Servant Evangelsim

Out-stretching the Outreach Dilemma

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

I have been spending some time thinking about how to revamp and ignite the outreach ministry of our church.  One of the frequent dilemmas for a church that desires to become more externally focused, more missional, is the balancing of service and PR.  There is nothing inherently wrong with advertising, but sometimes a sincere outreach can be perceived as a mere marketing strategy.  When this happens it sends a distorted message to both those outside the church and those who go out from the church.

John Stott, in his book Christian Mission in the Modern World, offers the following insights about this dilemma:

To sum up, we are sent to the world, like Jesus, to serve. For this is the natural expression of our love for our neighbors. We love. We go. We serve. And in this we have (or we should have) no ulterior motive. True, the gospel lacks visibility if we merely preach it, and lacks credibility if we who preach it are interested only in souls and have no concern about the welfare of people’s bodies, situations and communities.  Yet the reason for our acceptance of social responsibility is not primarily in order to give the gospel either a visibility or a credibility it would otherwise lack, but rather simple uncomplicated compassion. Love has no need to justify itself.  It merely expresses itself in service wherever it sees need.

Mere Marketing Misses the Mark

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

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This had to be one of the more irritating telemarketing calls I can recall. 

Some guy cold-called me at my church office yesterday and wanted me to give him a blow-by-blow of our Outreach strategy.  He had a service to sell that would “enhance” our attractiveness to the community.  To listen to him it sounded like a can’t miss thing.  One problem with that ‘can’t miss program’… I had used similar services in past churches, and my present church had used it prior to my arrival.  All previous tries were whiffs. We attracted ZERO.  And we blessed no one – except, maybe, the sellers of the service.

But the “selling” of the church is not the only thing that gauled me.

One thing that rubbed me the wrong way was the pretense of selling this service, not for the money but for the benefit of the Church.  What c-#-@-p!; err, what a joke.  Who did he think he’s kidding? (Or, is he kidding himself?)  I have no objection to people being in business to make money.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Even in the church supply business there is nothing wrong with profit.  Scripture speaks against dishonest gain, not against  legitimate gains.  So this guy had no reason to hide the fact that he is in business. Just own up to it. To deny it leads me to mistrust him even more.

A second thing, and what probably bugged me most, was that he had the audacity to demand that I explain to him about our Outreach program.  He really insisted. Ordinarily I am happy to share our vision. But this was a cold-call telemarketer.  I don’t have time for that.  Trying to get off the phone, I simply expressed: “We’re doing fine.”  Yet, he kept pushing, even asking sarcasitcally: “Doesn’t your church want new people to come?”  Since when did I, or our church, become accountable to this guy?

Finally, in retrospect, I am also a little disappointed.  I finally gave the guy a brief synopsis of our Outreach strategy. Our plan is simply:  “To Bless the community where God has sovereignly placed us.”  Though we are happy our church has grown significantly in both members and attendance over the past two years, that’s not what we want to be about. It is not about us. It is about God’s glory & grace. It is about loving our neighbors. We are intentionally becoming more Incarnational than Attractional. In other words we are measuring our health more-and-more by the way we go out into the community to serve those around us than by the number of people we put on our rolls.  Therefore we are engaging in things like Prayerwalking, Servant Evangelism, and equipping and unleashing our members to serve in a number of ways throughout the Mountain Empire.  We are learning to express the love of Christ in practical ways to our neighbors.  Eventually we hope to be able to express the love of Christ in significant ways…

But marketing, while it may have a place for the church, will never of itself help us meet those objectives.  Marketing by it’s very nature is about selling of self.  Marketing is about “US”.

What was disappointing is that this guy didn’t comprehend what I was telling him.  Not at all.  His paradigm only allowed him to digest the work of the church in one way – mere numbers attending our church.

What is more disappointing is that I suspect this guy reflects the majority understanding of mission permeating American Evangelicalism: “It’s All About Us.”   And with that perspective – even when we sincerely think we are doing God a favor when our churches grow – our influence has steadily diminished throughout our society. 

We have ignored the covenant mandate made with Abram in Genesis 12, that the Lord’s plan is to bless all Peoples through us; we have neglected Christ’s madate to love our neighbors (Mark 12); and have have forgotten the example of the early church (Acts 2).  How else can we explain this narcissistic myopia in Evangleicalism?

Let me finish with this: I’m not opposed to church growth.  I agree that healthy churches do grow; and that ‘non-growth’ is nothing to take pride in.  But I have learned that not all growth is healthy; and that sometimes a period of stagnation or even decline may in reality be an opportunity for a chrysalis period.  Again, I have the privilege to pastor a church that is showing growth.  But either way, when our focus is primarily on ourselves it is not where it needs to be: first, on God; and second, significantly on blessing our neighbors.  (Mark 12.28-31)

When we learn to effectively place the emphasis in the proper order, God is glorified, our neighbors are blessed, and we are all better off.