I met this week with 3 members of the Church of God, who are over their churches in South Carolina. Their questions for me were, “How do we get people to come to church?” They’re experiencing a lot of the “revolving door” – with people coming and people leaving.
So, they’re trying to figure out how to touch the next generation, and it’s going to be an interesting process, because of tradition. One of the things that they talked about was the traditions that exist thorough out all of the churches, and the different types of traditions. Whether it is clothing issues, or music, or whatever, getting people to think in 21st century terms is going to be difficult.
A lot of the churches are very afraid that if they change what they are doing, then they are going to lose the members that they have, and they’re wondering “Will I have a church?” But the question that we have to get them to ask is, “Will we reach the lost?” There certainly are plenty of people out there – I’ve been in Cracker Barrel on Sunday morning and you have to wait in line – so there’s plenty of people out there that need to go to church, but that are not thinking about it at all.
So, I was excited that the Church of God leaders were interested in better ways to reach more people. We’re going to get together – they want to bring a bunch of their pastors in, and I’m going to have a round table discussion with them. I’m having more and more of these round table discussions about church and about what people think about church. I can’t wait to see what happens.
