Ministry to Missing Members
John Savage
I wonder if anyone ever misses the missing?
Lyle Schaller
The perception church leaders have of inactive members is linked to the actions they intend to take about inactivity.
Mark S. Jones Simply talking to inactive members is difficult. Asking them why they dropped out is like opening the spigot on a water tower full of grievances both real and imagined. John Savage leads us into this troubled area and says we've got our work cut out for us in drawing these people back into active fellowship. But he doesn't leave us there. He shows us how to understand the missing and how to meet their needs.
Not surprisingly, this chapter was one of the highest-rated articles in Leadership's history. Savage, president of L.E.A.D. Consultants in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, studied the problem for more than ten years and interviewed inactive members from four churches. Here he explains what he learned about why people choose to become inactive and what can be done to bring them back to full participation. I was going through slides I had used in an every-member canvass in my church. When I held some to the window, I was shocked. Pictured in the first three slides were three couples who had held key offices in the church my first year there. Now, four years later, those couples were totally inactive. These people no longer attended worship, except maybe on Christmas or Easter, made no financial contribution, didn't participate in the life of the church, and had a negative attitude about the congregation. How could people move in just four years from active involvement to total inactivity? I wondered. I thought of times I had visited inactive members and seen absolutely nothing happen. In fact, often they were more convinced to stay away after I made the ...
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