Written by Ben Griffin, LINC's CEO

Here is the question: Does the American church need a new strategy?

I contend that the church doesn’t need a new strategy, it needs to remember the original strategy with a modern expression.

Here is what the numbers say. According to a recent Lifeway study the majority of Christian churches in the United States are declining in attendance. A whopping 84% of American churches are not growing or have shrinking attendance.

Anecdotally, the American culture has a consistently more negative view toward Christianity. There was a time when you would regularly see a Christian pastor standing at the side of the US President or a prominent Christian leader speaking to the issues of the day on national television. Today those are rare sights.

But maybe those are not the right metrics to go by when measuring the effectiveness of the church. You can easily make the Scriptural point that the church of Jesus has always been counter to popular culture. So, let’s focus on the key metric of outreach.

How many churches are actively reaching new people with the good news of Jesus?

This number might be the most convicting of all. According to the earlier mentioned study, only 16% of churches in the US are growing, AND only 1% of churches are growing through new believer growth. Meaning, that the majority of churches that are growing are not because they are engaging unreached people, but because of transfers and births.

Somewhere along the way the primary strategy for outreach in the US became the Sunday worship event. But is that the strategy that Jesus modeled for us? Is that the strategy through which Christianity went from a handful of followers to billions of people? It is not.

Worship services are great at reaching Christians who are looking for places to worship.

Worship services are not God’s given strategy for reaching new people. You are.

He didn’t command the organization to go and make new disciples, he gave that mandate to his disciples and to us.

Over the next few weeks I will break down how this old strategy played out in new ways can make a profound difference. I’ll explore new expressions of loving our neighbor through the work of modern day local missionaries.

These everyday followers of Jesus are engaging their local communities in powerful ways through grassroots nonprofit, ministry and business ventures. All rooted in the original strategy of Jesus: engaging people with the good news through the power and witness of loving our neighbors.