Why We Suck at Evangelism: 5 Theses for Consideration
I have been a redevelopment pastor for almost three years now. Part of my call was to lead the parish in evangelism with hopes that we would see numerical growth. Now that my three year term call is about up, I can look back and say that – while we have done many good things here – evangelism has been an unmitigated failure. The new members we have are not the result of our outreach, but the result of people looking around for a neighborhood church or a Lutheran church.
When I first got here, I proposed we take the Servant Evangelism model and make it our own. Doing little things like handing out water bottles, or free newspapers to commuters, or flowers on Mother’s Day to strangers, or free gift wrapping during the holidays. Simple things, things anyone can do. This was met with an uproar of resistance. So what did we do? A direct mail campaign. We sent out about 10,000 cards advertising Easter. My son decided to be born that Easter morning so I am unsure how many people may have been visitors as the result of the cards, but no one else bothered to follow up either. Some in leadership (who are thankfully no longer in leadership) began to grumble about the cost of the cards and effectively blocked ever doing them again.
So what next? Let’s hand out branded materials at an area festival. We had reusable athletic beverage bottles made with our name and logo and website and we filled them with lemonade or water for thirsty festival patrons for free. We were a big hit, distributing about 1800 bottles. But no one showed up the next Sunday or two who said the bottle led them there, so complaints resumed. By Christmas I proposed again going door to door, which didn’t happen. So I made up some Christmas service fliers and attached envelopes, challenging people to at least mail some fliers to a friend. If they would do 500 as a congregation, I would personally hand out 500 on my own. Which I did. Some people took fliers and mailed them, but others acted with ambivalence. I followed this up with a postcard campaign. I had secured some free postcards with our name, logo and brief invitational message, and implored people during my sermon to take a handful and hand them out. The only taker was a 10 year old girl (God bless her courage in doing so).
I’ve tried to get them to do a few other things, but you get the drift. Very little effort leads to no results. And please don’t think I am writing this to shame my current congregation (though they should have some shame about some of the lack of effort in this area); I have witnessed this at many mainline churches. In fact, I tried to bring people in to do an evangelism seminar at my last church and the council scoffed at the prospect. We Lutherans have a major problem with evangelism. This has been really bothering me as of late, so in true Lutheran fashion, I offer the following theses as to why we suck so bad at this.
1. We do not know what evangelism is. We confuse it with service ministries and anything else that may bring us into contact with people. But we don’t really get that it is about introducing people to a loving God who offers salvation.
2. Evangelism requires opening up to someone else about your own faith, and we all know that faith is something that should be kept private and personal (note the dripping sarcasm).
3. We have no real compelling reason to evangelize. When I was a kid in the Free Will Baptist Church, a group of men met weekly to go door knock. Every week without fail they were out in the field sharing Jesus with people because they were compelled to do so. What compelled them were many different things, not the least of which was concern for how a person would spend eternity. We as Lutherans don’t seem to have anything that motivates us quite like hell motivated these Baptist men. Come to think of it, when is the last time you heard the word “hell” from your pastor’s mouth during a sermon? (please note: i am not one of those people who likes the idea of using hell to frighten children and old ladies into believing, but we seem to stumble over this whole afterlife thing.)
4. Perhaps all of this is due to the fact that we have no real doctrine of salvation anymore, leaving this idea that Jesus needs to save us back in the Lutheran dark ages. Do we even see Jesus as a savior anymore, or is he simply a moral exemplar for those of us who really aren’t so bad? I don’t know sometimes. i mean, you are ok and i am ok and we are all just ok, right? Well…I am not so sure.
5. Many of our churches are membership enclaves, and are not focused on making disciples. We focus on making life comfortable for ourselves and catering to ourselves, usually without much regard for outsiders. We want everyone to be a member and then we try to avoid challenging or upsetting them for fear that they will leave and our institutional life would be weakened and our time as an institution shortened. So let’s avoid all that stuff that makes Christianity seem hard like taking up crosses and following Jesus and let’s focus on providing quality programming and music like we are a PBS affiliate.
Ok, discuss among yourselves…
September 22, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Add to #5: When we remodel, is it to make ourselves more comfortable? Well, if we remodel, people will notice our church, so more will come in the door. Ah Ha, Lutheran evangelism, through boards and hammers.
September 23, 2010 at 6:40 am
I call that “Field of Dreams” evangelism…if you build they will come!
September 22, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Just wanted to leave you with a link you may not have seen; for some reason I thought of it as I was reading your post. I’m really not sure why! But I just go ahead and do things these days…..
September 23, 2010 at 6:40 am
That article brought tears to my eyes. It may make it into a sermon soon.
September 23, 2010 at 8:54 am
I’m glad I put the link up, then. Blessings, Robb….
September 22, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Amen and Amen.
Kelly Fryer is like a hero in many Lutheran circles, she writes that she dreams of Sunday morning traffic jams because of all the people headed for church, but all the Lutherans who eat her stuff up don’t do anything about it.
I’d almost settle for our active members bugging inactive members to come back to their church home or even just to show up once in a while but they don’t even do that.
At Christmas and Easter I make up a simple flyer inviting people to come to church and ask people to take a few and give them to friends, family, neighbours, or co-workers but they’re just left on the table in the narthex.
People cry that our membership is aging and dwindling, they grump that there’s not enough money to pay our bills or do ministry but they won’t get off their butts to do something about it.
Your comments about opening up and sharing about their faith, or even knowing how or why we evangelize or would even want to evangelize (being saved is important isn’t it?) are right on.
September 23, 2010 at 6:32 am
Hey Lutherpunk,
I found this link off of my husband’s facebook page! Great reflections.
In a post-Christendom age, adults need to feel competent about faith to do the face-to-face caring evangelism you describe and I desire to see happen in our Lutheran congregations. Opportunities to testify to one’s faith comes from practicing testimony. We have responded to people’s busyness by offering them a way to experience the fullness of God’s grace in one-hour of worship. Faith that engages doubt does not often occur in the complex practice of worship that seeks to strengthen faith in the midst of doubt — though worship might explore doubt. Faith that engages doubt happens most often in learning opportunities, mission opportunities, day-to-day coffee shop opportunities where the people of God stumble into unbelief and wonder about the meaning of salvation for their lives and for the world. This is the locus of testimony that, practiced over time, leads to competence and the possibilities of evangelizing in a post-Christendom context.
And I totally agree with you, when hell is off the table as a motivator for faith this is hard. But, more authentic. Coerced faith generally backfired down the road. Another topic, for another day.
Peace.
September 23, 2010 at 6:45 am
@ both Tom and Jessicah
I think I see this as more a crisis in theology first and practice second. We don’t really get what our motivation is, therefore we don’t really do anything. It seems to me that we need to return to some of those basic theological questions.
As far as the idea of testimony goes, I love it! Anna Carter Florence at Columbia seminary has done some interesting work with this for preachers and I would love to see it extended out to include the laity. My experience with fundamentalism has shown me the power of personal testimony, and I would love to see the mainline embrace this. Heck, I may start working on some of this today…imagine a testimony of the month sort of the thing in worship…
September 23, 2010 at 8:33 am
I’m not so sure about the “testimony at worship” thing–and here’s why: Lutherans know that having testimonies is not part of the way that Lutherans worship. Other denominations do that at worship. Most Lutherans aren’t sure that evangelism is part of their denominational identity and fore-grounding it in a “foreign” practice may only serve to underscore that in ways that you really don’t want to do. You’re in danger of setting up and us vs. them rooted in denominational identity rather than acheiving the goal.
Now, there’s absolutely no doubt that evangelism needs to start happening and start happening better in both your church and mine. Jessicah’s right that it can’t all happen in the worship space. Trying to address the theology first won’t do it–you have to start wiuth habits and practices and build the theology into that. One possibility is getting people in small groups to talk about their faith with each other. My guess is they’ll find it hard even to share it with someone they know holds it! It’s not until they get comfortable doing that that they’ll be able to do it with others.
September 27, 2010 at 3:11 pm
I completely agree with this, Derek. Many people in our Anglo-Catholic parish were reticent to talk about their faith openly because they thought it was pretty gauche. Such things are private. It’s something that turned them off about evangelicalism, actually. The thing is, the way evangelicals talk about their faith (starting with the idea of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ) would not map onto their (our) faith at all. And so in addition to getting people talking, I think we need models for how to do that and what it looks like in a way that is infused with our own peculiar identities. This is rather than adopting evangelical or megachurch inspired forms that don’t make sense theologically and it is rather than adopting corporate language or the language of pop psychology to describe what we’re doing.
September 28, 2010 at 6:33 am
Please do allow me to clarify my point here. I am not proposing that testimony look like what I heard the fundy circles, which all basically had the same sort of narrative. “I was a sinner and did x and y and then like St. Paul saw the light and haven’t needed to do x or y since finding Jesus.” I am thinking more about having people learn to share where they find God and God’s grace in their lives. This is different because there isn’t a imposed or assumed narrative. It makes room for different ways of experiencing Christ. This may include anything from experiencing healing through prayer to recognizing Christ in the sacrament of the altar and everything in between. The trick is helping folks find the language to do so.
I don’t necessarily buy into the idea that worship is the wrong place to do it. We use Temple Talks (either right before or after the liturgy) to talk about all matters of things, from announcements to financial reports. Why not let folks practice this story telling at a time like that?
September 23, 2010 at 9:24 am
Robb – lots to consider here. I’m going to blog about this and other things later today. Thanks for your work.
September 23, 2010 at 9:34 am
I agree with Derek’s point about learning to talk with others who share our beliefs. One of many reasons that I’ve attended a weekly Bible Study with friends since 1977 is that I can talk about my faith, and I can get feedback, and I can “practice” talking about my faith where I know I’m safe. Now it is part of who I am. I never learned this in the Lutheran Church growing up, nor in a Lutheran family, nor in a Lutheran College. I learned it first in an interdenominational Bible Study group….started by a Lutheran pastor who wanted a place to share faith talk.
If we aren’t talking about faith and about God, we aren’t talking about our blessings either. Sunday morning is “worship Service” time. Why worship? If we haven’t talked about the WHYS it may be because we haven’t even thought about this.
A Catholic friend of mine told me that her children would complain about having to attend church. She would tell them that if they didn’t have something to thank God for each Sunday, they had a sad life indeed.
In this consumer society, “Church” may be judged on how entertaining it is, on what we get out of it, on if “we are fed.” Perhaps there needs to be more emphasis and teaching on the emphasis of Worship.
If you think I’ve changed the topic…no, I’m just getting at this in another way: The act of public worship, publicly going forward to receive Communion. in a witness….but only to those who are there. The question can then be, how do we put this witness into words and into our everyday life out in the community? I live in a very small town, and I can tell you that people do know who goes to church and which of those people don’t put attributes of the teaching into their daily life.
September 23, 2010 at 9:41 am
Hi Robb,
I too have have spent part of my journey in more witness/evangelism oriented churches. It was just expected and understood on the part of members that because of all the wonderful things God has done for us, we should share this with others.
I’m on internship now, but have been approved for mission redevelopment, so what you’ve done in your congregation has special interest for me.
May God lead and guide you in your continued service. Thank you for all you do.
September 24, 2010 at 4:26 pm
If you ever want to chat about redevelopment, let me know.
September 24, 2010 at 8:02 am
so great. thanks for this. more a little later. I liked the link, and it made me cry, too.
September 24, 2010 at 9:29 am
There seems to be a common thread in this discussion, and that thread leads away from the Lutheran tradition. Perhaps a return to a truly Lutheran identity, and I don’t mean a cultural one, would bring people to Church. What makes a Lutheran: the confessional tradition, the creeds (all three of them), the Lutheran liturgy. Lutherans need to learn to love themslves, and stop looking to the mega churches. Where is the Lutheran version of the Oxford Movement?
I go to a Lutheran church and get watered down Marty Haughn and Methodist hymns if I’m lucky. I weep when I look at my grandmother’s hymnal and just what we’ve hold in my hand just what has been discarded in the hope of being more inclusive, open, and attractive to newcomers. Does anyone on the committees that come up with worship resources take in to account that the thing that attracts people is a unique point of view, a Lutheran point of view. No wonder Jaroslav Pelikan left.
There’s too much crying (including my own tears). Don’t mourn! organize!
September 24, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Erich – as plenty of folks can attest, I was at one time wanting an “Oxford” movement of sorts for North American Lutherans. I am not sure if i have changed my mind or just sort of given up on that. My preferences are for high church and formal, but i don’t find that resonating with most Lutherans. My it is our failure to catechize well, but perhaps t is something deeper. I wish I knew the answer.
September 30, 2010 at 10:02 am
There are Lutherans out there who are craving just that. It can be found if one looks for it, but it also comes with a certain social conservatism, that is contrary to a gospel of love. It seems that the Anglo Catholics have it right and they are seeing their congregations grow where the congregations that have liturgical dance and clown masses are struggling.
As I said above: Don’t mourn. organize! How can we who are nurtured by the Word as expressed through the Lutheran tradition create a movement or coalition. I’m not talking schism, but rather a pan Lutheran group who advocated for Lutheran tradition.
September 28, 2010 at 7:31 am
Erich, sounds like your church worship committee needs to have your point of view. Please consider joining the worship committee. I’ve also thought that the music in our church this summer didn’t have enough “depth” and I think that today I’ll mention this to some people on our committee.
But what you said reminded me of my time at one of our Lutheran colleges. They often had “interesting” things happening at Sunday Worship, liturgical dance, for example. All well and good, but that stuff doesn’t bring the kids in on Sun morning. And the sermons were “creative” but we were more likely to hear directly about Jesus on the weekends when parents were present.
Regarding hymns: I’ve attended the very conservative Lutheran church of my in-laws many times. No modern music or Sunday School songs there, just good old Lutheran hymns. But they play and sing them like they are marching toward a gallows. Even the good old hymns can be ruined by slow draggy tempo, on the one hand, or overly flowery organ playing on the other hand. If the music leader (organist, pianist, etc.) doesn’t play the hymns like they mean it, well forget it. What visitor would think that the people in the pews really mean it when they sing about their faith without opening their mouths and singing like they care.
September 30, 2010 at 10:37 am
I am a Lutheran!
I just needed to say that first.
I’ve left the Lutheran church. I cannot stomach the changes. I was raised LCMS, but became a member of ELCA when I moved from Arizona to NYC. It was strange and wonderful to see incense and people crossing themselves, which were to Catholic for the western congregations in which I was brought up. Those first years of living in NYC taught me to love my Evangelical Catholic traditions. (Hey! That’s a name for a movement!) It goes way beyond music. It goes to church architecture. If you have an altar that is on the wall. Do the liturgy ad orientum! It’s the tradition of the building! Where is the Athanasian Creed? Will I never hear it used in a service other than when I pray the office in the morning? I know I’m rambling, but it does say Idle ramblings at the top of the page. (Yes, They are not supposed to be mine.)
Liturgical dance is not well and good. Even Pope Benedict is opposed to it. (I’m no fan of the Papacy. in fact arround the house I call the Pope what Luther called him, but…) I’m not opposed to modern interpretations of hymns, but not (shudder) praise bands.
The Lutheran church that I loved growing up is no more, and if it is it doesn’t want me. I attend an Anglo Catholic church that is so high on the candle they are on fire. I go here because I hear more Lutheran hymns (Yes, the translations are a bit strange) there than I do in a Lutheran church. I will not become a member there. I will not convert. I am a Lutheran. I wish the Lutherans were.
This does come back to evangelism. We (Lutherans) are Evangelical Catholic. If we keep our traditions rather than being lured away by the Methodists, the Baptists, the Mega Churches, we will draw those looking for tradition to us. Follow the rubrics. without embellishing them. If your choirmaster/organist plays only dirges, fire him. and stop with the inclusive language! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Jesus has a penis! After all if He didn’t there would be no Feast of the Circumcision on January first. Use the tradition of a confessional Church to evangelize. If support is needed start a movement.
October 2, 2010 at 11:02 am
It sounds to me like to some degree Servant Evangelism was not tried and found wanting, but was not fully tried. A servant evangelism model is not unrelated to early church models, for example. PreChristendom models. What I do know is that in our burned over age, loud Jesusy doesn’t work. People rightly tune us out when we do it. Encouraging service to others, and discipleship practices, seem counter to a world that has a lot of words.
Musical styles and tastes change. Hymnody as we know it is the development and innovation of chant. I am learning that for many it no longer moves the heart, but chant does, so does adapting hymns to musical styles we call popular. The beauty of tradition is that it is multivalent and complex, so there are other resources to draw upon to meet our times as we add on our own contribution to the tradition. Too ofter, the tastes of another era and of the pastor or seminary professor don’t prepare folks to do tradition, rather than simply receive tradition in this regard.
October 8, 2010 at 9:59 am
Christopher,
the problem I’m finding is that lutherans son’t know what their tradition is. They see the number of people in chairs at other churches and try to be like them rather than offering a lutheran liturgy.
I was looking for some liturgical resources yesterday as part of my commemoration of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg. I thought it would be interesting to see what he did to the German Mass to create the first American Lutheran Liturgy. I could not find his Mass anywhere on line. Unfortunately I.m traveling and don’t have access to the libraries I usually take advantage of.
It seems to me that the favoring of chant is a sort of pandering to spirituality rather than return to tradition. that being said the Anglo-Catholic church that I attend has a sung Mass the Mass is usually by some rarely heard renaissance composer, not chant, and is beautiful, but it seems that the Lutheran tradition wants the Mass to be in the vernacular. Although Luther never wanted to get rid of the Latin Mass he understood that people needed to be lead to it. That’s why he created the German Mass: to bring people to an understanding of the Latin so that they could return to it. Today we seem to be running further and further afield and rather than leading people to the Latin Mass we’re leading them to non-liturgical spiritual masturbation.
October 21, 2010 at 9:37 am
Re: Testimony
It can be scary when we don’t have the “I was a sinner, then x and y, and now…” story to tell. But testimony doesn’t have to be a conversion experience story, it can be a faith story.
- a person who was important in growing your faith.
- a time when you realized that you could not have made it by yourself.
- a time when you felt close to God or far from God.
- something you do spiritually that is meaningful.
- your favourite Bible verse or worship song.
If people think about those things and then are ready to talk about them when the right moment comes up then they have a testimony. If someone says they’re feeling lonely then you can talk about feeling far from God and how you came through it. When someone talks about a favourite song then you can talk about your favourite hymn and why it’s a favourite. When someone talks about a special person you can talk about someone who made a difference for your faith.
October 22, 2010 at 8:57 am
What do you think is the relation between testimony and apology? Is not the apology more closely related to the Evangelical Catholic tradition? Luther seemed to always be talking about his battles with the Devil as a very personal experience. Is that testimony or apology? Or neither? Is there a connection to Augustine here? I ask there questions sincerely and not rhetorically.
Here’s the rhetoric:
When talking about evangelism as expressed in the liturgy I do not believe that there is a place for testimonials, or even apologies. these are however appropriate in both personal and public forums other than worship; which should be reserved for, well, worship, and not sentiment.
October 22, 2010 at 9:22 am
Good point re worship. Perhaps we need to directly address the concept of WORSHIP with the people in the pews: tell them directly what Sunday Morning is all about. We are there to worship, not to to be entertained. “Special Music” should be chosen with that in mind, for example. We can worship with our heads if our hearts are not in it. Worship takes some discipline. It doesn’t need to be dreary, but it might take some work, especially on those Sundays when we feel our life crashing down around us. We can be taught that an emotional reaction can be worshipful in the proper context and mood, but that key changes to heighten the emotions of the crowd are not necessarily true worship (as I read about somewhere recently.) We can be teaching that attending worship each week is a discipline that is worthy of following, as compared to deciding each Sunday morning “just how we feel” about attending. I learned this from a sermon way back in 1972 and the change in my attitude about attending Sunday services has had a big impact on my life.
All that said, it still IS great to also be fed on a Sunday morning during the worship service. I am fed by the scripture readings, the sermon, and the communion elements. The hymns can help me express my gratitude to God while they teach me about God’s greatness and grace. Lutheran worship is participatory worship, which we don’t get if we are just watching a TV service or attending an entertainment type worship.
October 22, 2010 at 10:07 am
[...] A heartfelt cri de coeur from a mainline pastor: [...]
October 22, 2010 at 11:44 am
wrong website URL fixed.