Growing your fringe

There’s a great line in the film Crocodile Dundee. Someone tells Dundee that a friend of theirs is going to visit a psychiatrist. Dundee asks why, and is told it’s to talk about his problems. Dundee’s retort: “What, has he got no mates?”

With community involvement, there’s a temptation to leapfrog over friends and family and go for the stranger. It’s understandable - it’s much easier to ‘hit and run’ where strangers are concerned. And it’s so much easier to cope with the rejection if they prove not to be interested.

But this isn’t the most effective way. The really effective way is to start with those you already know.

Every church has a fringe. Every Christian has friends.

When Horndean Baptist Church in Hampshire decided to research the needs in its community, it built into the process two questionnaires designed to get the congregation to think about the network of relationships they already had.

One questionnaire asked them to identify the number of people they already had contact with, and the depth of those relationships. The second got them to think through the ‘type’ of people they knew – their age, status, background, interests, and so on. (Click to go to a form of these questionnaires on the Engage site.)

By compiling the information they began to get a picture of their fringe. This enabled them to plan programmes that would engage with these people and cause them to grow in number.

As we develop relationships with those we know, they introduce us to those they know … and the snowball starts rolling.

And there’s another advantage to this. Rather than faith moving people away from their community friends, it encourages them to develop those relationships further.

And this prevents the church from cutting off the source of its new relationships. If we were to cut off that source, we’d find it far harder to create connections. The only thing we’d be left with would be those who have no contact with us other than ‘cold calling’.
 

Last Updated 30 November 2010