Mission

We're running a football event tonight with a mini tournament for an hour or so and then off for a curry at a local curry house. It's striking how willing people are to come to this. My hunch, however, is that if it was back to church for a curry afterwards suddenly the number of people coming would drop off.

There is something about coming into a church building that just turns men off almost no matter what the event is. Especially if those men are in their twenties and thirties as most of these men are. It'd be interesting to probe their ideas of church and find out what exactly it is that produces such a reaction, but that is another idea for another time.

If men won't come in then we have to go out. Where are the places that men congregate? Where will they feel at ease and listen most? My hunch is it is either in the pub, at a sporting venue or at a restaurant, so the onus is on us to meet them with the gospel in those places. I know of one church which has planted a new congregation in a football stadium and found it has reached men.

Interestingly it is what you see in Acts as Paul evangelises and then plants churches. He goes to the synagogue first but then he goes where the people who need the gospel are - the market place, the debating hall, the river bank. In a world that is more like that of the first century Roman Empire than ever there is much we need to learn from Paul.

For centuries we've been in a culture where people have been willing to come into church when invited, this has removed the need to innovate. Britain in 2007 is no longer like that, church is foreign to most people and a place in which they do not feel comfortable. We must therefore go out to make the gospel known.