I’ve attended all kinds of professional clergy development and church growth conferences. All of them hinged on copying the methods of corporate sales, but dressed up in nice inspirational language. Unfortunately, these will get you corporate sales results. The people who are brought in by such methods are buyers contracting with an institution, not necessarily souls joining a family.
The key to our kind of evangelism is the personal connection. It’s pretty tough to sell your content in the current market, but people will always stick with those who love them and bless them. We don’t do “cold-call evangelism”. Maybe that means fewer members, but we aren’t looking for numerical growth. We are looking for lost family, even if we never met them before.
The only strategy we need to discuss is how to engage people who need. How do we come up against those needing a family? Where will we find them? If you listen to church growth hucksters, you would pick your demographic and try to get their attention. But faith doesn’t recognize demographics. It’s neither a “missions” emphasis of seeking the conventional needy, nor trying to win over wealthy clients.
We don’t want to be and do what all the mainstream churches be and do. If the core of identity for Kiln of the Soul is the people involved, then we want to involve those who are ready to be bound to Christ in faith, or already bound. We aren’t selling a program; we are reaching out to folks who know they need a hug and all that it implies.
Thus, we uphold the image of glorious eternal love in a family format. We are hoping to draw people who will be serious about contributing to the basic mission of changing ourselves into those who reflect that eternal identity hidden inside our fleshly presence. We want people who will be good at keeping that focus. Everything else is just packaging.
To the degree we might long to change the situation around us, it’s all through prayer. There will be no hint of activism beyond the simplest level of vowing to act on sacrificial compassion wherever we pass through this world. It’s not doctrine that cues us to who “good people” are, but faith that clings to Christ through the worst of this life.
We aren’t going to change people. We are going to build an atmosphere where the power of God changes them, an atmosphere that pulls down the strongholds of defilement that hinders people discovering what God intended for them.
