Church Redone - Always Reforming

How Not to Build Community at Church

It seems that 10 Ways to Keep Me From Discovering Your Church inspired Adam at AskingY to take a look at ways in which individuals keep from building community in the church. While my article focused on ways the church thwarts visitors, Adam’s takes on ways that individuals thwart making connections.

Regrettably, I think at different times I’ve been guilty of every single item on this list. Are you holding back community?

Here’s the first five…

1. Keep Conversations Short
2. Always sit in your “assigned” seat
3. Avoid New People
4. Come in Late
5. Leave immediately after the service (or early)

See the rest of the list and Adam’s commentary at 10 Ways to Avoid Building Community Within the Church .

10 Ways to Keep Me from Discovering Your Church

I’m now a few weeks into looking for a new fellowship body and I’ve come up against many barriers that churches have in place to keep me from easily finding or connecting with them. There are a couple local churches that have completely vexed my efforts to learn more about them and after 2 weeks and several hours of effort, I’ve stopped trying to reach them. The reality is most people, myself included, are probably not going to attend your church if they can’t find any information about it beforehand. Other churches I’ve managed to find and attend, only to be thwarted in my efforts to learn more or get connected. This is all part of what I call church discoverability, which includes initially hearing about a church, learning more, first attending and initial connecting.

So if your church’s goal is to make it painfully difficult to be discovered by new people, here are 10 real ways I’ve experienced that churches keep from being discovered:
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