Some are offering Christianity 101 courses, both to introduce newcomers to basic Christian teachings and to prepare church members to explain better what they believe to other people. Some remind people they can never evangelize much if they only get to know people who already go to church.
Some congregations send people out to work on behalf of the poor and the struggling, hoping their hands-on caring can be a witness to their faith.
And some are trying to create an atmosphere that lets people know that here is a place where questions about faith and belief are tolerated — that you can have questions and doubts, and still be welcome in the conversation. They talk about the Bible as a book for life, a valuable guide for people faced with real-world problems. As Scott Kinder-Pyle, co-pastor of a new church development in the northwest suburbs of Philadelphia, put it: “There has to be a sense that this biblical material interacts with life’s big questions.”
To start with, though, many Presbyterian churches are learning through painful experience that they cannot assume that people will just show up. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) continues to lose members like water through a colander — down another 34,871 in 2000, the last year for which statistics are available. And many PC(USA) congregations are small. About 7,300 of the denomination’s 11,200 congregations have 100 members or fewer, and many have had to ask tough questions about what they need to do to grow or even to survive.
A recent national survey of religious affiliation found that about three out of four Americans do consider themselves to be Christian — with 52 percent of American adults identifying themselves as Protestant or members of other non-Catholic denominations and 24.5 percent as Catholic. But the percentage of those identifying themselves as Christian dropped, from 86 percent when the survey first was conducted in 1990, to 77 percent in the follow-up survey last year.
And one of the biggest gains came in the group who said they identified with no religion at all — that number doubled, from 14.3 million people (8 percent) in 1990 to 29.4 million (14.1 percent) in 2001.
The American Religious Identification Survey, released by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, was based on random telephone interviews conducted from February to June 2001 of more than 50,000 adults. Extrapolating from those results, the number of people in the U.S. who identify with a non-Christian religion increased from 5.8 million in 1990 (3.3 percent) to 7.7 million in 2001 (3.7 percent), including 2.8 million who identified themselves as Jewish and 1.1 million as Muslim.
While the survey did find decreases in the percentages of American adults who consider themselves Christian, there were two distinct areas of growth since 1990: among evangelical Christians and non-denominational Christians. About 16 percent of American adults — 33 million people — had changed their religious identification at some point. And less than half of one percent of people surveyed identified themselves as atheists — much lower than the number who said they did not identify with any particular religion.
Presbyterians committed to evangelism say that’s one of the lessons they’ve learned: that just because people don’t go to church, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not interested in spirituality or faith or religion. But often, people involved with churches are unwilling to take the first step, to initiate the conversation.
Robert Shettler, minister of evangelism at First church, Orlando, Fla., eats breakfast most mornings at a bagel shop near his home. Why does he do it? By hanging out there, “that’s a group of people outside the church that I have become friends with,” he said — employees and other “regulars” who chat with him routinely and invite him to birthday parties and share their troubles when life get tough.
It’s what some people call “relationship evangelism” — making connections one-on-one, gradually building friendships and trust, seeing evangelism as “a process, not a one-time event,” Shettler said.
Some people don’t do it because “It’s hard work and it takes time,” he said. And some Christians are reluctant to talk publicly about what they believe, afraid they won’t have the right answers to people’s questions, uncomfortable trying to approach someone who may have their own beliefs or be critical of organized religion and questioning of God.
“That’s a problem we have in Christianity across the country — sometimes we’re so isolated from the world we’re supposed to be reaching,” Shettler said. But with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, “people are more open to talk about faith now than ever.”
Some also say that effective evangelism is linked with real spiritual depth — with people who take seriously prayer and Bible study, who belong to communities of faith-sharing, whose lives have been transformed by their own experience of God. These are not Christians who just show up on Sundays and go through the motions. They want people to know what can happen, how everything can change, when someone dedicates life to following God.
Evangelism works when “you have testimonies of everyday, regular people talking about what Jesus Christ has meant to them,” said Joseph Woods, who leads congregational renewal workshops for Presbyterians for Renewal, an evangelical group. “It’s not uncommon for many of us to go tell someone about a movie we like or a new restaurant in town . . . . Why is it we’re so unwilling to talk about Jesus Christ?”
Often, people don’t share their faith because they’re worried about offending others, said Sheryl Kinder-Pyle, who, with her husband, Scott, is co-pastor of Crossroads church, which was started in 1996 by Philadelphia Presbytery as a new church development in a growing suburb of Philadelphia.
“I want to say to people, ‘Are you more afraid about offending people or offending God?” Sheryl Kinder-Pyle said. “If God has been doing all these amazing things and showing us grace and we are keeping that quiet — that’s an offense to God.”
Six years after it started, Crossroads is still searching for ways to connect with people who may not already be plugged into a church. Most Sundays, about 140 people come to worship with Crossroads at an elementary school gymnasium; many of them are young families and single people. The church’s Web site leads with a quote from journalist Bill Moyers: “The most interesting story of our time . . . is emerging in the intersection between the secular and the sacred.”
At Crossroads, what that means in practice is a serious message, but presented using images and music that young people find familiar. “The worship we’re trying to offer has some traditional elements, but it intersects with the popular culture” Scott Kinder-Pyle said. In preaching recently on the Ten Commandments, for example, he planned to lead into a discussion of the meaning of covenant with a clip from a Mel Brooks film, where Moses comes down from the mountain carrying 15 commandments, then drops one of the tablets and breaks it, ending up with 10.
Crossroads also encourages people to talk about the basics of faith, Scott said — things such as “Why do we believe the Bible?” or “Who do we say Jesus is? How is that divinity-humanity thing put together?”
To get people to share their own faith, he said, “You start to suggest . . . that we don’t have the truth. The truth has us.” So it’s okay if people don’t have all the answers yet or are confronted with “life’s ambiguity.” That kind of approach — in small faith-building groups where people feel comfortable being authentic with one another — will make room for people who didn’t grow up in church or who went but didn’t really connect, “who are scared they don’t have it all together,” but are willing to give Christianity another shot.
Some congregations also are going out into the streets, intentionally trying to introduce their church to people.
Last summer, for example, Sheryl and Scott invited the pastors and spouses from seven other new churches in their area, many of them from nondenominational or loosely-affiliated associations, over to their home for dessert. They talked strategy and ideas — how to advertise, where to find meeting space, when to hold Vacation Bible School. To get the word out about their churches in the community, they came up with a plan for passing out water bottles at a nearby soccer league, where about 400 children play each Saturday, and divided the weeks among the different churches.
First church, Orlando — a 5,500-member downtown congregation — last September sponsored CityReach, a four-day evangelistic push inspired in part by Matthew 22:9: “Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet everyone you find.”
Although some research suggests that more people would come to church if someone would only invite them, many feel reluctant to ask someone to come to their church, afraid they might seem pushy. In some congregations, people think “we’ve been on this corner for 50 years, people know we’re here. If they want to come, they will,” said Doug Wilson, associate for Presbyterian evangelism with the PC(USA).
And some congregations think of themselves as friendly — they greet the same people warmly week after week — but they might not bother even to say hello to someone they don’t know. Wilson spoke to a seminary student who told him: “I went to the same church four Sundays in a row, and the only person who spoke to me was the pastor.”
CityReach was “a dream of some of our elders,” an event similar to an old-fashioned revival, Shettler said. Working with a nearby Baptist congregation, the church brought in some big-name Christian speakers (among them Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ, Franklin Graham and evangelists E.V. Hill and Robert Schuller from California); offered concerts by Sundry and other contemporary Christian musicians; set up a special outreach for the homeless; closed off the street in front of the church and set up big screens for those who wanted to sit outside and watch. Over four days, about 18,000 people came; about 100 people dedicated their lives to Jesus Christ and another 300 made recommitments, meeting one-on-one with about 200 trained decision counselors from the church. About 450 volunteers from the church helped with the event and 500 “prayer partners” prayed for CityReach for a year before it happened.
While First church is a big church with considerable resources, smaller churches can try many of the same techniques, Shettler said. For example, they can:
• make a deliberate effort to invite people to come to worship or other activities at church;
• train people from the church to help guide others to knowledge of Jesus Christ;
• have Bibles ready to hand out to people who might want or need them;
• pray for people they know who are not Christians and show them that faith is a part of their lives. For example, when a co-worker is having a hard time, offer to help and promise that “I’ll pray for you;”
• schedule something geared for beginning Christians — from a “What do we believe” class to a special revival speaker. It doesn’t have to be a big name, Shettler said. Just “bring your friends and begin to share the gospel.”
For First church, Orlando, the next step will be to set up neighborhood groups — finding a way to let church members work together in their own neighborhoods to present Christ’s message. If someone new comes to church, they’ll be paired up with someone who lives nearby. People will be encouraged to make new relationships in their neighborhoods and to talk about their church. Not everyone will be receptive, Shettler said. But one thing they’ve learned from CityReach: if you just ask, some people will come.
