Thread by @Aspree_Berean

This is unpopular these days, but: Saints, there is absolutely no reason why you need to look at your church demographic and say things like 'we should change what we're doing so that we can change our demographics to match the makeup of our community'.

This is faulty wordly thinking masquerading as godliness.

Now, it's absolutely true that churches can be unhealthily unbalanced in all sorts of ways. But this comes from sinful biases, not just the demographic makeup.

Just because your 'pie chart' of skin tones/genders/ages doesn't exactly reflect the pie chart of your community doesn't mean you're 'bad', 'wrong', or 'insufficiently balanced' to do what God has called your church to do.

Some things related to this.
1) ...

To insist this is necessarily true is to say there are no other churches in town that can accomplish God's ministry work and that it's up to yours alone, and you alone must shoulder the burden of 'becoming all things to all men'. God builds His Church (collectively).

2) ...

This thinking leads to the same failures of seeker-sensitive and attractional church programming, but with added 'guilt'. Because the dividing line is not just about wanting more people to come, it's about specific folks, there's a natural assumption that your church has failed

...to be sensitive to the needs of a specific group. Attractional models have never worked to really grow God's kingdom, there are more reasons why it will fail when it's specifically aiming to target a specific cultural 'group'.
(Edit - 2.5 - yeah, and just wait till members

...of that demographic find out you were making a push for their 'group' and let them wonder why you wanted them individually to be involved so badly.... This is the 'hand grenade' of quotas and metrics. )

3) This can minimize or restructure resources away from the current..

...ministries your church is involved in and people it is currently helping. Time, Talent, and Treasure are roughly finite resources, at least on short time scales. It's possible God has spent time developing a lot of powerful mechanisms in your body to help the people that are

actually there.

4) It will turn the focus of the people and the leaders on unhealthy metrics like numbers and demographic breakdowns. This can only result in more pragmatic efforts and more focusing on differences, not less. You will almost certainly start down a path that

leads to the church suddenly being //more// aware of demographic dividing lines (esp. in the wrong ways), and working hard to show partiality to some over others. These are not biblical concepts, and will not serve as a solid foundation for real growth. This sounds

theoretical, but I've seen this a few times already and I've heard of many others.

Folks - yes, we should seek to try ourselves and see if there is any false way in us, including some racism or prejudice, and we should ask God to do this to us as well. And yes, the gospel is

about all tribes, people, tongues, and nations gathering at the foot of the cross. But that doesn't mean a church that has a certain breakdown is necessarily 'bad'. I see no such measures in scripture. I see no indication that Paul is concerned for the church of Rome to

have a roughly commensurate percentage of Gentiles and Jews. I see no sign from Peter that we need to get more men involved in the church because it was getting too feminine.

No, I see things like "Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian,

Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all." and "My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory."

We should seek to be impartial, and remember that the Lord builds His Church, and if we're serving

people, don't necessarily assume it's the wrong people just because it's not the same makeup as some arbitrarily-imposed ideal makeup."
This thread pasted with permission.. Some thoughtful thoughts from a thoughtful friend. Thoughts?