Competition in the Church

I was attending a meeting about planning and visioning a future for Park UMC when an interesting way of looking at things came to me. We were talking about factors inside the church and outside the church when our leader brought up the term "competitive knowledge." In the business world this is the knowledge of what your competition is doing, so McDonalds being aware that Subway is really pushing the healthy side of fast food, or Nissan knowing what Toyota is doing with Hybrids. The tendency in the church, and my first instinct was to think, that for Park, that would mean looking at what the Lutherans down the street are doing, or the Assemblies of God across the river. Certainly it is good to know what other churches are offering, but I think there is more important competitive knowledge in the church. If we are to think about this not as a how we can poach people who might go to the Lutherans instead, we are limiting who we are looking for, even if we are not trying to take their members, just their potential members, we are not helping the greater Kin-dom. I think the real competitive knowledge we need in the church is knowing why people are choosing to stay home instead. Even we assume the Church has something to offer people, how are they getting this somewhere else. Who are people turning to instead of the church with their problems? Family? The local bar? Oprah? What are people doing to fill the spiritual side of them instead of church? This is the real competitive knowledge we need. How can we find ways to reach those people, rather than just worrying about what the Lutherans are doing, or the Catholics, or whomever it is in your area. The meeting was great, the conversation was energizing, but that thought alone seemed to frame it all so much better for me. Now I just need to work on figuring it out.