Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been exploring the ideas of vision for a church and if a church should have a target, what having or not having a target does for a church and how to determine that target.

One of the struggles for churches is to continue making decisions with their those they are best suited to reach in mind.

Here’s why: the church gets older.

All of a sudden, a church plant that started out reaching college students and single adults now are married, with kids. Families start attending. The crazy ideas they once had now seem ludicrous when you consider the businessmen, nurses, dentists and teachers that attend.

If a church isn’t careful, the leadership of the church will not have any decision makers who are the age of who they say their target is.

What do you do then? Make sure you have some decision makers that are in your target. 

For example, if you are hoping to reach 20-40 year old men, you need to make sure that some of those are decision makers in your church. If you are wanting to reach 50 year old women, you need to know what speaks to them. Whoever you are trying to reach, it is a good idea to run ideas by those in that age bracket, those who have a worldview different from yours.

The older you get, no matter how hip you think you are, you are out of touch. I’m in my 30’s and I feel out of touch with 21 year olds. This is why I spend time developing leaders who are in college, have students and singles in my community. I’ve even run some ideas by 20-25 year olds to see what they think of sermon or video or song ideas.

What I’ve discovered is they have drastically different opinions than a 45 or 55 year old. This is not right or wrong, it just is. And, if your target is clearly defined, you know which way to go.