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TechnoratiAt a time when many people are leaving the Church and Christians are found to be ill-equipped against challenges to their faith, more pastors are standing up to the call for discipleship. Among them, Pastor Larry Osborne of North Coast Church in Vista, Calif., is lending his voice to bring the church focus back to the spiritual growth of its flock.
Osborne has put forward the “sticky church” concept in his new book, Sticky Church, to highlight the fact that many churches pay scant attention to their back door, where many people slip out, and instead place most of their emphasis on the front door of reaching large crowds. He calls churches to slam the back door shut and to be stickier, and ultimately healthier, by not just drawing people, but growing them to spiritual maturity.
In an interview with The Christian Post, Osborne explains why some churches aren’t aware of their back door being open, how to keep people in church, and why a “Mayberry USA” culture can help Christians grow.
CP: In your book, you said that churches are so focused on reaching people that they’ve forgotten the importance of keeping people. There have been studies about how so many people are quitting churches, or even switching churches. You rightly point out that the problem doesn’t seem to be drawing people in, but keeping them. Do you feel most churches in America are oblivious to the back-door concept?
Osborne: As long as the front door is larger than our back door or even equal we often think things are okay, and if the front door is larger we’re all excited that we’re growing. But in reality when we keep people for only a short time, what we’ve done is more likely inoculate them to Christianity rather than help them get the real disease. Once someone’s been to church for a while, kind of connected and then fades out, it is really hard outside of a major crisis in their life to reach them again. Rather than reaching 100 people, 20 of which we keep, I’d rather reach 50 people, 40 of which we keep. The way I like to put it is fulfill the second half of the Great Commission, instead of just the first half. The Great Commission says to go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them, but the second half says teaching them to observe all things that I have taught you. You cannot teach people to observe all things that Jesus taught if you’ve got them for six months or they come at three special seasons a year. As I hear in some churches, as much as one-third or more of the church comes once a month. It’s pretty hard to disciple people and finish the job. One thing I want to clarify, to me, the sticky church concept it’s not about church growth. It’s about discipleship. The church growth that comes is a secondary component. But the whole goal is to fulfill the second half of the Great Commission and not just inoculate people. And the side benefit is, the church gets bigger.
CP: Do you feel most churches don’t have their focus on discipleship and just focus on the front door?
Osborne: I think I would say more that most churches seem to focus on either informational discipleship or front door evangelism and the missing component is long-term sticky relationships. Because you can focus on discipleship through programs that you run and material that you want them to experience, almost a discipleship curriculum, if you will, but it is the significant relationships that keep people. We’ve all met people who have stayed in a really terrible church. You finally ask them “why are you staying there?” There’s all kinds of maybe disunity, disfunction going on. And they always say “my friends are there.” That’s why I call it a little Mayberry USA in a highly mobile culture. Mayberry is the old town from a sitcom long ago, it was just this cute little rural town where everybody knew everybody. We just don’t have that in our culture anymore and yet people do need that long-term stability in their life. Continue »
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