Who is your Audience?

 

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We want our reach to be extensive, saturating and our voices heard nationally and internationally. We classify this deep desire under the category, Mission. After Covid-19, Most of the pastors, preachers and self-appointed Christian leaders have started a YouTube channel. Great progress! All the Church services and events are uploaded in the digital platforms. Allow me to pose this question, Who is your audience? It is worth pondering on few more questions listed below:

· How do we understand Missions, in such context?

·      Who do we want as our audience?

·       What are we actually expecting?

·      What are we tracking day in and day out?

·   Would you take a moment to seriously ponder on the above questions and clarify your views and motives?

The fact of the matter is that the digital media has grown significantly after Covid-19, but the Church attendance has dropped drastically and the reach to non-Christians has become stagnant. Most of the Christian leaders are settling down and focusing on Christians who are less than 4% in India and less than 20% globally, excluding Catholics. With this approach, we are expecting a mighty revival. If you carefully analyze from all the digital platforms, what people in most cases want is to see the flow of funds grow cumulatively through all the digital platforms. Reaching soul is made a platform and a bridge to find personal security and gratification. I risk myself to be looked upon as a stupid critic and dismiss this blog as irrelevant. But truth and facts can always be too demanding. In fact, in the Bible we find many unfollowed Jesus as they found His teachings hard (John 6:66).

How would non-Christians understand the Church service and follow Christ? Why would a non-Christian even open the Church service from your channel and watch? Do you have anything designed that can be a take - away for people of any faith and find the truth about Jesus? When Jesus was physical, He spent most of the time with sinners and was tagged as "friend of sinners" (Luke 7:34) and today in the absence of physical Jesus we want to be tagged as "friend of Christians" and want huge Christian followers who would sustain us and through whom we can accumulate riches.

Let me quote a fascinating passage in Luke 17 where Jesus heals the 10 Lepers. And out of 10 only one returns. Immediately, Jesus poses a strong question to the one who returned by asking "where are the nine?" Then Jesus said, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Luke 17:17 CSB.  Jesus was not just excited about the one who returned and ensured to follow Him and be part of the team, but challenged him by asking why the nine have not returned with Him. In Christ’s Mission, it is not always about the one who is with us but the nine who are outside the fold. The rate of non-Christians is so high in number, yet it isn’t unsettling for us. We are willing to spend all our time within the four walls, equipping and reequipping without getting them out to the task and Mission, God has designed for us all. Why do we fail to see something is drastically wrong on the way we focus on the priorities?

Focusing on the crowd outside is not just doing a prayer walk, intercessory prayers and having seminars on Missions but to plan every single initiative and intervention to reach people for Christ. Some of the suggestion can be, to plan a channel addressing common life changing topics that can attract people to follow Christ. Write periodic articles exclusively designed for general public. In case you want to know how it is written, you may check my blogs for non-Christians. Equip every believer to share their faith and lead at least one person to Christ every month. Stop getting excited with Church activities and musical programs. I am sure if you think in this direction, you would be in a position to design many such practical ideas to reaching out to the larger crowd. Set your audience right for a greater harvest.

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