The SHINE Blog

What Do People Want In A Church?

In an attempt to clear out a backlog of clippings I have “saved” for later posting on the SHINE Blog, I’m going to try to post some of them in the next few weeks. These are just things that I have run across in my surfing or reading and wanted to share.

Today we have two related questions from different sites: What are parents wanting in a church and what unchurched young people want from a church.

From churchrelevance.com: (click to read the full post)

I believe a greater percentage of parents are looking to find a church that meets both their needs and their kids needs.

Each parent has their own mix of “wants,” but here is a list of things that every parent seems to like:

A children’s ministry that makes their kids feel loved.
A children’s ministry and church with good security.
A children’s ministry that effectively teaches their kids valuable lessons.
A children’s ministry that is fun and “wows” their kids.
A friendly church.
A church with good preaching.
A church with good worship.
A church that makes it easy to make friends.
A church that offers opportunities to get involved.

I encourage you to read the whole post by clicking the link above and make sure you read the comments after the post as well. Pretty interesting discussion about what the focus ought to be.

Then, from their recent book, Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches that Reach Them, Ed Stetzer and co-authors Richie Stanley and Jason Hayes found that

63% of young adults said they would attend a church if that church “presented truth to me in an understandable way that relates to my life now.”

15% of the younger unchurched attended church weekly as a child and have no current
animosity toward the church, yet 37% are hostile toward the church and Christians.

Four out of 5 unchurched adults aged 20 to 29 in the U.S. believe a supreme being exists. Though they are not attending church, 3 out of 4 claim the existence of God does or would impact their lives, but this does not seem to translate into involvement in a church.

Nearly three-quarters express some level of agreement that the Christian church is generally helpful to society. Young unchurched African-Americans agree more than others (25% to 7%) that the church is the only place to learn what it means to be Christian. (Lost and Found, Stetzer, Stanley and Hayes, B&H Publishing Group 2009)

March 26th, 2009 Posted by Glenwood Presbyterian | church articles | one comment