Results of the Zacchaeus Survey
Monday, September 15, 2008 at 10:07PM Thanks to everyone who responded to the Zacchaeus Survey. Here’s why I wanted to know:
Seven or eight years ago I was attending yet another in a long line of church seminars, listening to post-modern guru Leonard Sweet give a talk about rethinking church, about how to reach out to a post-modern world. At a point mid-way into his talk, he asked us all to sing along with him, and then started:
Zaccheaus was a wee little man
And a wee little man was he
I don't remember any more why Leonard wanted us to sing, but I do remember that it suddenly hit me; the entire room—probably 1500 people—sang along with him, all the way through. Hand motions and everything. Nearly the entire room. When we were done, I turned to Linda, our part time vocal coordinator, who'd sung happily along, and asked her a question.
“Do you realized that nearly every single person in this room knew the words to that song?”
She just smiled and kept looking at Leonard. I think I scared her from time to time.
“No, really,” I said. “Let me ask you this—where does a person learn that song?”
“In Sunday School,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.
“Right. So what does that tell you about ninety-eight percent of this audience?”
She looked over at me briefly, still smiling, hoping I would pick up on her body language--which I believe I correctly interpreted as “Why do you always have to start in like that?”
“I’ll tell you what it says,” I continued. “Every single one of us has been going to church our entire lives. We’re all here to discuss how to make the church more relevant, how to appeal to outsiders, how to evangelize a lost world, and apparently not one of us has come from outside the fold. Seriously—we’re just a bunch of in-breeders! Even Leonard.”
I think the word ‘inbreeders’ shut down the conversation, but you get the point.
We all know the song.
So, what does this mean? What do you all think about this? I have to confess that it bothers me still. The Big Church I refer to had as it’s mission statement, “Big Church exists to bring lost people to new life in Jesus Christ.” Or something very close to that. Except…that for the first five or six years, we really only grew by bringing in people who liked our church better than theirs, because we had cool music and videos and stuff. The statistics on new people were dismal, by evangelistic standards.
This is something we did not talk about. We just kept on with our meetings and mission statements and shiny new programs. I think that’s changing over there now, and I hear really good things. And besides—it’s good that people who weren’t attending their old churches, that were just sitting on their hands, it’s good they’re excited about coming someplace great, right?
So what do you all think? I’d really love to get your thoughts on this.
Reader Comments (6)
Ed - I get this...
Having been part of an 'evangelical' church since I came to Christ as a young adult, I was continually frustrated by our 'evangelism' methods.
Now I am at a church that stays focused on that vision like a laser. In fact, when I meet people who come to PCC from another church, who are already believers, I always tell them, "You know, we're not here for you. And if you are here, you're going to have to serve. Because we're all about the guy who is still sitting at home on Sundays, who thinks there's no room for him at the table."
When we have membership classes (about one a quarter), if less than 50% of the people there are from another church, we get worried. We get 'in trouble' at staff. We're not doing our job.
Loved the Zaccheus piece - it's so, so true. My best friend here at this church would be like, "Huh? Who?" Unchurched all the way - until she met Jesus....
Forgive my rambling. Good post.
I'm glad to hear that you're doing what you say you're doing - that shows integrity. Honestly Beth, I still don't know how I feel about it all. Did you read that Sally Morgenthaller (sp?) has stopped her whole 'Worship Evangelism' thing? Maybe she never had an influence over your way, but she was big on the scene for a while.
http://nancybeach.typepad.com/nancy_beach/files/morgenthaler_article.pdf
Good conversation!
I love how you see things......I sometimes think that we use, depend on our weekend services to to entice others...which mostly entices someone from some other church...as I get older I think my focus needs to remain on "being" the church in my everyday life...that includes getting messy into the world around me and engaging with others close to God and not close to God..I'm all for being friendly and approachable to those who visit on a weekend or who are "seekers" or "checking it outers" (whatever you want to call it) but I think our weekly gatherings may be more effective if we reflect who we are as a community of believers both uniquely cultural and biblically. If we disciple and build the men and women of the church in Christ....won't it be natural that their lives will intersect others who don't believe for the cause of evangelism because this is a part of discipleship???? Is this making sense? I don't know?
The one thing we DON'T want to be is phony. Phony is a death sentence. Everybody can smell it--especially outsiders. So I agree that our weekend services should reflect who we are as a community. But beyond that, why do our services have to reflect anything at all? What I mean is, why spend any time at all worrying what other people might think? That just leads to guessing how they think, then trying to be to them whatever we think will influence them. Yick.
First of all I DID TOO GO TO SUNDAY SCHOOL!!! You'll have to sing it to me so maybe I'll remember it.
Secondly, I know bunches of skeptics, religious and otherwise, who believe that money runs the church more than any desire to save people. I just pissed off a whole lotta your friends, didn't I? But seriously, how many churches do you know want to increase their numbers any way they can, whether they are creating born-agains or stealing them from other churches. We should maybe talk about this more later.
Well, you're only about the 14 billionth person to get steamed about that! Books have been written, rants ranted, etc. I remember a song from the mid-80's with lyrics something like:
Numbers numbers, numbers, that's the name of the game.
Sometimes it's jealousy, sometimes they're right. I had a very interesting exchange with a pastor downtown this past spring...hmmm...might make a good post.