A group of us spent an awesome couple of days at the Velocity 2010 Conference at Mountain Lake Church. It was my second time to this conference. I learned so much, and came back with my head just SWIMMING with stuff to process.
One of the single biggest things that really stuck with me was something that Alan Hirsch, one of the speakers talked about while we were there. He gave a long, highly intellectual, academic discussion about who the church really reaching with the Gospel… He had studied and studied, and had come up with some very interesting results.
Alan stated that in our culture in the United States today, “The Church” has a pretty clearly defined target: people who are LIKE THEM. Most churches fit within a clearly established “norm,” with similar dynamics of family, socio-economic context, style, and other factors. In other words, the way we “do church” really appeals to a CERTAIN group of people within our population. His calculations put this group at around 40% of the whole. Churches are “attractional” to this group. We attract approximately FORTY percent of the population… Those that are similar to us. ALL churches do this.
In other words, ALL churches are working hard to try to attract the SAME 40% of our population… Which means that NOBODY is fighting for the OTHER SIXTY! Are you serious??? Can that really be true?
It really made our group head back to the hotel and question what we are really all about, and who we are trying to reach.
What we discovered is that in reality, we don’t need to be just planting “a church.” We need to be planting THE GOSPEL. THE GOSPEL RESULTS in the church. It isn’t that the Church has a mission… The MISSION has a church! We are the result of the Gospel being planted, and our job is to plant the Gospel.
So, in our community, WHO IS the “Other Sixty?” How can we plant The Gospel for these people? We’ve got some great ideas, and we even have some things going on already… Do you have any thoughts on that? Email me!