Customer Reviews

The Unchurched Next Door: Understanding Faith Stages as Keys to Sharing Your Faith

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As one of the privileged research team members for "The Unchurched Next Door," I would like to say that the book only covers half of what we actually did to research this work. Dr. Rainer did a great job of condensing our research, feelings, and attitidues into a book length work, and the conclusions he arrives at are solidly based in real, live, interviews.

On occaision, we researchers had to endure criticism, scolding, tears, cussing, and other generally nasty behavior, along with some true blessed events, such as hearing people ask, "What must I do to be saved?" Each of us was assigned several states and we each had to "discover" our own interviews. That in itself was an educational effort. Some traveled, others utilized the telephone, while others still demonstrated great creativity in many ways to meet the unchurched. Each of us discovered, personally, the unchurched persons that we interviewed.

Ultimately, as a pastor, I highly commend this work to both the pastor's library and the average church members's library as a reminder of God's Great Commission; to seek and disciple God's lost sheep. It is easy to read, easy to understand, and with dilligence, easy to do!

The Unchurched Next Door is an admirable attempt to understand why people don't attend a Christian church and how best to lead them to a relationship with Christ that includes church attendance. This monumental task was undertaken by surveying people around the United States to get their answers to multiple questions (statistical results are presented in an appendix). From the results of these questionnaires author Thom S. Rainer divides unchurched people into five distinct groups. These groups run the range from those who would attend if someone would invite them to those who are openly hostile to the gospel and people who attend church.

Thom S. Rainer is a dean at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, a fact that he reminds the reader of on a regular basis throughout the text. Other than that one minor annoyance, the information is extremely valuable to anyone involved in church growth and outreach. I found some of the numbers to be surprising and some pretty much what I expected. Either way, the analysis was consistently insightful. The Unchurched Next Door is a highly recommended book for anyone charged with growing their church and its influence in the surrounding area.

This book gives us all a glimpse of what the unchurced really think about Christians, church, and a relationship with God in their own life, as well as perspectives about reaching them at different places on a spiritual receptivity scale developed by Ranier and his team. Laden with statistics, but written with a pastors heart, Ranier uses story after story to demonstrate that people far from God are genuinely interested in knowing more about the God we serve and follow. Ranier justifies with hard evidence from the field that many are waiting for a warm friendship with a Christian or someone who is willing to share with them in order to move up in receptivity about Christ. This book is what I would call encouragement and reminder for many, as well as equipping the reader with an understanding of the unchurched that might be previously unknown. The insights will suprise you!

What I learned: The average profile of the unchurced was suprising, as well as the information about each stage of spirtitual receptivity, from the most antagonistic to the most ready to ask Jesus to be the leader and director of their lives.

I think we need to stay mindful here that as we share Christ with those who don't know Him, they are real people, much of whom are very open to God and His Word, but are disillusioned with the church. Let us as His ambassadors not get mixed up into thinking we need to invite them to church (which is a gathering of believers), and rather invite them into our home, build a relationship and 'show' Jesus to them...it's not all about church growth; it's about growing the Kingdom of God through growing disciples!!!

This is a good book. Even from a reformed background you realize that you can't just lock yourself up in your little church and expect that people are going to come in and ask how to be saved. you have to go out and talk to people. it is a great book.

I recently finished reading The Unchurched Next Door by Thom Rainer. I had previously read his books Surprising Insights from the Unchurched and Simple Church, and I found his research to be very illuminating in those books. The same is true of this book.
For this project, Rainer had a team of interviewers conduct extensive one-on-one surveys with unchurched Americans from a wide variety of backgrounds. Rainer classifies them into five categories of unchurched. These are classified on the "Rainer scale" from a U5 (highly resistant and antogonistic to the gospel) to a U1 (high receptive to the gospel.) His researchers found that only 5% of Americans were U5's (antogonistic), and that among the remaining 95% of the unchurched, the majority would likely come to church if somebody they knew invited them and offered to go with them into the building. Here was the most interesting statistic in the book-- Answers to the question, would you be likely to go to church if invited:
U5 (antogonistic): 0% very likely, 20% somewhat likely, for a total of 20%
U4 (resistant but not antagonistic): 17% very likely, 45% somewhat likely, for a total of 62%
U3 (neutral): 23% very likely, 63% somewhat likely, for a total of 86%
U2 (receptive): 46% very likely, 51% somewhat likely, for a total of 97%
U1 (highly receptive): 52% very likely, 45% somewhat likely, for a total of 97%
Over and over again, Rainer pleads in this book for Christians to invite their friends to church. His plea needs to be heard.

This book provides a helpful introduction to near-neighbor evangelism which is lacking among many Christians, myself included. The main points are that not all unchurched people are at the same place on their faith journey, and that many will come to church if they are invited, which unfortunately seldom happens.

I think a couple of weaknessesshould be noted. There seems to be an underlying assumption that there is a clear path between someone coming to church and their becoming a disciple of Jesus. Rainer doesn't really help us see what that path is. The second weakness is that conversion is seen as occuring when someone pray's "the sinners prayer," "invites Jesus into their hearts," or "accepts Jesus as their personal Savior." Biblical conversion is more complex.

Rainer did a great research on the unchurched, and in the process, developed a grading on where to place people, i.e. the Rainer Scale of U5 to U1 where U5 are the most resistant and U1 the most receptive. Rainer goes beyond what people are resistant about to show that, often times, there is history and past experiences that give people a certain perception. He also offers some approaches towards reaching and building relationships with the different categories of people.

One of the important results of the study is that most people whould go to church if they were invited. Some young Christians (those who just had a relationship with Jesus) wondered why their Christian colleges, friends and neighbors never opened their mouths to invite them if having a personal relationship with Jesus is a matter of life and death, heaven or hell. People tend to feel intimidated walking into a church, and so by inviting friends there, and helping them to know their way and meet people, greatly helps. Also, some Christians have bad experiences with U5s (which constitute only about 5%) and gets turned off from inviting the unchurched or in sharing the gospel. Christians need to look to the other 95% and get over their bad experiences.

Even as culture and society changes, the results in the future may change from what is presented in this book, but as for now, this research shows that there is a window of opportunity to invite the unchurched to church and leading them to a personal relationship with Jesus.

Extremely helpful to read before going on mission doing surveys and witnessing door to door. Helped to understand where people are in the process of receiving a witness about Jesus Christ, and to not feel discouraged when they "rejected" our offer to hear the gospel. It helped us know how to pray for certain people knowing that they are either resistant, neutral, seeker, or just waiting to hear the gospel.