantly bombarded with the message that the world is no longer interested in the church, and by association the message of the Gospel. I hear all the statistics about the church in the United States declining, and I don’t doubt that those statistics are true. I run across people on a regular basis that lament these facts. They are facts that should cause concern, but my interest in these things isn’t to have a woe is me moment, but to try and figure out what to do about it.

The first thing we should do is turn to God in prayer. Every Christian and local church is located in a specific ministry context, and need to be seeking how God would have them reach the community they are a part of. I truly believe that if we want to reach people for Christ He will show us how to do that right where he has put us. The issue comes when we have to implement what He is calling us to do. That often means those of us within the church have to get uncomfortable. We are going to have to do different things. Change can be hard, but I believe God has been an agent of change throughout history. He flooded the earth, created a nation for Himself, gave Israel the law, gave them a king, He sent Christ, called the disciples, and started the church. Those are some incredibly deep and lasting changes, but the character of God never changed even though His methods of reaching the world with His unchanging message did.

The truth of God’s changing methods should be an eye opener for us. He never once departed from the truth, but continued to reach the world in different ways. I have been fascinated for years to see people still drawn to the truth of the message of God despite the fact that it tells them they are wrong in how they are living, and how to properly relate to God. I’ve watched them come back over and over and be told things that are often hard to hear. I started asking myself why that is? I have come to believe that people want to have a place that they feel they belong and that they are loved. This is the overarching message of the Gospel. God’s grace is reaching out to us to give a place in the family of God through the blood of Jesus. We need a family where the truth can be told in love, and I firmly believe we can stand on the Word of God and reach people as long we have a heart to love the world around us as we speak that truth.

Now how do we get this message in front of people that have turned the church off for whatever reason? We as the church have to be willing to get outside our closed groups. Many people that aren’t connected to a church see a local church as a closed group. I know that’s not how a church may view itself, but it doesn’t matter how a church views itself. What matters is how do the people that the church is trying to reach view the church. This is where the change spoken about earlier comes into play. A church has to be willing to have a true outward focus. This means putting aside what may be most comfortable, and to strive to do what is necessary to reach the lost and those that have left the church while maintaining the true teachings of the Bible.

The church’s number one goal is to reach people with the message of Jesus Christ. It’s not about our comfort, our traditions, our music, our committees, our buildings, our Bible translation, our ministries, or anything else we can add to the list of things we hold on to. It’s about lost souls that need Christ, and need to be part of God’s family. This means the church and the Christians in it have to stop hanging their heads, and talking about how bad things may be. The church has to be willing to do something about it. I will tell you that everything you try may not work, and that’s ok. We can learn from failures and success. What we can not allow ourselves do is sit and be complacent. Dare to reach out. Dare to try something new. Dare to fulfill the Great Commission.