People attending for a long time without becoming members is common for all churches, especially for international and multi-cultural ones. Some join quickly, some more slowly, and some not at all. Why? The answer comes down to the issue identity. People join churches that they identify with.
Pastors expect (and hope) for God to lead people to attend and ultimately join their churches. Amen! Church membership should mean something profound for people. Though many approach church attendance and membership with a consumer mentality, expecting some “bang for their buck” or some benefit in return, there is nothing unspiritual about having high expectations about the local church experience. After all, Peter was inspired of God to write, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people” (1 Peter 2:9-10).
People should expect to have a strong sense of identity and community in the church. We will see, in this brief study, that depth of identity with the people of the church is what “seals the deal” for church membership, and not mere appreciation of the mechanics of the church program.
The Movement of God in Hearts
Paul wrote, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). Jesus said, “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). We should depend on the Lord and trust Him to lead us and to empower us in all we do in ministry. God’s will and His leadership should be the main driving forces in someone joining a church. But we live in a fallen world and have a deceiver in our midst, one who masquerades as an angel of light. Prospective believers, though growing in Christ, bear in their souls’ scars from this sinful world, and are hesitant to trust others. So, it is understandable if people are cautious in joining a church, especially if they have been hurt.
Christ is the Center that holds the church together. And He should lead the believer, whether a new Christian, a struggling one, or a mature believer, to a church. We should be more concerned with bringing them into the church universal than the church local, leading them to repentance and faith in Christ. But still the experience of deciding to join a church should be a spiritual one. The Spirit will lead people to Christ and to be a part of a local church, and He will also use the church leaders in that process. Being able to understand the five steps or phases that people go through to choose a church is very helpful.
Five Steps to Membership in a Local Church
We each have a built-in five step process in our minds we go through before we decide to commit to be a part of a group of people. Identification is the final and key step, when the individual says, “I am like these people,” or “I want to be like these people,” or “I want to be one of these people.” But in all there are five steps they take as they move to full identity with the church: (1) Dissatisfaction with their current church life, (2) Attraction to your church, (3) Satisfaction with your church program, (4) Friendship with your church’s people, (5) Identification with your church.
Advertisers, for example, know this process and in their ads, they do not just talk about savings or how good and inexpensive their products are, compared to the competition. Advertisers appeal to our sense of self-esteem, that in using this store or buying this product brand we can identify with people we admire and wish to be like, and feel good about ourselves. So, they use celebrities, use attractive and happy people that we want to think resemble us, and even show illogical things, such as thin attractive people drinking copious amounts of beer, which does not happen in real life. They are selling identity with the products, making the prospective consumer say, “I want to be like those people.”
We can see this process in many things in life. For example, you probably went through a similar process to decide to marry your spouse. You started dating because (1) you were not satisfied with singleness (dissatisfaction), and (2) dating this person wasn’t a bad experience (attraction), so (3) you continued dating (satisfaction), and then (4) you exclusively dated because you really liked each other (friendship), and finally (5) you chose to marry and start a family (identification with one another, the two become one). In evangelism something similar is experienced: (1) dissatisfaction with your life without Christ, (2) hearing the gospel and being attracted to it, (3) accepting the basic tenets of the gospel, (4) trusting in God’s good intentions, His friendship, toward you, (5) making a decision to repent and trust in Him, identifying through faith with His death for your sins.
If we combine these issues and break them down into percentages of people who attend our church, we will find that a pyramid develops. We are really describing a series of steps that the average person will progress through to become a member. Like all pyramids, the base must be the largest piece, and this represents all those who come to our church for even one Sunday.
Identification with your church
Friendship with your church
Satisfaction with your church
Attraction to your church
Dissatisfaction with their current experience
Let’s examine these five steps from the bottom up.
- Dissatisfaction: 100% of attendees: All those who attend church have some level of dissatisfaction with their current spiritual church experience. Either they do not like the church they are attending, or, because they are new in town, they are dissatisfied with not attending a church. They don’t like what they are doing and want to do something else.
- Attraction: 75% of attendees find something at the church that they like enough to come back. Often at this level they are attending because there is not a better option.
- Satisfaction: 50% of attendees: Those who continue coming are generally satisfied with your church, with the program, your teachings, your worship, and the people they meet. They attend regularly but are still open to options.
- Friendship: 25% of attendees: As they continue to attend they begin to think of the church as a source of friendship, their experiences with the program and the people are generally positive. They like who your church is, what you stand for, how you conduct your business. But they have not yet seen the church as people like them.
- Identification: 10% of attendees: They themselves identify with the church and its people, it is who they are or hope to be, not just a friend but an extension of themselves. They become loyal members.
The percentages, other than the first (100%), are all estimates. But in an international church it is very important to realize that many people will stop short of actual identification with the church and will hang out indefinitely in the friendship phase. The hardest step to take in this process is from step four to step five, or from friendship to identity. There are many reasons, perhaps the leaders are from a different ethnic group, or maybe a different denomination. They will be friends and supporters, and even loyal friends, but they may not have full identification with them. They may say, “We like you and you like us, but you are not us, really.”
In the USA these days, there are quite a number of multicultural churches that are finding it difficult to maintain unity in the latest conflicts between races in the nation. The varying perspectives have placed dividing lines and points of contention among some church bodies. Whereas we may all agree that we are friends in Christ, even members together of the same heavenly family, and act friendly toward one another, and express Christian love toward one another, it is more difficult to identify as members in the same family on earth, even the same Christian family.
So, here are some takeaways from this study that you can use in your ministry:
- When you have families regularly attending your church, don‘t assume that they are loyal to your church. They may simply not have any more attractive options.
- Instead visit these regular attending families and get them involved in a small group where they can develop friends with whom they identify. Ask them what is keeping them from officially joining the church.
- Preach and practice the unity of the church and identification with the church as the people of God. Always point to the higher and spiritual points of our shared identity in Christ, and try to avoid the unresolvable things that can separate us.
- Seek to have an excellent worship and church program. But don’t assume that excellent preaching, music, and programming alone are enough to make someone decide to stay in your church. All of these can help move them one step closer toward identification with the church as a whole, but liking the church is not the same as identifying with it.
- Seek to do those things that celebrate everyone, but that unite the church and do not divide the church.
- Be careful of keeping new people at “arm’s length” until they have joined. They need to know if they will be accepted by the church body.
Remember that an International Church should be more than people of different ethnicities sitting next to one another. It should also include people who experience Christ together and embody Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
