Reaching the Lost, or Talking to the Found?

We’ll be talking with a preacher or an elder about how their congregation shows up online, and there’s a moment where he relaxes a little and says it.

We’re listed in the directory. People can find us.

And he’s right. They can. That listing does real good, and we’d never discourage it.

But there’s a question worth asking before the conversation moves on, and it’s the one that changes how a congregation thinks about all of this.

Who exactly is doing the finding?

Those Directories Are Good at What They Do

Let’s give them their due, because they earn it.

A directory of faithful congregations solves a genuine problem. A family moves across the country and needs to find sound brethren in a town they’ve never lived in. A member is traveling and wants to worship somewhere on Sunday. A young man takes a job three states away and his parents want to know there’s a congregation nearby.

Those are real needs and they’re met well. Anyone who has ever relocated knows the relief of finding that listing. It’s a service to the brotherhood and the people who maintain it are doing good work.

So nothing here is a criticism of the thing. It’s a question about what job it’s actually doing.

Only the Found Know to Look There

Here’s the plain fact underneath.

To use a directory of churches of Christ, a person has to already know that churches of Christ exist, already know they’re looking for one specifically, and already know that such a directory is out there to be searched.

That’s three pieces of knowledge, and a lost person has none of them.

The man in your town who is quietly falling apart doesn’t know the phrase. The young family that just moved in isn’t looking for a fellowship, they’re looking for anything. The woman awake at two in the morning with questions about her mother’s death is not going to think to check a listing of congregations. She’s more likely to type her actual question into her phone.

So a directory listing reaches people who already found their way. It reaches the found. That’s genuinely valuable, and it is a different job entirely from reaching the lost.

Two Audiences, Two Doors

It helps to see these as two separate doors rather than one.

One door serves brethren who already know what they’re looking for. A directory listing handles it, and it handles it well.

The other door serves a person who doesn’t know the terminology and is searching by need rather than by name. That door opens through entirely different means. Being findable when somebody searches for a church in your town without knowing what kind. Having plain answers published to the questions people actually type. Showing up where people already are with something a stranger would stop for.

Most congregations have built the first door well and never built the second one. And because the first door works, it feels like the matter is settled.

So the question we’d put to a congregation is the one that sorts it out. Are we trying to reach the lost, or are we talking to the found?

The Same Trap, One Step Further In

It’s worth mentioning that this problem doesn’t stop at directories.

A congregation’s own website can do exactly the same thing. If the site is built around the schedule, the calendar, the bulletin, and announcements, it’s serving the people who already attend. It’s a directory of a different kind. A member uses it constantly and it works, so it feels like it’s doing its job, and in a sense it is. It just isn’t doing the other job.

The test is simple enough. Look at your site and ask who would understand it, and who would find it useful, if they had never once set foot in a building. If the answer is nobody, you’ve built another door for the found.

This Is Not an Argument to Stop Anything

Keep the listing. Keep the calendar. Keep the bulletin online. Those things serve real people with real needs and there’s nothing wrong with any of them.

What we’d urge is simply that a congregation know which door is which, and notice if it has only ever built one of them.

The found will always be able to locate you. They have a language for what they’re looking for and they know where to look. The lost have neither, and they’re the ones the Lord sent us after.

If you’d like an honest look at whether your congregation is reachable by someone who doesn’t know your name, we’d be glad to walk through it with you.