"Our Outplacement Specialist Is Ready to Serve You"

"Our Outplacement Specialist Is Ready to Serve You"

Our guest writer today is Earl Creps, author of the new book Off-Road Disciples (see left).The last congregation that Jan and I pastored is located in a Midwestern city that serves as the home of our denomination’s national headquarters and several of our colleges. With large pools of believers (including thousands of Christian college students) in town, we faced the possibility of investing years of our lives filling seats with Christians who used to have a seat in someone else’s building. This seemed like a grim prospect for a couple reasons...

1. Expectations: transfers may consider their “last church” as God’s new default position and are perplexed when your congregation isn’t like that. Or, they may have left the last place over some issues they plan to bring with them.

2. Infrastructure: integrating transfers into the congregation consumes time, energy, and resources that could be invested elsewhere—like in evangelism.

If George Barna is right, though, “More than 80% of the current growth registered by Protestant churches is biological or transfer growth – very little of the growth comes from penetrating the ranks of the unchurched.” William Chadwick’s book, Sheep Stealing deals with the same theme. So we’ve got a problem, and I lived it first hand in our congregation.

Now, let’s be clear. Since 50% of growth by conversion is considered world class, transfers are just going to happen. I’ve been one. Also, there are some advantages to this type of growth. Paul came to Antioch, for example, because Barnabas brought him. An infusion of Christian talent can be exactly what a ministry needs to get on mission.

The key for me, then, is attracting missional transfers; believers who want to live in a way that affords a credible hearing for the gospel in their community.

I want to suggest two factors that can attract missional Christians:

1. Culture: Every pastor knows that musicians are attracted to good music. I believe mission works the same way.

2. Outplacement Specialist: The back cover of every Sunday bulletin in our last church carried a paragraph about Daryl, our Outplacement Specialist. A student at my seminary working on a counseling degree, Daryl was responsible for much of the telephone follow-up for all of our visitors. But we also advertised that he would assist anyone who was not feeling like they fit into our congregation with finding another church more suitable to their preferences. We had some takers.

The existence of an Outplacement Specialist sends a couple of strong cultural messages. One is that we are unapologetic about our identity. Our culture and approach are simply not for everyone. The second message is that we do not view integrating transfers as the core of our mission and are delighted to help them find another church.

For discussion:

1. Should every church advertise the services of an “Outplacement Specialist”?

2. Transfer growth takes a beating all the time. Is it really as bad as many observers claim? Does it have benefits we overlook too often?