Church Reputation

One of my wife’s co-workers had just been hired at a church in a town that we would pass through as we drove down the interstate, so we decided to keep an eye out for it.  Since it was a big church in town of about 20,000, we thought it might be visible from the freeway.  Tina was curious about the place and we needed a break, so when we stopped at an Arby’s for lunch. I asked the girl at the counter if she knew where the New Springs Church was located. She smiled and said, “Oh yes, that’s a great church. Everybody knows it.” I asked her if she went there. She said no, but she had friends that went there and she had been there a couple of times. I asked her for directions. She said, “Well, it’s out on such and such road.” I told her I was just passing through and didn’t know that road. She called her manager over and told her I was looking for New Springs Church. She gave directions that included three or four turns. I had hoped to catch a glimpse of the church as we sped by on t, but that wasn’t possible so we decided not to look it up. However, I asked the manager if she attended New Springs. She said no, but she knew the church because her grandkids had played basketball there and attended Vacation Bible School. “It’s a wonderful church. They do lots of stuff for people.” Just then another worker walked up and said, “Yeah, they help a lot of people. I go to another church, but if I didn’t, I would go to New Springs.” I thanked them, and we went on to our destination.

We never did see the church, but I got a mental picture of it. It’s a place that reaches out to the community, has a great reputation, and serves as a great embassy for the Kingdom of God in Anderson, South Carolina. I still haven’t been there, and I don’t know the pastor, Perry Noble, personally, (although I have become a fan of his articles on churchleaders.com). I have no reason to toot New Springs’ horn. I’m just reporting what happened and drawing this conclusion: this church must be doing a lot of things right, and I wish more churches had this kind of reputation in their communities. My mentor, Dan Harman, used to say that he wanted there to be three kinds of people in our town: those who went our church, those who went to another church but said they would go to our church if they weren’t involved in that church, and those who didn’t go to church anywhere but said that if they started going to church it would be our church. From my small sampling at Arby’s that day, it looks like New Springs has been able to do that in their town.   

What would happen if someone got off the interstate in your town and asked the people about your church at the local Arby’s or McDonalds? Would they get directions or a blank stare? Would the traveler hear good things about your church? Do the people in your town know about your church and is what they know positive? The people I spoke to that day didn’t talk about the great pastor. They spoke about how the church cares about people and reaches out to the community. (One of the people did mention that the worship was great, but that was far from the first thing they said about the church.) Big church, small church, whatever size your church is, it needs to build a reputation in your town for doing the great commandments. If it does that, it will almost automatically follow that the great commission will be accomplished. Here’s the thing. There’s only way to build this kind of reputation and that’s for the members to really learn to love people who don’t come to church and who may not be anything like the church members. You can’t program that. You can only teach it and, more importantly, model it.