I was in a meeting with the college ministry I volunteer with today when I had an idea that I’ve been tossing around in my head for a bit today.
We were planning for next year’s “Welcome Week”, the week before classes when the students all move onto campus, and students were throwing out great ideas about events to hold and fun things to do to help promote the ministry.
Although Welcome Week isn’t necessarily our “Super Bowl” it probably is our Draft (check me out being relevant…NFL draft was today). It’s the time when a whole 25% of the campus is new. It’s a time where you can both reach students who are already Christians by providing them with a place to go during their time in school and it’s a time when you can reach students who don’t know Christ with the gospel. Really, it’s the most important week of the year for college ministries.
With the great ideas the students were throwing out I began to think to myself, “Why should these events be limited to welcome week?” Obviously we aren’t able to do everything that we thought of, but what is to say that we don’t extend Welcome Week throughout the whole year?
Here’s my thought process on this:
What if we shifted from doing everything to drive people to our weekly services where they will hear the gospel to doing everything to host events that are fun, cool, or exciting where we can then share the gospel? Or if we genuinely went out and cared for people the way Christ tells us to while sharing the gospel?
The shift pulls the focus of our evangelism from attracting people to the service (the “come and hear” approach) to going out and sharing with them while providing added value to their lives (the “go and tell” approach). We meet them where they are, as opposed to forcing them to come to a building they are uncomfortable with filled with traditions they are unfamiliar with.
Obviously this does not mean we don’t preach the gospel in our church services. Far from it! We should always preach the gospel, and should be providing people with a way to become right with God, and besides, believers need to hear the gospel regularly.
But what it does mean is that we do not treat our buildings as the castles we hole up in, letting the drawbridge down every so often to send someone out.
I am convinced that the church today has its priorities somewhat out of order. Should our events be aimed at growing those who are already believers while our services are aimed at evangelizing those who aren’t? I think that it should be the other way around.
Strategically it just makes sense. If you are trying to expose someone to the gospel, is it easier to invite them to a fun event or to a church service? My guess is that someone would be much more willing to go to a fun event with you than to a church service.
And if you are trying to grow in your faith, is a “Pizza Potluck Fellowship Dinner” going to help you as much as a carefully prepared, exegetical sermon? Probably not, although the dinner probably tastes better.
Now, I’m not saying we should stop having events for Christians or stop inviting non-believers to services. Again, quite the opposite. Both are great ideas and should absolutely keep happening.
But if you think about it, having so many events for ourselves is almost bordering on selfish. We should be spending the time and resources on reaching a lost world. And by relying almost solely on services to evangelize our friends, co-workers and families we have almost become too lazy to learn how to share the gospel relationally.
So let’s flip our priorities and keep both in a healthy balance.
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Category: Thoughts on Ministry
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