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Gospel Opportunities Right Outside Your Door

By Ed Stetzer

“Good fences make good neighbors.”

Published in 1914, Robert Frost’s famous “Mending Wall” is a classic American poem. Every year, middle school students are tasked with memorizing it and high school students with explaining it. In it, Frost tells the story of two neighbors rebuilding a wall between their two farms. Reflecting on the fact that each year they have to rebuild the same fence as nature persistently tears it down, one of the farmers says “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.” Yet each time, the other neighbor merely responds that “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Few people will confuse me with a poet, but this poem has stuck with me. So many people have bought into this thinking, believing that the optimal neighborhood is one where people stay on their side of the fence. We chose safety and stability of carving out our spot instead of the unknown and difficulty task of developing relationship. Fences are meant to free us from actually engaging our neighbor, that’s what makes them good.

A common realization of COVID-19 that many have had is that this view is antithetical to our gospel mission. Stuck close to home, we’ve been awakened to these people who live on our street or in our apartment building. Suddenly, those we previously had tried desperately to ignore became a lifeline for human connection. Underneath this realization is a central truth: engaging your community begins with engaging those around you.

God has placed you in your neighborhood or your apartment complex for a reason. He has given you a mission field to build his kingdom by showing and sharing the love of Jesus with those around you. In response, I want to offer three practices Christians should consider in tearing down these fences and engaging their communities with the gospel of Jesus.

1. Submit your Friendships

When I was young in ministry I received one of the most important pieces of advice I ever received: Submit your friendships to the kingdom.

Most people can only have a certain number of friendships in life at any given time. If you want to truly reach your neighbors you need to be willing to make those people your friends. Instead, Christian too often want to engage their neighbors but only to a certain point. They want to reserve their friend slots for church or work. Their neighbors are merely acquaintances, people they just happen to live close to. Yet if you want to engage our community effectively and see lasting fruit you need to be willing to give your time, energy, and affection to your neighbors.

Within this season of COVID-19, this requires intentionality. While I’m thankful for digital technology, our dependence on it this season has the unintended consequence is that many people have allowed opportunities to make connections to slip through the cracks. My point is simple: if you want to grow in this area, now more than ever, this requires purposefully focusing on maintaining connections in your community.

2. Map the Neighborhood

In Christians in the Age of Outrage, I recount a story of when my wife, Donna, and I became convicted over how we were failing to reach our neighbors. We had moved to the neighborhood with grand plans to show and share the love of Christ to those around us but for a host of reasons we hadn’t made much headway.

In talking through what we should do, I remember getting out a piece of paper and drawing a map of our neighborhood:

We drew a diagram of the streets and cross streets, and began to fill it in with everything we knew about each neighbor. Our intention was to be mindful of all the people in the immediate proximity of our house. We wrote down the names of eight of our nearest neighbors who didn’t know Christ. We started to find excuses for our kids to play together. We hosted cookouts and Super Bowl parties, and then we started a Bible study. With every trial, success, and crisis came the opportunity to preach the gospel. Avoiding the “Christianese” that can obscure the gospel, we would emphasize that only in Jesus can we find fulfillment for those most common desires of the human heart—to be known, loved, and valued. Several people attended, and over a year, we saw a key couple in the neighborhood trust Christ, be baptized, and start leading a Bible study in their home.

Drawing a map of the neighborhood was a way of crystalizing our community as a mission field. Reaching our neighborhood can be very abstract until you begin to understand who lives where and what is going on in their lives.

Mapping our neighborhood helped us to visually understand that these people were our neighbors. They weren’t just people who lived near us, they were real people with real lives that we were called to show and share the love of Jesus to while we lived among them. It made us speak and act in concrete terms rather than in the abstract.

In essence, mapping out our neighborhood challenged us truly know the scope of our community.

3. Lead with the Table

Christians can’t expect to make inroads in their neighborhoods and in their broader community if they believe evangelism and mission only takes place at the front door. One of my close friends and fellow pastor once told me, “You can’t say someone’s a friend until they’ve sat at your dinner table.”

In exploring the importance of hospitality in Scripture, Joshua Jipp offers this important definition:

Hospitality is the act or process whereby the identity of the stranger is transformed into that of guest. While hospitality often uses the basic necessities of life such as the protection of one’s home and the offer of food, drink, conversation, and clothing, the primary impulse of hospitality is to create a safe and welcoming place where a stranger can be converted into a friend.

This is a powerful definition for Christians seeking to engage their communities. Hospitality is a primary way we convert strangers into friends. The vulnerability and intimacy of welcoming others into space that society is increasingly telling us to guard, tells them that we value both them as human beings and the opportunity to be in relationship with them.

Obviously, creating any sort of social connection can be challenging in our pandemic world. Yet, if you just look outside your door, God may open your eyes to the work He has already been doing in the houses or apartments you pass by every day. The burden will be upon you to think creatively about how to bring them into your “socially distanced” space. You could have a bonfire, offer to buy groceries or other necessities, or even just go on a walk.

God is already at work in the hearts and minds of those around you, and He invites all of us to join in with Him. In this season, let yourself be surprised by how the small act of opening your home, and offering your time, can open people’s hearts to hear the gospel of Jesus.

Home > Blog > Five Ways to Know Your Community

Five Ways to Know Your Community

By Jason Daye

If your church wants to be effective at building bridges into your community, then you must have a good understanding of your local community. Where are you? Who lives around you? What are their backgrounds? What are their concerns? What is the DNA of the neighborhood in which God has called you to serve?

Every church serves in a unique context, so you must know the community around you. Without this understanding, your church shouldn’t rush outreach efforts. If you jump ahead, you will likely waste time, energy, effort, and resources if you do not first understand the people around you.

Here are five ways to get to know your community.

1. Talk to local school principals, counselors, and teachers.

In one church I served, an elementary school was across the street. Not long after I moved to the area, I scheduled a meeting with the principal and counselors. In that meeting I not only introduced myself but also asked a lot of questions about the community.

2. Interview people in the neighborhood.

Talking to those around who gather in areas around your church will help you to better understand what people in your neighborhood are thinking and feeling. I have a friend in Chicago whose church members talk to people at bus stops. These conversations open doors for people to share their needs and struggles and provides your church the opportunity to show that you care about your community.

3. Talk to other pastors and ministry leaders in your area.

Often, insecurities, competition, and a lack of trust keep pastors and churches from meeting and partnering together. Don’t let that be the case for your church. Meet with these pastors and ministry leaders and find ways that you can lock arms to better share the hope of Jesus Christ in your community. This also allows you the opportunity to glean from the experience and knowledge of those who may have been in the community longer than you.

4. Do a demographics study.

These studies provide a snapshot of your neighborhood. You can find all kinds of statistics online or hire an organization to compile this information for your area. Significant data that influences your church’s outreach to your community includes marital and family status, income and education levels, ethnic backgrounds, and crime rates.

5. Talk to community leaders.

Like those who serve in schools and individuals in your neighborhood, community leaders have great insight into the needs of your area. Their insight can help your church uncover some of the best ways to serve your community.

It is essential that you know who it is that God has called your church to serve. Take the time to first know them before you jump into outreach efforts.

Adapted from Engaging in Community Outreach. Check out this FREE course on Ministry Grid!

Jason Daye is the Vice President of Mobilization at Outreach Inc.

By Drew Hyun: Over the past 40 years, the Christian church in America has been deeply impacted by the attractional church movement, a movement that emphasized for churches to be relatable and effective in reaching the unchurched. These attractional churches conducted services and programs in such a way that people would be “attracted” to church.

As a result, today we have many churches across many denominations and backgrounds that look a lot like Willow Creek or Saddleback, two churches that helped usher in this attractional church model that so many have implemented to more effectively reach people for Christ. Many church plant strategies heavily emphasize the attractional church model and for good reason; we’d all especially love to have people attracted to our churches rather than repelled by them!

But frankly, a church plant without as many resources has a hard time being as attractional as they’d like to be, mostly because of limited time, energy, and resources (both financial and human).

How can a church plant be more attractional with such limited resources?

Our Context in New York City

To share a little context, we live and minister in New York City, a city where there are a plethora of attractional gatherings, from music to art to fashion to film, that vie for people’s’ attention. Meanwhile, even the large churches in NYC are well known for their amazing music (like The Brooklyn Tabernacle and Hillsong NYC) or their once-in-a-generation preachers (like Tim Keller and AR Bernard).

How in the world can a church plant in NYC be as attractional as any of the above?

Three Essentials for an Attractional Church

When we start new churches in NYC, I encourage our church planters to think missional/incarnational and attractional. We should intentionally be living out both manners of outreach for our unchurched friends, family, and neighbors.

When it comes to being an attractional church, I know we can likely never be as “excellent” or maybe even as talented as some of the larger churches in our area. But I truly believe one word changes the game when it comes to starting an attractional community in the city.

It’s the word presence.

The Presence of Transcendent Worship

First, does our community have the presence of transcendent worship?

We don’t have to have the bells and whistles or the perfect stage environment or the best musicians. We simply need worshippers who aren’t faking it. If we can cultivate communities that inspire awe, wonder, and worship of God, then a space can immediately become attractive by its sense of transcendence, that people authentically and passionately believe in God and will cry out to Him in worship.

This is not to say that excellence shouldn’t be present (because it should), but it is to say that the presence of transcendent worship supersedes any cosmetic forms of worship.

Here are a couple of questions I often ask:

• Are our gatherings inspiring transcendent worship, everything from welcome to singing to preaching to liturgy?
• Are people not only hearing about God, are they experiencing God?

I truly believe that skeptics and seekers today are attracted to transcendent worship, and I think church plants should focus on cultivating this heart first, before working on some of the “forms” of attractive worship environments.

The Presence of a Loving Community

The second essential for an attractional church is the presence of a loving community. Building a loving community doesn’t necessarily take massive amounts of financial resources to build. Instead, the very opposite can be true!

The questions I ask when it comes to our environments are:

• Do people enjoy being there with each other?
• Do people linger to eat together, pray together, laugh together, and cry together?

This is why I believe the launch process is so important. It’s a time to really build a loving community.

There have been times when our church launched too soon, and I think it was because we had all the programs of our ministry in place, but we didn’t have the soul of friendship. There’s something incredibly sticky about a community that lingers in environments due to love, and this love is not easy to build, but it’s cultivated with “time, togetherness, talking, and tacos” (another phrase we often use).

The Presence of a Loving Community in a Neighborhood

There’s something awfully attractive about people who are generous with their time, energy, and resources, particularly for people beyond their huddle.

I truly believe these three elements of presence are our most powerful tools toward being attractional. We might not have the best preaching or the best music or the best family environments (although we’ll certainly work hard on these), but if we have presence, we have something far more attractive than anything this world may offer.

By Ed Stetzer: One of the biggest issues in our culture is race relations. I write about it often, and the latest #Charlottesville incident reminds us of the brokenness we face in this area.

One of the biggest knocks on the Church is that 11:00 on Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour in America. There is no reason to argue it. Neither should that fact cause us to change everything we do to make it untrue. I’m not defending the reality, and I do understand that there are many reasons for it. But it is also encouraging that many churches are trying to overcome that history.

However, I also know that there is a strong movement to help us not be defined by ‘white church’ and ‘black church’ labels. There are many good people reaching across ethnic and color lines to help the Church become as diverse as the many types of people God created. There are challenges for sure. But these challenges can be met and dealt with successfully.

When we talk about churches becoming more multicultural, I’m not here to shame anyone. I get that many Anglo churches are filled with angst because they are “too white,” but that can be good or bad. The fact is, some churches are in communities that are not very diverse. A church is not primarily responsible for how multicultural its neighborhood is, but it is responsible for how kingdom-minded it is. So what does it look like to make a healthy cultural shift away from who you are to who you can be?

Notice the Neighborhood

The goal is not to meet a quota.

It is to meet the expectations God has for us. In some ways, that expectation varies from local body to local body. But it seems fair to suggest that the Church should have a goal to reflect its local community—not because it has to, but because it wants to. So, as we go forward, it is important to understand that the move to multicultural Christian community is not something we achieve because we are forcing it, but because we realize the force in it.

It starts with a church being like its neighborhood. But, if possible, it is good to be morediverse than your neighborhood.

It affirms the value of the diversity God has created. It says that we are not satisfied to simply be around people like ourselves. We expect missionaries to engage in partnerships with various cultures. Well, our mission starts in our communities. So we should ‘go’, even if the going is in Jerusalem.

Push beyond what naturally occurs, and watch what God will do.

Become a Welcoming and Understanding Community

One of the things we should recognize is the dynamics of a congregation or gathering of people.

What is a person thinking, hearing, or seeing when he or she walks into a church? The first thing most people do when they walk into a church and look around is ask, “Is there anyone like me here?” That is a natural human question.

If the person is young, he or she is probably looking for young people. If he or she is a parent, they are likely looking for families. If he or she is a person of color, they are looking for people who look like them. You may say that doesn’t sound very spiritual. I’m not saying it is right or wrong. I’m saying it is true. And we all do it.

Years ago, I visited a very large all-black church. I looked around out of curiosity, “Are there any white people here?” There weren’t. But what was great was someone came up to me and said, “Listen, the pastor makes sure we welcome all kinds of people. We want to welcome you.”

At that point, I knew a bit how African-Americans feel when they visit Anglo churches, though there are many other issues at work when it is reversed.

So, as we realize how people are wired, it becomes important for us to not create an environment that is naturally off-putting. If we want to minister in our community, it is a good idea to look like our community so people in the community feel at home when they enter our church. Part of this happens when your church enters the community. Build relationships with people across the diverse lines in your neighborhood.

Hire Leadership Who Reflect Your Values

If you want to be diverse, it’s important to build a multicultural team. If your church is not large enough to hire staff, you can still develop a diverse group of leaders.

What you celebrate, you become. If you celebrate diversity in your leadership, it will be reflected in your pews. So hire well.

But don’t bring someone on just because he or she is the right ethnicity or color. It takes a lot more than that. And some people, Anglo or people of color, just don’t want to work to be in a multicultural setting, and they won’t help you—you need people who value that diversity and want to work for the kingdom value that a multicultural church expresses.

Look for bridge builders who are willing to learn to relate to people of different cultures and contexts.

You need leaders who value diversity, but not just that, they have to value reconciliation, which helps us undergird diversity.

One final note there: It is also important to remember that many minority-majority churches are so because they can’t become multicultural. Sometimes it’s a choice that those of us in the majority need to respect.

It’s not like most African-American churches are sitting around wishing they had more white people in their lives. Many enjoy a historic spiritual and cultural heritage in their church because, for many years, that is where their community has been enriched, empowered, and educated. It is where their leaders were recognized and appreciated. This is true in several minority communities. Many do not want to lose that heritage by trying to become more diverse. Many also live their lives in majority culture and need a safe place where they can express the sides of themselves that don’t get affirmed in the broader culture. Or else they may lose those valued parts of their culture and identity and history.

That’s worthy of our respect even as we seek to become more diverse.

Always Focus on the Big Mission

There are many dynamics at play when it comes to growing in cultural diversity within a church. None of these factors should overwhelm the mission of the Church, which is to be God’s reconciling agent in a fallen world. But in that reconciling of humans to God, there should always be a part that is focused on reconciling human to human. In a way, it is the natural outcome of a renewed human.

This movement to open up the Church to a multicultural face is the visual expression of what happens in the heart when God heals our land. It should not be used to beat down those who are less diverse. Rather, it can be a great way to build the family and reach the lost. After all, if the redeemed can reach across the gulf to reconcile with the lost, certainly we can join hearts and arms with those who have a little more or less melanin than we do, right?