“Who’s your church going to target?”
I heard this question many times before we started our new church. I was told about demographic studies, church consultants, and other sources of professional guidance that were standing by to help me best answer it. While I was tempted to give a snarky answer each time—“Well, we are hoping to reach the unicyclist millennials of Miami who are partial to electrolyte-infused water but refuse to do so with single-use plastics”—I opted for a more appropriate path. I simply pointed the inquisitive person to how that question would be answered by the churches in the New Testament.
I realize this question means well. People want ministry to be effective, but this concern is often overwritten by an insistence on pragmatic efficiency. It aims at reverse engineering. “Who will our church try to reach?” means “Who will we try to attract to our church?” Our answer to that question will then determine our ministry instincts as to what we offer—our style, décor, programming, beverages, etc. But outside of obvious localized languages and regional cultural expressions, doesn’t this reveal wrong thinking about the church? Wouldn’t this potentially start the church with a kind of partiality that
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