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It’s getting harder to reach the unchurched

Knowing how to connect with those who have chosen to ignore churches, how to successfully invite them to engage with a community of faith, is a challenge that eludes simple, step-by-step solutions, according to George Barna and David Kinnaman in their book Churchless: Understanding Today’s Unchurched and How to Connect With Them. The authors aim to provide insights that enable churches to create deeper, more enduring relationships with unchurched people, leading to their positive introduction to and lasting relationship with a Christian community of faith.

The book is based on data from a number of surveys conducted in the US by the Barna Group between 2008 and 2014. According to the 2014 figures, 47% of American adults are “actively churched”, 8% “minimally churched”, 35% “de-churched” and 12% “purely unchurched”. Most readers will be unsurprised to learn that secularism is on the rise and churchgoing is losing its role as a normative part of American life.

What can churches to do win back the unchurched? Unfortunately the list of strategies and tactics that do not work corresponds fairly closely with what churches actually try to do: direct mail, TV advertising, unsolicited phone calls, billboard advertising, sermons on CDs, etc. The things most likely to succeed were: older adults who provide life lessons to younger adults, helping the needy in the community, and interesting public events that are hosted by the church.

To reach unchurched people, you need to understand how they think and what their priorities are, which is why this type of book is useful. However, it seems to me that cultural diversity is becoming too great to allow any particular generalisations to be drawn about the characteristics and preferences of “the unchurched”.