Faith, Friendship, and Finding the Right Space

As a writing professor, I’m always trying to get my students to understand target audience: what it is, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. Different genres, media, or events are going to be for different people. A rock song is going to appeal to rock fans, an article in The Atlantic isn’t likely to be read by Gen-Z, and anyone off the street isn’t going to walk into a random high school reunion—if they aren’t a part of that graduating class, they won’t know about it, and the activities won’t be fun for them. Essentially, not everything is for everyone. My mom isn’t going to go see an action movie in the theatre anytime soon, and it’s safe to assume if I’m at a car show, it’s for someone else.

The same thing applies to church, and the different kinds of ministries that make up a church. Certain ministries are going to be more accessible to certain groups of people, because they might be the target audience based on their demographic or history.

Let’s dive into a few examples of what I’m talking about.

At Neighbor’s Church, which I attend in San Diego, there are three ministry events that I regularly attend, and I’ve invited different friends to these for different reasons, because how I want to share my faith is going to be influenced by who I’m talking to.

The first ministry I invited a friend to is the large church gathering on Sundays.

Most weeks are the same: I arrive at 10am, talk to some friends, sing worship songs, walk through the liturgy, listen to the sermon, and then help pack up the chairs. It’s a rhythm deeply familiar to me, because I grew up in the church. But it can be overwhelming to someone without that background, so when I invited my friend Meghan to church with me, I did so deliberately, knowing that she was raised in a Christian household and attends church regularly. She has the skills, knowledge, and background to participate in a church space and get something out of it (the fact that on that particular Sunday a group of friends and I pranked the pastor was just a bonus).

The second space I invited a friend to was to small group.

My friend Heather (not her real name, whom I wrote about in the last blog), did not grow up Christian, and knew nothing about the Bible when her boyfriend started to try to bring her to church. She was very overwhelmed by the singing and praise to God, and often couldn’t follow the sermon because she had no knowledge or framework surrounding the Bible—not the historical context, the stories, or the Gospels. As a result, she’s far more comfortable in our weekly small group, where we eat together, make plans to prank the pastor, and answer any questions that come up during our discussion.

The third space a friend joined was my podcast study group.

A handful of us from church meet on Saturdays to discuss the BEMA podcast, which is hosted by two theologians who discuss the Bible from an Eastern lens, rather than a Western one. I met Carla (not her real name) at the restaurant we were meeting at, and we got to talking. She was our server most Saturdays, and we invited her to join us. I came to learn that Carla grew up with some serious church hurts and walked away when she was a teenager. Now, approaching her thirties, she is understandably skittish around church and church-like gatherings, including small group. But the BEMA group? She’s much more comfortable discussing theological concepts while we drink beer and share about our lives.

The point of all these examples is that sharing the life-giving truth of Jesus, and the clean water that He offers, takes different forms because people are different. Not everything is for everyone, and based on someone’s background, one way of giving a message will be received over another.

Because Spring Church is, to put it nicely, off the beaten path of most churches in Bellingham, it can be hard to share the mission with the people around us. Is there any casual way to talk about Uncommon Friendship, Common Discipleship, connecting with political enemies, and learning how to lament together? Most socially-integrated folks have a hard time with coming face-to-face with powerlessness, whether it takes the form of physical disability, homelessness, addiction, or mental disability.

How can we share Spring Church’s mission when we’re already so different from what socially integrated folks expect?

Coming up, we’re going to launch a new small group, aiming at serving the community while also making it easier to share clean water with those in the neighborhood. By serving in places like the food bank, we can work side-by-side with our neighbors, demonstrating the mission of Spring Church and creating natural opportunities to share our faith and mission. Changing up how we start a conversation takes into account that different ministries do different things, because people are different, and not everything is for everyone.

Join us for our Common Table Gathering this Sunday, where we’ll talk more about sharing the clean water of Jesus and what our new small group is going to look like.

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