Calvary Church Planting Network

Mark Driscoll is the controversial pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. Although I haven’t listened to much of his teaching, what I have listened to has been very solid theologically. I had had his book, ‘Confessions of a Reformissional Rev.’ recommended to me on many occasions. When I finally bought it, I must say that I enjoyed reading it. He is funny and sarcastic and brash. I’m from New Jersey so I appreciate all the elements involved. There was something that he wrote on page 101 of that book that really got me thinking.

In speaking of reaching out as a church, he asked,

1) Who we are reaching out with?
2) Who are we reaching out to?
3) How will we reach out?

These three questions are just brilliant as it helps to focus a church planter in fulfilling their calling. Oftentimes, we make outreach decisions not based on ‘reality’ (which is what these three questions lead us to), but on some past experiences. We often do outreach the way we saw the churches that we were apart of do it. But it often doesn’t translate.

Let’s look at each one:

1) Who we are reaching out with?

Who do you have to do outreach. Oftentimes church planters ‘burn out’ their new fellowship by trying to do something too big with too few people. The people feel burdened to do too much and often they feel that the outreach was unsuccessful in light of the energy exerted. This is the business principle of ‘over promising and under delivering’. It never goes well.

Be honest with yourself. Who do you have who will help? What are their giftings? A good leader and church planter will harness the gifts that the people have and use them for the furtherance of the gospel in your community.

Let me give you an example. I minister in Marin County, California. In Mill Valley, people are serious about their bike riding. Excuse me, their cycling! They get all done up to go out on their bikes. I realize that a cycling ministry in Mill Valley could potentially not only produce fruit, but would also get our name out in our community. I want a cycling ministry. But the problem is, at six months into this church plant, we don’t have any riders in the fellowship. So it would be silly, at this juncture, to do a cycling outreach when none of us even own a good road bike.

2) Who are we reaching out to?

I find this to be the hardest point to really understand for church planters. Who are the people that you are trying to reach? How do they think? What are they concerned about? Oftentimes a Christian’s idea of outreach is to get a cool Christian band and a good Christian speaker. But what is funny is that, most times, only Christians want to hear a good Christian band and a speaker. When the last time one of your unsaved friends came to you and said, “Hey do you want to go hear this lecture?” I thought so. The apostle Paul in Acts 17 met the Athenians where they were at. We need to do the same. We need to know and understand our intended audience.

To further my example, where I minister in Marin, it is one of the richest counties in the entire country. As I said the people love their outdoors activities. I am ministering to predominately affluent, upper class families. Most of the time both parents work high stress jobs for a prime salary. It’s is common for the men to be significantly older than their wives. Oftentimes this means that you have men in their mid to late forties having young children. They are politically liberal (as left as it gets) and are more ‘new age’ than in most areas. They are a sophisticated group, preferring jazz, wine and cheese. We need to know our target audience.

3) How will we reach out?

This third question is the outgrowth of the answers to the first two questions. Once you know who you have to be reaching out and you understand who your target audience is, now the question is, ‘How will you try and reach them?”

Now with my example, knowing everything that I have shared about Marin County, it is not hard to see why trying to do an indie rock outreach doesn’t make much sense. Because of the population of Marin love the outdoors so much, we have an earlier Sunday morning service (9 am). We realize that if we do church later in the morning people would less likely come as it would cut into their outdoors time. We also do a more elegant style of decoration at the church. We often have fresh flowers on our information table. Our approach to evangelism incorporates the people’s openness to ‘spiritual things’ and seeks to point to Jesus.

Conclusion

I have found that these three questions help to focus the outreach ministry of a church. When you understand the reality of who you have to reach out with and who you are trying to reach, then you can tailor the ministry to the specific people group that God has called you to.