How to Attract the “Right” People to Your Church
Some forms of discrimination are sinful, but some are not. Churches should be discriminating against certain people. Contrary to popular belief, we don’t want everyone to come to our churches. By the way, everyone believes this.
If a fire-breathing conservative Christian were attending a very liberal church, and that Christian stood up in every Sunday service and read aloud verses in the Bible which talk of stoning those who practice homosexuality (Lev. 20:13), wouldn’t that person be asked to stop attending that church? And likewise, if a liberal “Christian” were attending a more conservative church and would not stop spreading blasphemous heresies, wouldn’t they be asked to leave as well? So really, every church discriminates.
How then do we get the “right” kind of people to come to our church? First, we must define who the right people are. The Bible does not divide humanity primarily by race or ethnicity, or economic status, etc. It does divide humanity by a person’s standing in Christ. A person is either in Christ or in Adam; saved or lost; a believer or an unbeliever; a sheep or a goat; elect or non-elect.
The true church (i.e., all true Christians) is made up of only those who have been regenerated (born again). Our local churches should ideally be made up of those same people. Of course, since we can’t see into the hearts of people, we can’t know for certain who is truly a believer and who is not.
We also need to take into consideration that even a true member of God’s elect may not yet be converted. God’s electing of people happens even before they are born (Eph. 1:4), so even while the apostle Paul was unconverted, he was one of the elect.
How then do we attract the right people (the elect) to our churches if we can’t even be certain about who the elect are?
Simple: do what God has told you to do. God knows everything. He knows the hearts of people and He knows the future, so He knows how attract the “right” people. If a church does what God has told it to do, no less and no more, it will mainly attract the elect. Of course, no church will be totally pure; even the best churches will have a mixture of believers and unbelievers amongst its members. But following the Bible will do much to weed out the pretenders. Generally speaking, the more closely a church follows the Bible, the higher the ratio of true Christians to false Christians will be.
The subject of what the Bible tells a local church to do is a large one, but here are a few ideas that will help your church attract the right people (i.e., the elect):
1. The preaching.
The preaching of the word of God is the most foundational aspect of a church. It is here where most churches have problems. If you are preaching sermons that are carefully crafted to not offend the unbeliever, then you will attract mostly unbelievers. This means, your church will soon be filled with people who are not true Christians (but who think they are). This is what happens when your preaching gives people the impression that they are “all right” in God’s eyes.
While preaching doesn’t have to be rude for rudeness sake, it does have to incorporate the whole Bible, and many of the Bible’s teachings are quite offensive to unbelievers! And yet, if an unconverted person is one of the elect, even bold preaching won’t scare him away (Acts 2:36-37).
Many churches today are filled with people who think that they are not in need of grace. These people often make up their own rules and think that because they obey their own rules, somehow that means they are right with God. Preaching that salvation is totally a work of God, and not us, will do much to drive these pretenders away.
On the other hand, in many churches there are people that live sinful lives, and yet they think they are right with God because they’ve been told that following God’s law isn’t that important. So, teaching that true salvation is always accompanied by good works (Eph. 2:8-10; Titus 2:11-14; 1 John 5:3) will drive away those who believe that obedience to God’s commands is optional.
2. Church music.
Rick Warren once said that a church’s music will have a big impact on the type of people that come to your church. While most of what Warren says about church music is wrong, he is right on this point. Churches which worship God with music that mimics the music produced by a godless culture will mostly attract “worldly” people. These people aren’t true Christians (Jam. 4:4). And, just as truly biblical preaching will offend the non-elect, songs that are rooted in Scripture (and not just the “happy” verses) will not be preferred by unbelievers either. Even a quick perusal of inspired songs shows that God’s songs aren’t exactly “seeker-friendly” (Ps. 5:5-6; 7:11; 9:5, 17; etc).
3. Church discipline.
Not many unbelievers would want to be members of a church that practices biblical discipline. While we ought have grace, love, and humility toward our fellow church members, a true church will discipline members who continue in unrepentant sin.
4. Christian fellowship.
Even though close, loving fellowship can be attractive to unbelievers, many fake Christians prefer to attend churches that don’t have close fellowship. Many people want to belong to a community, but not many unbelievers want to have people asking about how their walk with the Lord is going.
Sharing meals together is great fellowship. But if everyone at the table is talking about the things of the Lord, that will tend to make a false Christian a little uncomfortable. Many false Christians attend megachurches because they don’t want fellowship! They’re there to check off their “went to church” box, not to actually invest their time caring for others.
Following the Bible won’t guarantee that a church will have no fakers in its midst. But not adhering to what the Scriptures say about church practice will generally attract mostly false Christians. Those who are numbered among the elect will be drawn to a biblical church; the non-elect will not be. A church should discriminate, but that discrimination should be organic, not forced. Just do what God has told you to do, and the good kind of discrimination will follow.