At the beginning of the fall semester, we always resume our Sunday School for all ages. One of the classes that we have added is an introduction to our church. It is not a membership class which outlines privileges and expectations of a potential church member. Instead, it’s a class for visitors and newcomers who we want to get to know better.
In what follows, I’ll lay out some of the questions that I ask the new folks at our church. Below each question, I’ll explain what I’m hoping to learn. Here are the six questions:
1. How did you hear about the church?
This is a question to gauge interest. If a person has researched your church and looked through the doctrinal statement in detail, you know that they have a doctrinal interest in the church. For someone else, their interest might solely be based on the warm invitation of a co-worker or friend. They don’t know about the doctrinal statement, they only know that their friend is nice and they hope the church is the same.
There is a big difference between the person who has come to the church because of the aesthetic appeal of your building’s architecture, and someone who has come because they were broken, and a church member reached out in care for them.
So asking this question helps to reveal the type of interest a person has in Jesus Christ and his church.
2. What is Your Religious Background?
This is a question to discover a framework. If we are all shaped by our backgrounds, then it is helpful to clarify what is the frame that sits around that background. This is a general question that is looking for simple, broad answers like:
- I grew up Buddhist
- My family went to a Catholic church
- My parents were both atheists, we didn’t go to church.
- I went to a Christian campus group in university.
- I was a member of a confessional Presbyterian church.
When you ask the background question, you are discerning where people are coming from in terms of the belief systems they’ve been around. You’re not finding out if they had a good or bad experience in those contexts yet, because that’s the next question.
What you will discover is the difference between the background of a Pharisee or a Gentile or a Samaritan. And you will start to see (and help them to see) how they are affected positively or negatively by their framework. Which leads to the next question.
3. What has been your experience in churches (if you have any)?
This question is more specific, and reveals a person’s perspective on ‘church’. This question differs from the previous one because many people have gone to a doctrinally sound church, but for whatever reason, their experience was negative. Or for others, their religious background may not have been Christian, but it was generally positive in their eyes. As a result, they might have a different perspective that will not assume that the gospel and the church is better than what they’ve had.
Experiences with religious groups can make or mar us. Consider the experience of the woman who was entrapped by the Pharisees and charged with adultery in John 8? Her background was Judaism like the Pharisees, but her experience of it was wholly negative. Jesus deftly confronted the Pharisees, offered her hope, and called her to repentant, believing obedience.
This is also a question to discover is someone may have been disciplined out of a church or at least created problems somewhere else. How people interpret their experiences with the church will reveal a lot about their spiritual state.
4. Why Join a Church?
Asking people what they want is always helpful. And the same goes for asking them why they want to join the church. This question reveals their aspirations.
When people outline their reasons for joining a church, they will admit what they are really after. Maybe they want to serve in a ministry but will go wherever there is a need. Others may want the church to be a platform for them to find self-expression. Others may not have thought about why they would join the church, except that they like the people there and want to have those people as their new social circle.
I remember in the early days of our church plant a woman visited who showed me the bible she had revieved from a famous preacher. She listed all of her qualifications and then inquired about our worship services. After all of this, she informed me that she was looking for a church where she could “use her gifts”. It was clear that she wanted to use the church for her own self-expression.
You will also find the good motives people have for joining a church, like wanting to grow, disciple others, and fulfill their roles in accord with lists of gifts from Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4.
In an introductory way, many aspirations will start to come to light.
5. What Barriers Prevent Someone from Joining a Church?
This is a question that solicits an admission. In a class, people may not reveal too much personally, but at least people can admit that being a confessing, covenanted member of a church requires faith in Jesus Christ, and not walking in blatant, known sin that would immediately be cause for church discipline.
You might get an admission about the church discipline question. Or you might get further clarity about how people think about the ‘inside/outside’ aspects of the gathered church.
If someone thinks that the only barrier to joining a church is growing up in a different religious family, then you will know that there is a lot of teaching to do to correct that admission.
What is the Gospel?
Is there a confession of gospel among the newcomers? This is the most important question. It is both simple, yet surprisingly intimidating: What is the gospel? Many people are so confused about religion that they can have masses of theological data to share, but lack clarity about what are the essential pieces of the gospel.
Keep the answers to a short elevator pitch. Some theology stars might wish to present a lecture. You don’t want that (and nobody else will). The goal is to see if people are clear enough about the gospel that they can give a concise, orderly confession of it. The main categories will be God, Man, Christ, and Response. Each of these can be filled out, but your question will reveal how much work you have to do in teaching the gospel to new people.
What you will find is that people with extensive church backgrounds may lack clarity about what the gospel is, and what it isn’t.
The hope of these introductory questions is to begin an ongoing evangelistic and discipleship connection with these newcomers. The hope is that they would become gospel-believing, Jesus-following, covenanted members of your church.
Asking these questions can be a starting point along that journey.
