Outreach

 

Characteristics of the Unchurched

What we've discovered about the people we're trying to reach by going door to door…

While "door-to-door evangelism" has been out of season recently, most churches having abandoned it for other more productive forms of "winning the lost" it is still a fine method for polling. By polling I mean finding out about the people we're trying to reach--what they are like and what they think. "Knowing the customer" is the secret to "making the sale" of course. While we may reject the selling image of evangelism, the notion that we should know who we are trying to reach is still a sound principle. So, in the interest of helping us all make our own lists, here is the list I propose based on door-to-door and conversations with the unchurched. How would you make the list different from your own talks with people who don't go to church?

 

1. They are busy. These people are not bored and desperately looking for more things to do. Rather, their life is a jumble of busyness -- packed with work, home, civic, and educational activities. They often have several places they are supposed to be on any given evening and they believe they are already "stretched too thin." They are like the thorny ground in Christ's parable -- they are trying to grow too much on their plot and religious pursuits just get choked out by the "cares of this world." The notion that we can provide them with something exciting and fun to full up their boring lives won't work for most people.

 

2. They consider church boring. Most of them have been to church somewhere along the line and they consider the experience to be eminently unm