A New Look at Evangelism

The Barna Group has published an interesting interview about a new look/trend of evangelism.  I found it to be very interesting and something that I had not thought of before.

In the article, the Barna Group published some figures from it’s research: “According to Barna research, only 4% of unchurched adults were invited to church by a friend and actually went, 23% were invited but declined, and 73% were never invited at all.”  At first I found this pretty shocking, but then I thought, “when was the last time that I invited someone to church.”  Hmmm…if other Christians are like me then maybe this statistic isn’t as shocking as I thought (sadly).

I would encourage you to check out this article about the new way that we can try and reach our non-Christian friends, neighbors and people we meet.  Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Surprising Discoveries

Recently I read an article put out by the Barna Group (http://www.barna.org) titled “What People Experience in Churches.”  I enjoy reading what Barna puts out because it is entirely based on facts and statistics.  The statistics and conclusions in their article caused me to do some thinking.  Here is a link to the full article: http://www.barna.org/congregations-articles/556-what-people-experience-in-churches

One very surprising, yet very real statistic from this article stated that “most people cannot recall gaining any new spiritual insights the last time they attended church . . . even among those who attended church in the last week, half admitted they could not recall a significant insight they had gained.”  This is not something that I would usually think of as being a usual occurrence, until Sunday afternoon.  My husband and I were talking about church and it took us almost five minutes to remember what the sermon had even been about.  Has this ever happened to you?  Now, this does not speak to the quality of the sermon, but more that we had moved on and not ingrained it.  This personal realization really knocked me off guard.

In the article I found two graphs in particular very interesting and I could not stop talking about it.

Church Experiences, by Church Size
Size of the Church Attended Under 100                  100-299                    300+
Feel part of a group that cares for each other	81%	76%	78%
Felt a real and personal connection with God	78%	68%	77%
Gained new spiritual insight or understanding	44%	34%	49%
Church puts a lot of emphasis on serving poor	39%	44%	57%
Attending church affected my life greatly	33%	24%	34%

 

With all the discussion regarding church size, this graph was very surprising to me.  It made sense to me that a church with a small congregation would feel more cared for.  I expected that.  I was, however, very surprised at the overall low numbers for a congregation size of 100-299 people.  Their numbers for connection with God and affect on their life are considerably lower than the other sizes.  And the positive feelings toward churches of 300+ surprised me.  Do any of these statistics cause you to ask questions or look at things differently?

Church Experiences, by Generation
Size of the Church Attended 18-27         28-46         47-65               66+
Feel part of a group that cares for each other	47%	71%	71%	70%
Felt a real and personal connection with God	56%	62%	70%	71%
Gained new spiritual insight or understanding	35%	37%	40%	43%
Church puts a lot of emphasis on serving poor	30%	41%	41%	43%
Attending church affected my life greatly	20%	23%	28%	33%

This graph was very troubling to me because 1) of the lowness of the percentages for the 18-27 year olds and 2) the troubling numbers are from my generation.  From this data it shows that 18-27 year olds feel less cared for, have felt a real and personal connection with God fewer than older generations, and are largely unaffected by church.  Is this because they are stuck in the middle of older adults and high schoolers?  Do we forget about them?  I am always shocked by churches that do not have a young adult/college ministry because it is obviously such an important thing.

I would encourage you to read the full article, find out what surprises you, and consider where you fit into these statistics.  The answers might surprise you.