To connect with people, you need to meet them where they are, says Ben Ingebretson, the director of new church development for the Dakotas and Minnesota Conferences of the UMC. He offers six practical ways you can air out your church by taking your ministry into public spaces.
For the past month, I have been meeting with 18 other people on Tuesday nights at a local coffee shop for a coupling class. Rather than do our premarital course at the church this year, we decided we would advertise it at the city bridal show in January and hold meetings in a public space in March. People came, and we talked and shared stories. We more than doubled the impact we would have had offering the course at church.
Doing ministry outside of your church’s four walls is as old as dirt, but so quickly we forget how important it is. John Wesley was a master at it with open-air preaching. He was taking his cue from the apostles who ministered in the public spaces of their day. Wesley knew that to connect with people, he must go to where they are.
We must be careful not to make the success of the past our only roadmap for the future. To connect with people, we must go to where they are.
Many churches are preparing for a future that may never come. We settle for trying to attract a crowd rather than working to penetrate one. If we look to Europe as a harbinger of things to come, we quickly see that attractional church is likely on the wane. We must be careful not to make the success of the past our only roadmap for the future.
Here are some practical ways you can air out your ministry:
- Hold your next staff or council meeting in a public space. Let that space challenge your thinking about connecting with your community.
- Offer worship in a public space. Crossroads Church, a multi-campus congregation in Minnesota, offers an outdoor worship service. Perhaps one of your services could take place at the public school, or several times a year it could happen somewhere else outside your building.
- Office at least one day per week at a local coffee shop. I recently saw a pastor who put a small sign on his table, saying that he was a pastor and that he would hear and pray for any needs of passers-by.
- Buy a jumbo-sized grill. Loan it to anyone in your congregation who will organize a block party in their neighborhood. Don’t let it be used on church property where you will only perpetuate the “church club” mentality.
- Begin to plan and pray now about staging a new ministry off-site. Perhaps this could be a career transition group, a recovery group, or a parenting group.
- Try a pub Bible study. Find a night that a local owner may be eager for you to imbibe, and invite others to join you.
It is worth noting that the first martyr of the church, Stephen, challenged the idea that buildings are sacred to God: “The Most High God does not dwell in houses made by human hands” (Acts 7:48). If we push on the idol of sacred structures, we might get some push back. We might also discover the practices of missional leadership so needed today.
This article is reprinted from a blog post on the Minnesota Annual Conference’s website. Used by permission.
Related Resources:
- Putting Ourselves in the Place Where Life Happens by Keith Anderson
- The Go-To Church by Bryan Collier
- Taking Church to the Community Video Tool Kit
