Reaching out
Posted by Carol Howard Merritt on 17 Jan 2008 at 01:34 pm | Tagged as: church, spirituality
I was working with a pastor who was developing ways to communicate to the young adults in her community. At one point she got stumped. In my book, I talk about the fact that younger generations don’t want their churches marketing to them. We’ve been the targets of marketing strategies all of our lives. Most of us are consumer weary and exhausted.
Frustrated, she asked, “If new generations don’t like marketing, how do we reach out to them?”
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against marketing when we’re getting the word out about a congregation. If you need to let people to know that you’re there, then, by all means, take out advertisements in the newspaper, post handbills at the coffeehouse, host a booth at the county fair, hoist banners in your downtown, and saturate the Internet. Go all out.
It’s just that spreading good news is a whole lot messier than all of that. We need to let people know that the building exists, but we do not need to communicate that we need another warm body in the pew, or another giving unit to meet the budget, or more volunteers for our programs. The most important message is that we care. And there’s no way to convey that message other than doing it. Relaying that depth of interest takes time, and a much deeper, personal investment. Here’s what I try to do, as a pastor.
First, develop the art of storytelling within a community. In our churches, we allow people to form the movement of God into words. The heart of reaching out to people is listening and telling stories. As a pastor, I love hearing different narratives. And I find that some of the deepest moments in our church come when people begin recognize the spiritual struggles in their lives, and then they form them into words. It’s like putting clothes on a ghost–they take these resonant spiritual insights, they identify those points where their lives intersect with God, and they begin to form a vocabulary for those deep stirrings. It’s a powerful process.
Then people learn to tell our community about them. And as they speak, they are forming the story, as the story forms them. The word becomes flesh, and dwells among us, moving about the people. Then the story gets inside of us, and begins to change the way that we see things as well. People get comfortable with their spiritual journey. They have a vocabulary for it. They can talk about it.
Second, listen to the story of your larger community. We do this in different ways: reading the paper, looking at demographics. But nothing’s better than some good, old-fashioned participant observation. Which means you hang out. Eat lunch away from your desk. Write your sermons at the coffee house. Frequent the local bookstore. Take daily walks through the streets surrounding the church. Listen and pray for people. Figure out who’s in your neighborhood, and what they might need.
Third, begin to show the congregation where their stories and the community’s needs intersect. Actually, the members of the church begin to sense this. It’s all very viral. Because soon, people begin to talk to their friends. They can repeat those comfortable and comforting stories. And, the friend will show up. It may take a year after the initial invitation, but she usually does.
If your church is a place where an outsider can slip in the pew for an hour of internal wrestling, if she can mentally question everything that happens, and at the end of it, she knows that’s okay, then the person will attend again. Because, after all, we often talk about the spiritual journey as a matter of “acceptance,” but it’s often much more filled with struggle.
Then, after a good long time, her own story will begin to form in her belly. It’s an extensive, tough, and beautiful process. And one of the great things about being church.
So, what do you do? What have I left out? How do you reach out and form caring connections?
My frustration with folks who say they can’t “reach” young adults, is that usually I find they haven’t actually spoken with them, at least not on a real level.
My young adults are generally under 25–not the full range of ages, so that may be part of it, but generally, they easily smell fear. Pastors that shake their hand afterward with that desperate look of “please come back, please come back, please come back, I’ll buy you a pizza,” kind of freak them out. (And there are dozens of those pastors in this college town.)
They have stories–shorter stories maybe than the senior citizen in the next pew, but short stories count as literature and they count in the church. And the youngest adults (I guess that’s what I’ll call the 18-22 year olds, to distinguish them from the post college, still young adult crowd) have been marketed to their whole lives. One said to me just last week, ” I picked x church because I liked it, and because I liked the pastor. At Y church, which is my pastor dad’s denomination, I felt like they really mostly wanted me to meet their demographic spread.”
TC, this is a really excellent post and one that we are perfectly suited to do in our neighborhood (we’re really situated to be a nighborhood church). Our folks sometimes want to hit the city (of 1.5 million) with radio ads, etc…, but we really need to learn how to put skin on being good neighbors… literally.
I quoted some of this post and linked to it on my blog. Knowing you are an author and seeing below that this material is copyrighted, let me know if that’s not ok and I’ll be glad to remove it.
No, no! I never mind when people link to the blog. That’s the fantastic thing about the Internet–the stew of ideas that comes when we borrow and share from one another. The only reason for the copyright is because I was advised to do it from another writer.
I was told one time that people can steal stuff and then they can copyright it. Then I’d have to ask them if I can use my own material.
Is that true? Neal Locke? Are you out there? Do you know the answer?
I’m off to read your post…
What a great blog? I’m linking you to my site, for sure. How long has your book been out?
Thank you Mike! I appreciate the link. I’ve spent many an hour exploring the sites on your site. The book’s been out for 4 months.
Susan, You’re so right about the smell of fear. And there’s the smell of desperation that’s not very attractive either.
One of our young professionals said that she was going to make a church version of the “Wedding Crashers” because she has so many funny stories to tell.
I would love to see that movie. I think. Or maybe it would just make me cry…
I have enjoyed this post. The perception of the church is that all we want is to get people in the doors for our own purposes. A better way to approach is to show the communities we are in that we genuinely care by getting out and helping in the community, being a part of it instead of isolating ourselves. When we do try to involve ourselves it usually carries some sort of string attached to it so that we can either give a seven course exposition of the gosple or make a pitch for our church. What ever happened to getting involved with the poor, hungry, and needy just because we love and care for our fellow man?
People want to belong to a place where they are wanted and loved, not just another warm body to fill the seat and the offering plate.
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