The Struggle

Two months ago I stood in front of my small church’s staff and volunteers. I laid before them the Mission, Vision, Purpose, and Values that I would be imparting to the church in order to see people meet Jesus, and subsequently, see the church grow exponentially to reach more people. Without being boastful, and while giving glory to God, the plan of action I was laying before them was good. You can read through it on www.fellowshipsalem.com.
But as I laid out the Vision I was given, God pressed me to make a goal that I did not want to make. When you make goals, you hold yourself accountable to whether you accomplish them or not. When you share your goals, you really put yourself out on a limb because then everyone can hold you accountable.
So as I stood in front of the leaders I would be working with, I told them that it was my goal to see our church grow from roughly 70 people to 500 people over the course of a year. I could tell most of them thought I was crazy. I could tell that most of them knew it was the right thing to do, but were not interested in doing it and thought the goal was unobtainable.
As the weeks unfolded and as I began to lead and teach, people enjoyed the changes I was enacting and responded well to the vision I was projecting and the teaching I was giving.
But NO new people were coming. And in general people don’t just see or hear about a church, then come check it out- unless they’re a disgruntled Christian from another church or a rare ‘new to town Christian’.
Churches grow and unChristian people hear the Gospel because of word-of-mouth grass root’s invitations. And I cannot inspire or get people to invite their neighbors or friends. And apparently no one is talking about some of the exciting things taking place because no friends are coming with our members.
Our church finally is at a place where I would like to come as a guest. But a majority of our small crowd is old people. And the very few young people that we have are mainly female (just an interesting side note). So it’s possible that the younger people are not inviting other young people because there are so many old people and they percieve it as an old church; and the older people are not inviting older people because the preacher (me) preaches culturally relevant messages to a younger generation. I don’t know- it’s probably a little bit of both even though the whole crowd seems to be enjoying what’s going on.
So my dilema is this, does a church do more to make it’s existing crowd happy so they will feel more excited about inviting friends? In my case this would be appealing to older people who traditionally don’t invite people ever, not to mention that since they are usually retired they don’t interact with many people and/or most of the people they know already have a religous tradition.
My calling is this current generation so I would not be the one to facillitate the prior option.
The other option would be to appeal mostly to the people who are not there in hopes that they will come. This would mean appealing mostly to a younger generation and hope that the few young people we have will grab a hold of that and invite their friends. And hope that we could do some creative marketing to appeal to a younger generation that will not be invited….
The core question is: Does an organization market predominately to the customer it already has? Or does it market predominantly to the customer it wants? I know that you HAVE to do both to an extent, but which do/should you do more of??
And if they market predominantly to their existing customer; won’t they grow stagnant and cease growing- in a hold pattern? Or if they market predominantly to the customer they don’t have yet; won’t they alienate their existing customer- possibly to the point of folding before they reach a new demographic??
These are the things I’m struggling with. There are many dynamics involved, but everything good must grow. And in the long run I have to be a part of something that is glorifying God and advancing His Kingdom.
With God’s power- I will do whatever I can. God lead me in my decision making.