Unchurched Friend #2

This person i interviewed is actually my brother. So i have to say i know him very well. My brother grew up in church just like i did, always there for everything. He is 2 years older than me though, so we never had the same youth pastors as i did. In fact Rnady didn't like his youth pastor which is one of the reasons he stopped going to church after he graduated highschool. So while i was home over spring break i decided to interview him.

First i asked him what do you think the greatest need in our area is, and i think i should have explained it to him better, although i know he knew what i meant, but his first answer was to fill the pot holes! ha! Then he got alittle more serious and said that we needed lower gas prices and more job opportunities in our area.

I asked him if he was actively attending church even though i already knew the answer to that one, no. He doesn't even go on holidays. I asked him why he wouldn't go and he said because he didn't have the time and didn't want to be judged. Then i asked him what if there were church services not held on sunday mornings because he always works weekends. I said what about a friday night or a saturday night service. He said he still wouldn't go because those are either relax at home nights or go out and party nights. Then i asked him well what about a wednesday night and he still said no. so i told him that the issue wasn't that he didn't have time, but that he just didn't wnat to go and his excuse to everyone was time.

then i asked him what were a few topics that interested him. He said sports, i assumed he would have said that, but churches can use sports as an outreach in some way. He said that politics were very important to him. One topic that greatly impacted him he said though was the inhumanity people show towards each other. He hates it that people treat other humans like dirt or animals.

I asked him why he thought most people didn't attend church and this is where he game me alot of answers. He said that in some way or form that they've been pushed away from the church. He said that it's not that most people haven't gone to church, but they don't go on a regular basis because they feel like churches are just bi cliques trying to push out the people who really need church. He said it's not that people don't want to know God, they do, but it's that people don't want to be judged and not loved or not feel welcomed in a church.

Next i asked him what he would look for in a church if he did want to go. At first he gave me a sarcastic remark of it needs to look like a football stadium. Then he got serious and said that he would go to a church that wasn't hypocritical, that had a sincere concern for other people.

The last question i asked him was what advice would he give to pastors to be helpful to people. He said don't come across as a distant person, be more than the guy that stand in front of a crowd of people and talks, be interactive.

Then after all this i just asked him what else he wanted to say on the subject and he said this. "The people in the church are exactly what i don't want to be, they say one thing and live another."

So all in all it went really well. We actually talked for quite a while about alot of things. I just feel so sad, like we "the church" have failed people like my bother in some way or another, like we have not been doing our part as a church to make more people feel loved and welcome.