How amazingly complacent have some churches grown in America? With our only “persecution” coming from the ACLU and the mass media, we tend to be introverted and non-responsive to the communities in which we exist.
Sure there are churches that have wonderful community outreach programs and even some who evangelize, visit hospitals and prisons, and run food banks and clothing stores. But they are the exception rather than the rule.
Here’s an experiment you might want to try to see how in or out of touch the churches in your community are. Call them or email their contacts from their church website if they have one.
I recently did an experiment (because we are between church assignments) to see, with all the wonderful hi-tech contact from Twitter to Facebook to email, how responsive some churches might be to inquiries.
I emailed ten churches within a 50 mile radius of our home here in middle Tennessee. The email simply stated that we were interested in learning more about their church and would like to correspond by email or have someone from the church call us. Ten emails and not one response for two weeks. So I wrote again, and still no response for over two weeks. I began to wonder if this was typical of many churches that bother to have a website but never respond to the emails.
Next I decided to call those ten churches and five additional churches. Now to be fair, some of these were Baptist, some Presbyterian, and a few non-denominational and even one that had been Church of Christ. Fifteen phone calls, and every church contacted had a wonderful answering machine message about when they had services and how if I had a question please leave a name and number and I would be contacted ASAP. ASAP? I was hoping to get an answer before Jesus returns, but so far no such luck (or providence).
So let me total this up. 10 emails with ZERO responses. 15 phone calls with a message left asking for a call back and ZERO calls returned.
Maybe they were all too busy evangelizing, caring for the sick, needy, elderly, poor, and imprisoned. But I doubt it. Now I realize you may belong to a very active church and that this type of oversight would never happen in your case. And perhaps I just happened to pick 15 churches that are not indicative of the church in America- all anomalies. It’s possible, but not probable.
However I did get some good news. Once I had allowed ample time for responses to my queries, I called one more church. It was a Presbyterian church where a real live human being (angelic perhaps?) actually answered the phone, answered my questions and invited me to church!
As a pastor I always tried to make myself and the church accessible to anyone at all times through emails and phone calls. I felt it important to be available because no matter the need, if our Lord can respond at all times, we should at least try to be there for those inside and outside of the church.
So churches listen up: New Year’s resolution! When people take the time to reach out to you, make it a priority to respond. Unless you live in a cloistered monastery with no contact with the outside world, ANSWER THE PHONES!
Dave Macy (aka: Dave Deppisch) spent 30 years as a conservative talk host on a variety of stations in markets like Atlanta, Nashville, Toledo, and Ft. Wayne. He was drawn out of his profession into the ministry and now serves as an associate pastor. He preaches several times a year and is also available to bring his unique style of common sense conservative talk along with his faith in Jesus Christ to any setting that is looking for a speaker with humor, common sense, and Christian values.
He is the author of DoubtFreeLiving.com,and has been privileged to speak at CBN and appear as a guest on World Harvest TV.
