7 Simple Steps to Keep People Away From Your Church

Last updated on: May 24, 2017 at 6:21 am by Josh Daffern

7 Simple Steps to Keep People Away From Your Church 2017-05-24T06:21:30-06:00 Josh Daffern

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If you want to keep your church small and dysfunctional, there’s a simple plan to follow. If your desire is to see your church slowly fade away into obscurity and irrelevance, stay faithful to these seven steps. In Matthew 9, Jesus had his first confrontations with the religious leaders of his day, and a party at Matthew’s house showed just why the religious leaders had lost the people of their day.

9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. 10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:9-13)

From this biblical text, here are seven simple ways to keep people away from your church:

1. Label instead of love. You see at the beginning of the passage that Jesus’ company for the evening were simply labeled “tax collectors” and “sinners.” The Pharisees would have known the names of these people, but it’s always easier to label instead of love. If you can begin to categorize and caricature people with labels such as “gays,” “liberals,” “drunks” or other such labels, you’re one step closer to ensuring that none of those people would ever step inside your church.

2. Don’t go where sinners gather. The Pharisees stood outside the house and judged from a distance, shocked that someone who claimed to be holy would even enter into such an establishment. The easiest way to keep outsiders from coming into your church is to simply avoid them altogether.

3. Ignore the uninformed. The Pharisees were intentional to avoid speaking to Matthew or any of his guests. They berated Jesus’ disciples and pretended that no one else was present. If an outsider mistakenly makes their way into your church, the best way to keep them from coming back is to ignore them. Don’t talk to them; use insider language that only church people know; don’t explain anything to them. Pretend like they’re not there, and pretty soon that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

4. Shame those who socialize with sinners. Every once in awhile you might get an errant church member who gets all evangelistic and wants to start sharing Jesus with people on the outside. If anyone gets that crazy idea in their head, do what the Pharisees did: shame them. That’s the heart of the confrontation between the Pharisees and Jesus in Matthew 9. They shamed the disciples for even daring to socialize with those deemed less than holy.

5. Only heal the healthy. As a church, you have a good amount of resources at your disposal. As an American church you’ll have more financial capital available than most any other church in the world. With educated members teeming with Bible knowledge, you’ll have more potential leadership in the church than you know what to do with. If you want to keep people away from the church, leverage all of those resources solely on those inside the church. Jesus said it’s not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. If you want to keep people away, only heal the already healthy.

6. Judge non-Christians for acting like non-Christians. Jesus made reference to an Old Testament word from Hosea, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” meaning that God values mercy and forgiveness over rules and judgement. So, if you want to keep people away, stick with judgment. A church that’s skilled at this will develop a finely tuned ability to prejudge people for not holding to a standard they never agreed to keep. Let the judgment roll out from the pulpit out into the pews and onto the streets, and the outsiders will soon get the message: your church is no place for them.

7. Mistakenly smirk at your moral superiority. At the end of the day, pride is an incredible way to ensure that your church stays small and dysfunctional, because God will actively oppose your church (James 4:6). Jesus finished his confrontation with the Pharisees by saying that he did not come to call those who already think they’re righteous, but sinners. Or go back to how Jesus started the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3). Just be cocky. Wear that moral superiority like a badge of honor. Privately and publicly assume that you’re better than everyone else, and the lack of growth in your church will take care of itself, because God himself will be against you.

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