Church community outreach that changes culture
This column explores how churches can engage culture by reaching people who have drifted from church and by focusing on making disciples rather than measuring backgrounds. Leaders describe practical ways congregations serve beyond their walls, from schools and shelters to clinics and campus-adjacent spaces. The emphasis is on doing what looks like Jesus’ work in the community.
- Disciple-making matters more than tracking “never-churched” percentages.
- Many churches engage culture by going to people and serving tangible needs.
- Churches can help shape culture through servant leadership and spiritually inspired creativity.
By Mark A. Taylor
This column last week spoke of changing culture by changing the lives of those who never before knew Jesus. But how does the contemporary church get outside itself truly to impact the society around it?
Reaching the unchurched and the de-churched
When pressed to guess what percentage of their new members are totally unchurched, ministers’ estimates range from “very few” to as high as 50 percent. Bob Mink at Discovery Christian Church, Moreno Valley, California, for example, says those they reach usually attended church sometime, but long ago. “We see our ministry as reclaiming them and/or recalling them to the Lord and his people.” The same is true at Southeast Christian Church, Louisville, Kentucky, according to Jack Webster, outreach minister.
Brian Jones at Christ’s Church of the Valley outside Philadelphia has quit worrying about the percentage of never-churched converted there. “I think the real question is whether our church is making disciples out of our visitors, regardless of their church attendance history. Who cares if we attract someone to our church with zero church background if all we do is create a nominal, spiritually complacent church attendee out of them?”
Tim Harlow at Parkview Christian Church, Orland Park, Illinois, would probably agree. “I think the same thing attracts the unchurched as it does many other believers from other dead churches,” he said. “People want to see someone doing something that looks like what Jesus would do if he were here.”
Serving beyond the church walls
That’s a theme repeated by many. “We’ve engaged our culture by going to them,” says Jon Weece at Southland Christian Church, Lexington, Kentucky. The church has adopted two elementary schools, for example, and is in the process of opening the first of three free medical clinics in Lexington.
Connection Pointe Christian Church of Brownsburg, Indiana, is “absolutely committed to being a church actively serving outside our church walls,” says minister Steve Reeves, citing their work at homeless shelters, local parks, and other urban environments. And Sherwood Oaks Christian Church in Bloomington, Indiana, hopes to start a coffee house on the edge of the Indiana University campus, according to Tom Ellsworth, minister.
“There was a time when churches were known for helping the poor, the sick, and the disenfranchised,” said Dick Alexander at LifeSpring Christian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio. “When we return our focus to binding up the broken, the gospel will again get a hearing and the culture will change from the bottom up.”
Creating culture instead of reacting to it
Dave Ferguson at Community Christian Church, Naperville, Illinois, has an even broader vision. “The best way to penetrate the culture is to create the culture and not react to it,” he said. “The church was designed by Jesus to set the pace in cultural transformation, servant leadership, and spiritually inspired art! When we do that we will be creating the culture, and the world will respond to us.”
Author: Mark A. Taylor
Mark A. Taylor, who served as Christian Standard editor from 2003 to 2017, retired in June 2017 after almost 41 years with Standard Publishing (Christian Standard Media).
