Survey: Projects help sell churches
A new survey by LifeWay Research shows that people who don’t go to church are open to helping out with community service projects or attending concerts and sports events at a house of worship.
What they aren’t so interested in is attending a worship service.
The findings are part of a survey of 2,000 “unchurched” Americans that was conducted in partnership with the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College in Illinois. For the survey, the “unchurched” were individuals who hadn’t attended a worship service in the past six months, except for a wedding, special event, funeral or holiday observance. The margin of error is no more than plus or minus 2.7 percent.
Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research, a Nashville, Tenn.-based evangelical research firm, said being “unchurched” doesn’t mean individuals aren’t religious or have no connection to the Christian faith. The survey showed that two-thirds of those surveyed identified themselves as Christians. Of those surveyed, 62 percent said they attended church regularly as a child and now 32 percent of them say that they are nonreligious.
When it comes to what will get them to church, the survey shows that the majority, 61 percent, would be likely or extremely likely to attend an event at a local Christian church designed to make their neighborhood safer. Fifty-one percent said the same about participating in a church-sponsored community service project.
On the other hand, 66 percent said they were unlikely or extremely unlikely to attend a worship service, and 74 percent said the same about participating in a small group for people curious about God.
More than half of the unchurched in the survey said it’s important to find “their deeper purpose in life” but they are less concerned about whether they’ll go to heaven. Forty-three percent said they never think about what will happen when they die. So the standard evangelism question — “If you died tonight, would you go to heaven?” — might not be as effective, McConnell said.
More than three-quarters of those surveyed said they don’t mind if their religious friends talk about their faith. They are simply indifferent to organized religion, McConnell said.
“Unchurched Americans aren’t hostile to faith,” he said. “They’ve not seen the value of being part of a church.”
One statistic that McConnell found striking was that only one-third of those surveyed said that a Christian had ever talked with them about why their faith matters and what it means to be a Christian.
“If this Christian faith really is good news and if it’s valuable enough to change your life, why wouldn’t you [talk about it]?” he said. “They need to hear the value of why they need to be involved.”
McConnell said the survey shows that churches need to change the way they talk to the unchurched if they want to make a connection. For example, personally inviting them to a community service project might be more successful than sending out fliers inviting them to worship services.
“They are not opposed to learning about the Christian faith, so in the context of doing something good together, Christians would have the opportunity to share the reason for their faith,” he said. “That’s the biggest failure — finding that opportunity, the appropriate opportunity, to share that good news.”