So yesterday we suggested that simply reaching people who don’t go to church by nature is scandalous.  The very thought of reaching non churched people can offend Christians. It’s not we intend to offend, but the Bible suggests we just will.  Religious people get upset when non-religious people become the goal of a mission.

Today I’d love to switch gears and ask: of all the things you’ve done to reach outsiders, which have been some of the best ideas, and how might they have offended people?

Here’s a quick survey with a few things we’ve tried:

• We meet in  movie theaters (in part its just practical – it fits us for now).  Some Christians left because they can’t worship in a movie theater.  Some non-Christians come because it’s in a movie theater and not in a church.  For the record, we just keep pointing them all to Jesus.  (It’s not about a movie theater.)
• On Easter 2008, we tattooed a person live on stage.  It was to make the point from Acts 17 that all of us – even non-Christians – have a notion of God imprinted on our hearts.  A handful of Christians left our church over it.  Some non-Christians said it made them want to come back.  The tattoo artist himself hadn’t been to church for years.  He was very suspicious of church.  He said it was a great experience and impacted him deeply spiritually.  He was surprised a group of Christians accepted invited him in.
• We opened Christmas Eve 09 with Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll to try to break up the sacharine expectations around Christmas.  No one left. Everybody liked it and thought it was funny.  Clearly not edgy enough. :0)

We’ve done quite a few other things that have ruffled feathers (some male band members dressed up as Beyonce <not sure we’d do that one again, or would we?>, we gave away Starbucks cards to people who brought their friends <we’ll do that again>), all in the desire to see non-churched people move into a growing relationship with Jesus.

What have you done?  Or maybe more interestingly, what do you wish you would have done?  What was the reaction or what feared reaction kept you from doing it?

We had a great day at Connexus yesterday.  A record or near record crowd (I don’t see all the numbers Sunday)…great feedback.  Lots of new families.  As any lead pastor, staff member or volunteer might be, I was pumped as I drove home.

But then this irony struck me – hard.  We start setting up church before 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning.  Trust me, everyone but our volunteers and a handful of gas station clerks are asleep.  As I drove off of campus after lunch, the world is waking up, the parking lots at malls are filling up.  And we’re winding up, putting it all away.  It’s like we missed each other.

I’m not suggesting that we should move worship off Sundays or even off Sunday mornings (churches that have tried it rarely see great results).  If unchurched people are going to attend a service, it’s probably going to be on Sunday mornings. I’m not even saying we should be open 24/7.  That can often just mean the church becomes a cocoon – a retreat from our friends and neighbours.

What I’m thinking about this morning is that I hope there is plenty of evidence of our faith left on Mondays (and Wednesdays and Saturdays).  What a shame it is if as the world goes to sleep, the church wakes up and as the church goes to sleep, the world wakes up.

What do you think is the most effective way to personally and collectively lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus when the world is alive, awake and fully engaged?

Some great discussion on the blog and even some Facebook comments on this week’s Bad Church post.

If you’re like me, it’s so much easier to spot what’s wrong than to engage what’s right.  In part that’s human nature, in part it’s a product of being disappointed more than once, as Irene so aptly pointed out.

I’m still amazed that Jesus has put his hope in the church. I sometimes wish he stop using people to reach people, communicate universally or do something to take human error out of the mix. But you can’t read the New Testament and come to any other conclusion that the church is God’s chosen instrument.

So let’s turn the tables and ask: what makes a good church?  I’m not talking about creating a church where people who are already Christian have a ‘better’ time than at their old church.  That actually makes me sick to my stomach to think about planting another one of those.

I’m talking about a church that 90% of the population who doesn’t go to church might attend – a gathering where they might enter a growing relationship with Jesus.

So in your experience, what makes a good church?  What would make unchurched people come running?  I think we’d be surprised at how many people like – or are intrigued by -  Jesus.  What can we do better that would allow the church to be far more effective?

Thoughts?

Everyone who’s been to church has had a bad church experience.

Sure, you can find exceptions to the rule.  But most of the people you’ll meet won’t be the exception, they’ll be the rule.

What if you and I, in all of our interactions (personal and organizational), behaved as if that was true?  How would it change us?

Some thoughts:

1.  We might be more honest.  I’ve taken to telling people who are new to Connexus and new to faith that we will disappoint them.  We are a very human community, but my hope is that we will be able to admit it, own it, and deal with it honestly.

2.  We might plan around it.  We would take disillusionment as the norm, not as a surprise. If your assumption is that people have been burned, you react with more openness, more compassion and more transparency. 

3.  We would confess more honestly.  If you can admit your failures, you’re one step closer to solving them.  What we won’t confess won’t get dealt with.  Embracing our fallen-ness better prepares us to embrace our redemption.

Been burned by bad church?  What would help you overcome the sting and want to be part of an authentic community?  What could you do as a leader to help overcome it?

I think the hardest thing I do every day is not to build or sustain momentum for the church. It’s not writing messages, or even giving leadership to our team.  The hardest thing I do is to keep the church outsider focused. 

That actually shouldn’t surprise me because the hardest thing I have to do in self-leadership is to keep my personal life pointing toward others, not myself.

The drift inward – for organizations and individuals – is automatic, gravitational and effortless.  Almost all organizations would rather care for their own interests, not the interest of others.  Like employees at a retail store who look bothered when a customer interrupts their personal conversation to ask for help, most communities are self absorbed.  Why? Because (no surprise), most of us are self-absorbed.  The nature of sin is self-focus.  We evaluate church through the lens of personal preferences (I like this…I don’t like that….), not through the lens of what will reach our neighbours or be faithful to the ultimate purpose Christ has for the church.

If an organization becomes self-focused, ultimately it becomes selfish, unprogressive, resistant to change and indifferent or even hostile to the needs of others.  An outward focused organization becomes more generous, more compassionate, more responsive and ultimately far more effective.  No surprise there of course, because Jesus said when we give our life away for His sake we’ll find it.

I’m increasingly convinced that when the church in North America is declining it’s because we are self-focused, and that when the church in North America is growing its because we are others-focused and Christ-focused.  We plant churches all the time that claim they exist to reach the lost but function as though they exist to please their members. 

But focusing outward is incredibly hard work.  Because an inward drift is steady and instinctual, an outward focus has to be intentional,  deliberate and sacrficial.

Every day, I feel like I am on a personal and collective journey to make this life about Christ and about others.  I wish it was getting easier, but it’s just hard work.

How about you?  What’s the hardest thing you do?  How is your life and your community becoming more inward focused or more outward focused?

I’m thinking Bono might be one of the most effective communicators of our day. Better than most preachers, actually. 

More than a few musicians stand for something, but is there anyone who has gotten the message out more widely and clearly than Bono? 

So why is Bono effective?  Three primary reasons catch me:

1. The themes he uses have universal appeal. There is a God-given core longing in each of us for love, unity, peace and an unselfish use of power.

2. He always communicates the same message.  Through his words and actions, Bono continues to leverage four themes:  love, unity, peace and using power to benefit those without power.

3. Bono uses many media to repeat the message.  Words, video clips, press conferences, talks and (of course) music combine to get the message home.

What’s the lesson for preachers?  

1. Communicate what matters to everyone.  What scares me is that you could go to many churches for a month and not hear anyone talk about love, unity, peace or the selfless use of power.  Bono may have actually taken what continues to attract non-Christians to Jesus and made them his core message.  Lots of people who would never go to church are intrigued by Jesus.  They love who he was, what he stood for, and Jesus’ message resonates with the image of God inside each of us. Why can’t we cooperate with that and find some bridges in the story?  Not saying we can’t touch hard subjects (I preached on demonization yesterday), but I am saying there is a core that resonates with everyone.  Find it.  Preach it.

2. Don’t be afraid to repeat the same theme.  The temptation I feel is the temptation you feel: to be relevant we need to say something new.  Most people don’t remember what we said last week.  Live out your core convictions (if you got ‘em).

3. Remember that everything you do in a service communicates, not just the message.  At Connexus, we’ve learned to pick our music to reflect the message and structure the entire service to back up the bottom line.

 What have you learned from Bono or other effective communicators?  Why do you think his message is so sticky?  What can we learn as leaders from Bono?

On U2′s current tour, it would be easy to get lost in the sheer size of the spectacle.  The sense that what we’re dealing with is huge is very real. 

It’s also why people get hung up on God.  I have conversations every day with people who think of God as an idea – as a force – as something so large and impersonal that there’s no immediate or direct connect.  Lots of us grew up in church with that concept of God.

But Bono also did something else.  He made this huge show personal.

He talked about being in Toronto a lot.  True, musicians do that in every city.  But he also told some personal stories.  He shouted out to the people in condos next to the Rogers Center and asked them to flick their lights off and on if they were listening.  They did. (That was sweet).

In one extraordinary moment, while the intro to City of Blinding Lights played, he hoisted a twelve year old boy on stage.  He ran around the perimeter of the stage with him holding the boy’s hand.  During the first verse, Bono got down on his knee and sang the verse looking straight into his eyes.  Later in the song, Bono took off his glasses and put them on the boy’s face.  When it was over, he handed the boy back to security and to his parents.  Extraordinary.  Check out the photo from that night.

The biggest show in the world got personal.  Very personal.  Theologians call that imminence.  God is both transcendent (large) and imminent (personal).

Is that a key to briding the gap between believers and non-believers in church?  Rather than debate worship v. performance music (we use both at Connexus), maybe a key learning is that our service ‘style’ ought to reflect both the transcendence of God (being part of something bigger than ourselves) and the personal side (God is so close, so personal, and so interested in each of us).

How can we do this? Do we do this?  What could we do to better reflect this?  What do you think?

A constant discussion at the leadership table at Connexus Church is how to engage Christians and people with no church background during the same service.

Musically, it’s tricky.  We have a fantastic music team.  Andy Walker, our director of music, has done an unbelievable job of crafting what I think is one of the best church music environments in Canada. (Yep, I’m biased, but you should hear our team.)

The tension is Christians always want to sing more music.  People who grew up out of the church generally want less. Where else in the culture, after all, do you sing out loud in public?  People with little church background generally love great music, they just don’t want to be asked to stand for 30 minutes to participate in songs they don’t know to sing lyrics they don’t yet believe with their friends standing next to them.  That’s why we rarely do more than 3 participatory songs in a service.

We ask: how do you bridge the gap? I had the chance to see U2 last month in Toronto and watched Bono do something powerful. It was a huge life-highlight for me.  Broke down and cried a few times, actually.

He blended transcendence, imminence and a universal message masterfully together in a way that drew 63,000 people at the Rogers Center in Toronto together. And he did it much better than I’ve seen in most churches.

I wonder if there’s a blueprint in that for those of us who are committed to doing church in a way that constantly includes new friends.

That’s what I’m blogging about this week. 

In the meantime, anyone else at the U2 concert?  What did you see or learn?