An informal survey of the unchurched
Monday, June 23rd, 2008The following post was a collaboration between Mandy and Jeff…
Church has become quite a hot topic issue in the recent years. Move to a southern town, and the question you’re most likely to hear after “What’s your daddy’s name?” is “Do you go to church?” After that, you’ll most likely hear:
- “What church did you go to where you lived before?”
- “Are you looking at any churches here?”
- “You should come to my church.”
- “We’d love to see you Sunday!”
With so many people ready to pounce on any newcomer or anyone they discover is not attending a church, the question remains, “Why do some choose against going to church?”
In a quest to answer this very question, a series of five simple questions were sent to several people that have struggled with attending church. They were all more than willing to answer. I felt their urgency to be heard on this issue and also realized that their responses would have a lot of relevance for churches seeking to understand how to better reach people.
The questions were as follows:
- What do you dislike most about churches?
- What do you think churches should do more of?
- What do you think churches should do less of?
- What is one church you would like to attend one day? Why?
- What would you be least likely to attend:
a) A Sunday morning worship service.
b) A small group in someone’s home that you know.
c) A service project with folks from a church.
d) An evangelistic revival-crusade type meeting.
1. What do you dislike most about churches?
When answering the first question, the answers were amazingly similar. Read the rest of this entry »