Church relevance starts with knowing who you’re reaching
Every church is relevant to someone—but the key question is who. This column explores how a clear understanding of your community’s “sweet spot” shapes ministry choices without changing doctrine or core teaching.
- Relevance is defined by the people a church is actually targeting—intentionally or not.
- Community culture changes what effective ministry looks like, especially across generations and ethnic contexts.
- Megachurches can offer practical lessons on attracting and introducing people to Jesus through timely methods.
By Jerry Harris, Publisher
Who are you relevant to?
Every church is relevant, so to speak. There is a target that every church is reaching, whether accidentally or on purpose. The real question is who are they relevant to? An understanding of who the target presently is will go a long way in determining growth, influence, and the general effectiveness level of the church in its environment. For instance, if a church is targeting people over the age of 65, they will be thinking about using technology to make services accessible for the hearing impaired more than replacing the hymnals. They will change the length of the service in consideration of how long an attender could manage sitting in the pew rather than evaluating attention span. They might resist small groups in favor of Sunday school classes as empty nesters have downsized their home and are more used to peace and quiet.
How age and life stage shape ministry choices
If a church is targeting 18-25-year-olds, choices will again reflect a relevant approach. Smaller more relational environments like a café conducive to meeting new people, self-expression, or establishing intimate relationships fits perfectly. This target will have high expectations of excellence but will not be able to generate the money to achieve them so smaller or rented facilities work best. Many will struggle in ministry commitment as they maintain their mobility, still searching for that perfect fit while following a career path. Programming will need to be simple and transferable to fit into that mobility. Ministries to children, teens, or families would be a lower priority.
Finding the community “sweet spot”
So, the challenge for the church that wants to have maximum effectiveness is to find the sweet spot of that community. Jorge was a student pastor at Christ Fellowship in Miami, Florida. The population in that metropolitan community is primarily Hispanic. I was listening as some of our student pastors were sharing with him at dinner. Jorge related that student ministry in a Hispanic community requires a far different approach than in a primarily white community. Hispanic families in his community are very close knit, sharing most experiences together. When Jorge plans a student event, he has to plan on parents attending and participating. In the Midwest, student pastors and students zealously protect the distance between them and their parents in most programming. When the target changes, the definition of relevance and the approach that follows must change.
Traditions, the “80 percent,” and timeless truth
Since many churches are holding on to their individual or denominational traditions, people who wish to attend them are required to adjust their expectations accordingly. The majority of the community, the 80 percent, doesn’t care about those traditions and will just write them off as out of touch. This is the beginning of finding the sweet spot of relevance for a church. Questions must be asked to find a profile for that 80 percent. If the desire is to bring as many of this 80 percent into an intimate, personal relationship with Christ, they will determine what is relevant, while relevance doesn’t need to have any effect on doctrine or core teaching.
Many Christians have become “institutionalized.” It isn’t that we don’t want to be relevant to people outside the church, we’ve just been out of that world so long we just don’t remember it. Many churches are only growing through the children their young families are having. While being born in the church has some great advantages, one disadvantage is a lack of understanding of the world of the 80 percent.
Learning from megachurches
The Crossing found our sweet spot of relevance more pragmatically than philosophically. We found it in the success of the megachurch. Say what you want about the depth of the megachurch, the fact that they know how to attract people is not disputable. Since attraction and introduction are the first steps in an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus, I considered them the experts on the subject. They had struck a relevant chord in a very large percentage of those 80 percent. Instead of holding an unreasonable expectation that the 80 percent would suddenly and miraculously find interest in the church doing things the way they had always done it, megachurches looked across the board at finding relevant means and methods to package timeless truth. We chose to look at megachurches because they had simply found ways to get people in the door by being relevant to today’s culture.
My next column will explore the specifics of what we might glean from the American megachurch phenomenon for greater relevance.
Author: Jerry Harris
Jerry Harris is publisher of Christian Standard Media and teaching pastor at The Crossing, a multisite church located in three states across the Midwest.
