Today in an increasingly skeptical world, the church must move beyond branding and build a new, more powerful reputation. Here are seven steps to elevating your visibility in a community.
1. Elevate the visibility of your need-meeting.
Churches should be known as the place in a community where people go when they have a crisis. Churches that offer divorce recovery programs, grief support groups, 12-step programs, etc., increase their visibility as the primary place where needs are met in their community.
2. Elevate the visibility of spiritual change.
People are looking for ways to change their lives and often psychologists or self-help programs are their first choice. While these can offer a measure of change that people need—physical change—I believe only Christ can offer the spiritual change that people long for deep inside. So in the name of helping people better their physical lives, do not neglect their higher needs for a supernatural transformation that only comes through Christ.
3. Elevate the visibility of your openness and honesty.
Churches often promote that they have the best program or the most exciting worship. But nonchurchgoers sense that this is not the real purpose of the church. Acknowledge that your church doesn’t do everything well and sometimes you get fixated on your organizational needs. Then remind them that your church is a spiritual community, seeking to work together to draw closer to Christ.
4. Elevate the visibility of your unity in diversity.
In an increasingly diverse world, people want to go to a church that mirrors the diversity of God’s creation. But such diversity must not be only symbolic, but also heartfelt. It is important for people of diverse cultures to run the church together, to worship together and to learn from one another about cultural background and baggage. The church should be visible in the community as a place that not only promotes spiritual reconciliation to God, but also physical reconciliation between cultures.
5. Elevate your visibility as a place to learn.
People today have conceptions of the church as a place that lectures and criticizes, rather than a place that promotes learning. Jesus gave us a Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) to “make learners.” Thus our goal must be to acquaint them with his words, while we exemplify how these words are lived out in community.
6. Elevate your visibility as a place where everybody can find a place.
Emphasize smaller fellowship groupings within the larger whole. Most people today are not only looking for a large event, but also a smaller group where they can ask spiritual questions and receive support on their spiritual journey.
7. Elevate your visibility as a community that promotes and seeks God’s wisdom.
The church should be known as a place of Bible study and prayer. Thus it should be a place where people who are estranged from God, or even just struggling in their relationship, will find people and prayer environments that will assist them in connecting to their heavenly Father. If a person in the community needs prayer, the first place they should think of is your church.
If you can’t elevate one or more of these areas because they don’t yet exist in your church, then start with the easiest—but don’t stop until you develop these seven ways to elevate an organically spiritual and biblical visibility.