The Unchurched in Our Community

Here at Nativity we want to be a church unchurched people in our community want to attend. To do that, we need to understand them. Here are some characteristic of people who aren’t going to church in Timonium (with thanks to Pastor Carey Nieuwhof of Connexus Church):

1. They’re comfortable and successful and consider their lives to be perfectly fine without God. They feel absolutely no guilty about not being in church.
2. But they are in some measure spiritual. Most unchurched people in our community believe in God. They would be surprised and offended to be called atheists, which they are not.
3. They really do not know what Christianity or the Bible is about, so no assumptions can be made moving forward to engage them.
4. Most unchurched people in our community went to church growing up, but as we see a third and fourth generation of unchurched we are encountering a growing number who have never been to church before. They have no particular view of church, positive or negative.
5. They hate hypocrisy.
6. They love transparency. They love humor at church.
7. They don’t want to be told what to do and they resent when the Church comes across as judgmental or authoritarian.
8. If they do come to church they want to be anonymous.
9. But, if they do show up at church how they are greeted and how they are treated is the single greatest criterion for returning. It’s more important than the music or the message.
10. If they like what they find at our church they are actually more likely than our own parishioners, to invite a friend. In fact, they will be our next best evangelizers.