David Durey  Pastor of Adult Ministries and Assimilation at New Hope Community Church, Portland and T-NET Staff

Editors Note:  David Durey has put together a valuable website for Disciplemakers. Check out descriptions of some of the best resources available.  Click Here to go the IDN Site.

We’ve all done it. You survey the congregation hoping to see some of the same new faces you saw last week. If they come back, you are almost ready to high-five another church leader, your wife, or anyone close by. At least that’s how you feel in your heart.

Why did they come back? Well, you have every right to feel that your sermon, at the very least, was palatable enough for them to take a seat at the table one more time. The nursery must have met their minimum standards and the list goes on. But what if you could survey Christians who were successfully assimilated into your church during the last year or two. Imagine that you had a long conversation with them, asking how they were drawn to the church and why they stayed. Now repeat the same process in more than a dozen growing churches across your city, speaking also with a pastor at each church to gain additional perspective. Would you like to know the result? Certainly. Who of us wouldn’t like to identify proven actions you can take to improve the way your congregation attracts the unchurched in your community and assimilates them into the Body of Christ.

Too Many People Don’t Come Back

“Assimilation,” according to Rick Warren, “is the task of moving people from an awareness of your church, to attendance at your church, to active membership in your church".1 I wanted to learn how to do a better job of just that – helping people find the most important relationships in the world: with Jesus Christ and with the Body of Christ.

Let me share with you what I found. For my Doctor of Ministry dissertation, I selected 15 high-assimilation Portland-area churches, conducting extensive interviews with three new Christians and one senior or associate pastor in each church. These churches were both denominational and non-denominational, both charismatic and non-charismatic, both long-established and relatively young. After analyzing the data from those 45 new Christians and comparing that with what the 15 pastors had to say, I grouped the findings into three areas: personal relationships, intentionality and small groups.

Second, these churches are intentional in reaching lost people, welcoming visitors and providing a pathway for spiritual formation. Finally, they consider the practice of providing small groups to be the most effective means of helping new people form significant relationships and grow spiritually.

Personal Invitations Carry the Day

When asked, “What attracted you to this church?” over 70 percent of the new Christians interviewed cited a personal invitation. Just as Andrew went out, found his brother Simon Peter, and invited him to come and see Jesus 2, these new Christians identified someone they knew and trusted inviting them to church as the primary reason for their coming. “Our people are our tool for evangelizing,” one pastor explained. “What God has done in their lives is an example for the people that they are around – in families, in neighborhoods and in the workplace. Our members either extend an invitation to their unchurched friends, or these friends visit our services because of what they see the Lord has done in our members’ lives.”

National surveys confirm the importance of the personal invitation. “Invitations are the way churches open their doors,” writes Herb Miller, Executive Director of the National Evangelistic Association of the Christian Church.3 Win and Charles Arn of Church Growth, Inc, asked over 42,000 Christians, “What or who was responsible for your coming to Christ and your church?” Over 75 percent said that it was a friend or relative.4

Most people become Christians and enter the church through webs of relationship – common kinship, common friendship and common association. Leading churches in Portland report the same findings, and so they primarily use relational ministries to mobilize their members for outreach. Personal invitations clearly dominate the top spot. Eleven of the fifteen church leaders reported using invitational events where members are encouraged or even required to bring friends. Nine churches use small groups to connect with the unchurched. Thirteen utilize personal outreach or relational evangelism strategies, while four churches seek to develop relationships through need-meeting ministries such as groups for young mothers, sports ministries, and support and recovery classes. The Lighthouse Movement approach emphasizing prayer for your circle of influence, caring for them, and finally sharing the Gospel is advocated by three churches.

Growing Churches Create Intentional Pathways for Growth

All churches in the study provide specific ministries to assist in the spiritual growth of newcomers and members, most of them using small groups as a primary tool for helping disciples grow. Eight churches acknowledged adult education as a significant ministry for Christian maturation. One-on-one discipleship was also mentioned. The new Christian interviews verified that all of these ministries helped with spiritual growth, along with preaching and corporate worship. Whatever the format, a majority of the churches indicated that they had created a specific pathway for spiritual growth, most offering this formation pathway in the form of seminars or classes. Some churches have discovered the wisdom of integrating the formation pathway into the small group ministry by providing both open groups for outreach and sequential accountability groups for depth and maturity.

People Stay Because of Meaningful Relationships

When asked, “Why did you stay?” over 77 percent pointed to the combined categories of friendliness and caring, new relationships, or small group involvement. Fifty-three percent of the responses specifically indicated the importance of the church being friendly and caring. One new Christian said, “I think I’ve stayed because of the love they have shown me and that they have cared.”

These churches were keenly aware of the importance of personal relationships to newcomers and they confirmed that most people formed their significant friendships through small groups.

Practical Applications

Throughout my research, a number of practical applications surface repeatedly. Two relate to attraction and outreach, while the other two focus on assimilation.

1. Encourage Personal Invitations. Churches need to provide opportunities and encouragement for members to extend personal invitations. According to Lutheran historian Martin Marty, a single question defines the difference between churches that grow and those that do not: are they inviting others to join them?5

Church leaders must instill this value in their people. Leaders cannot rely on the visibility of their church facilities or great preaching as their primary means of attraction. Churches grow when those who attend invite friends, relatives and acquaintances who are not connected with a church.

Worship services in “inviting” congregations are high-quality and seeker-friendly so members know they can be enthusiastic about encouraging friends to attend.

One great example of an inviting church offers frequent bridge-in events throughout the year, such as drama presentations, a mother-daughter tea, and a public-garden tour. “Every weekend service we present the Gospel,” states one of the pastors. “So, we encourage people to bring their friends. We try to work primarily through networks of relationships so the people we are reaching are people like us. They know that it is a safe place to bring their unchurched friends.”

George Barna says his research indicates that in successful churches, members realize that inviting people to church is just part of their responsibility. They are also expected to accompany their guests to the church activity then provide the follow-up.6

2. Equip Members for Personal Evangelism and Follow-up. Many of the churches studied equip members and lay leaders alike with tools they can use to share the Gospel on a person-to-person basis. One pastor regularly concludes his sermons with an explanation of how to become a Christian. Yet that’s still no substitute for one-on-one discussions, he says. “I’ve found that a lot of people don’t get it until someone sits down with them personally and says, ‘Here’s what the Bible says about how you can know for sure that you are going to heaven, how you can be forgiven, and how to be saved.’”

3. Emphasize a Small-Group Formation Path. Rick Warren states, “Believers grow faster when you provide a track to grow on.”7  He also maintains that Christians need relationships in order to grow and that believers develop best in the context of fellowship.8

Churches could easily combine the intentionality of a spiritual formation path with the relational support and accountability provided by small groups. At one of the churches, new Christians identified at a commitment level called the “Follow Me” stage, are invited to a small growth group for up to a year and a half. As they continue to mature, they move into the “Be with Me” stage where they begin to take on ministry leadership responsibilities. Even at this stage, they continue in an ongoing accountability group that helps them continue to grow.

4. Update Your Membership Class. Finally, churches should provide a membership class that spells out expectations of a fully assimilated member and helps build new supportive relationships. I discovered these high-assimilation churches have essentially the same expectations of new members as they do for those they considered to be fully assimilated in the church. They help newcomers evaluate if they want to continue to associate with the church, and they project what newcomers can anticipate for their future involvement within the church.

Full Assimilation Involves Making New Ministers

What are the characteristics of a fully assimilated Christian? These churches affirmed the nine characteristics of an incorporated member offered by Win and Charles Arn 9 and echoed in Church Planting expert Bob Logan’s assimilation continuum. 10

1. Identifies with the goals of the church
2. Attends worship services regularly
3. Experiences spiritual growth and progress
4. Becomes a member of the body
5. Has 5-10 new friends in the church
6. Has an appropriate task or role that matches spiritual giftedness
7. Is involved in meaningful fellowship in a small group
8. Regularly tithes to the church; and,
9. Participates in the Great Commission by spreading the Good News to friends and relatives

For further Information and a complete report including additional charts and case studies of each church, go to the www.IntentionalDiscipleship.Net website. This article is revised and reprinted from May 2002 Net Results. © 2002 - Intentional Discipleship Network - 503-659-5683

1 Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church, Zondervan, 1995, p. 309.  (Back to Article)

2 John 1:40-42  (Back to Article)

3 Herb Miller, How to Build a Magnetic Church. Nashville: Abingdon, 1987, pp. 31-32. (Back to Article)

4 Win and Charles Arn, The Master’s Plan of Making Disciples, rev. ed., Baker, 1998, pp. 45-46. Church Growth, Inc. of Monrovia, California.  (Back to Article)

5 Miller, pp. 31-32. (Back to Article)

6 George Barna, User Friendly Churches, Ventura, CA: Regal, 1991, p. 100. (Back to Article)

7 Warren, p. 335. (Back to Article)

8 Warren, pp. 338-339. (Back to Article)

9 Arn and Arn, pp.49-55. (Back to Article)

10 Robert Logan, Beyond Church Growth, Revell, 1989, page 109. (Back to Article)