A Guaranteed Way to Get Unchurched People to Come to Your Church

Sometimes we overcomplicate things. There are tons of books out there on how to see your church grow. The truth is multi-faceted, from location and demographics to spiritual maturity and missional mindset. Some churches may not even aim to reach the unchurched, believing church is for church people.

But for those churches seeking to see the unchurched reached with the gospel, here’s a simple (not easy) place to start. A guaranteed way to get unchurched people to come to your church is to make a church service unchurched people actually want to come to. In many cases I believe it’s as simple as that. You can spend thousands of dollars on a church growth strategist and put up billboards all around town. You can make public declarations and invoke 2 Chronicles 7:14 as much as you’d like. But if you have a church service that turns away unchurched folks, then they’re not going to stick around.

This isn’t an either/or. This isn’t evangelism vs. discipleship. This isn’t deep truths vs. watered-down doctrine. This is as simple as adapting our personal preferences to reach the unchurched in our community for Christ. Here are some questions for you to consider:

• Is your church service welcoming? I’m not just saying ‘do you have an usher by the door?’. Everyone has that. Do you have some type of ‘host team’ dedicated on Sunday mornings to making the Sunday experience incredible for all first-time guests? This starts from the time they step out of their cars to the time they interact with your church members. (For extra credit, train your church members to be like this).
• Is your church service modern? Will your church service at all resemble the culture your unchurched live in, or will it be a time warp to a nostalgic time gone by? Everything from style of music to type of dress to how the sanctuary looks. If you’re trying to reach anyone other than homogenous religious folks who were in their prime back in the 50s, then you need to make sure that your service actually resembles today’s culture. And yes, there’s a way to do that without sacrificing the integrity of the gospel. If you still think that drumsticks are from the devil, then we’ve got bigger issues.
• Is your church service relevant? Preachers like me love to sit in our studies all week and delve into the intricacies of the original Greek text. We love to know where the Hebrew root of a certain word comes from, or how many times one particular word appears in Scripture. It’s too easy to spew forth information on Sunday mornings and hope that somewhere in the midst of that information something practical comes out. When the unchurched come to your service, they don’t know Greek or Hebrew. They probably don’t even have a Bible. What they do know is that their marriage is falling apart or their kids are slipping away from them or that their financial world is crashing down around them. If we don’t scratch where they itch, they’ll look for answers somewhere else.
• Is your church service truthful? This point is an important counterpoint to the ‘relevant’ argument. If the unchurched wanted to get another hyped up talk on the power of positive thinking, they would listen to Oprah. If they wanted another passionate presentation of the world’s common sense wisdom, they’d listen to Dr. Phil. They’re at your church searching for truth. They don’t want truth watered down. They hunger and search for undistilled truth, as uncomfortable as that might be. You don’t have to water down the truth to reach the unchurched.

If you can create a church service that is welcoming, modern, relevant and truthful, you’ll find something very unfamiliar showing up at your doorstep: the unchurched. That’s not the difficult part. The difficult part is getting all the good church folks to be willing to give up their preferences to reach the lost. But that’s another discussion for another day 🙂