Rose and I went to a Twins/Mariners game a couple months back. It was the first professional baseball game she had ever been too. In the middle of the 7th inning everyone stood up and started singing along to a song she had never heard in her life. It was quite humorous seeing how confused she was about what was going on (and for those of you who don’t know baseball stuff, this picture above probably makes no sense either).
It is scary to me to begin thinking about how many of those experiences an unchurched individual has while going to church for the first time. Most churches around the world aren’t growing, and I think a major reason for this is because we do church to reach the churched believer, not the unchurched unbeliever.
There are parts of the seeker-sensitive church movement that need to die, but there are parts we need to keep around. Thinking about how church would feel to the unchurched is one of those things we should simply never stop thinking about.
Here are two of my favorite Andy Stanley quotes on this topic:
“Evaluating our churches through the eyes & ears of the unchurched is both necessary & painful.”
“One of the reasons churches see decline is because they love their model more than the unchurched & unsaved.”
What does your church do that likely doesn’t make any sense to the unchurched?
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