Gateway Country
July 1, 2001
"Tell me what's working." That's a question I'm asked frequently. Pastors want to know what's working in evangelism, not theories or ideas from out on the fringe, but news from the front lines. We need insights that are new but tried, and transferable. So here's a report from the front lines at Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. Some quick background on Meck: Our church has grown in eight years from a single family to nearly 5,000 weekly attenders. More than 80 percent of our growth comes from those previously unchurched. Every person who has been baptized, every new member, and every attendee at a discipleship event is surveyed so we can verify that statement. We know where they have come from, how they got to us, and we have a snapshot of the state of their spiritual life before attending. We're reaching the unchurched at a rate that has astonished even us. And they're young. Mecklenburg is a church of young boomers and older busters, in their twenties and thirties, giving us a foot in both camps. Some myths need busting
In the decade since we founded Mecklenberg, our approach to evangelism has changed, largely because times have changed.Myth #1: Generation X has radically different needs from boomers.
People have changed, too, but not in the ways you might think. From our experience, let's bust a few myths about reaching people in this new era. Conventional wisdom is that the insights gained during the '80s and '90s on reaching unchurched boomers are of little value in reaching the generation that followed them. Not so.We have found that once twenty-somethings get married and have a child, they begin to look and act very much like boomers. When they start a family, those who wanted the music café and coffee ...
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