Yuscaran Honduras

Practical Tips for Creating a Relevant Church

Talk to a lot of people

If your goal is to meet the needs of your community and speak their language so they understand exactly what you’re trying to communicate, then you need to get a true feel for the people you’re reaching out to. To get a true feel, you need to have a large sampling of people (that’s just a rule of statistics).

Go to Starbucks and just chat with people. Go to the park, the mall, etc. and see how people interact.

The more people you talk to, the better.

Just keep in mind that this will only give you a general feel. Many people will be too reserved to tell you their real problems if you don’t know them well. Be aware that if you have an idea for how to reach out to people, but the truth is your idea won’t really do all that much, many people won’t tell you that. They’ll figure you’re a nice guy trying to do a good thing and they’ll feel bad about telling you your idea is a train wreck. That’s why you have the next point…

Talk to only a few people

These few people you talk to are, ideally, new friends from the community that you’ve become very close with. They’re people you see regularly. You socialize together. You eat together. You see movies together. So, when you talk about outreach or service ideas together, they have unparalleled confidence in the relationship and if you have a bad idea, they’ll tell you. They won’t hold back, even if they feel guilty for being so blunt.

The only warning here is that this level of relationship costs a lot in time and effort. It’s absolutely worth it, but there’s no way to achieve this level with a large number of people, so be selective and be intentional.

Know which needs to ignore

One of my long-term dreams is to get involved in a ministry that helps people in Honduras afford their basic necessities and eventually get out of poverty. So, last year I came up with this whole complicated way I could sell water filtration systems that would cost as much per month as buying purified bottled water for 5 people, but could actually produce enough water for 10-15 people.

I pitched the idea to a friend of mine in Honduras to see what she thought. She promptly told me that it would be a good idea to sell to the rich people, but people like her just didn’t have the money to care about drinking clean water.

It was an interesting lesson for me. The truth is, there are some needs your community has that people just don’t care about. They could be pretty important needs, like clean water, but people just don’t care about them.

If you want to be relevant to your community, you have to develop the discernment to only focus on the needs people care about. Granted, many people would put their needs for Jesus in the don’t-care-about category, and in some cases you have to just work at making them care rather than give up. But, you can only persuade them to care about a limited number of things.

Don’t waste your influence on something that doesn’t matter. I’d hate to make everyone care about clean water, then find I’d burned all the bridges needed to get them to care about Jesus.

Discover what environment your community needs

This can be one of the easiest to accomplish, and the hardest to feel comfortable doing. As leaders and administrators and just people who love God, we naturally develop a very strong reverence for God’s house and we can lose sight of what our community needs.

The lost in your community aren’t looking for a place to worship. If they don’t believe in God, why should they be concerned about finding some way to worship Him? What they need is a place that gives them healing, and their joy to be healed causes worship.

They need a place they can feel accepted, and that acceptance leads them to love and worship the God who makes acceptance possible.

Like I said, this can feel weird. But, even Jesus frequently put meeting physical needs above the goal of leading people in worship, because He knew that people won’t love God unless He first loves us. By putting more emphasis on loving others, we open the doors to the church and bring people in. Being in church is more important in the long run, but we must put all our effort into opening the doors before we can accomplish anything else.

So don’t be afraid to think outside the box about what people in your community are looking for, and provide it. There are naturally going to be some things that just aren’t acceptable. But, the majority of needs people are looking to meet can be reduced to something only God can provide (true love, mercy, grace, forgiveness, etc.), and when God provides, people worship.

About the Author

Trevor works for Excellerate church management software, which is is a cutting-edge system designed to help today’s growing churches operate at their best. Successful churches know the importance of being good stewards of the people God has given them, so Excellerate provides tools that help them do their very best in all areas of ministry.

For more information about Excellerate, visit www.excellerate.com

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