We’ve been praying for three people in our Sunday morning service for a while now. We’re doing this because of a challenge from our District Convention this summer.
I don’t know about you, but I have found some difficulty in this prayer. In the prayer, we take a moment to silently pray for three people who we know are disconnected from the Church and/or from God. The difficulty isn’t that I don’t know enough people who fit that category, if anything, it would probably be narrowing it down. The moment I say “these are my three people disconnected from the Church and/or God,” a flood of anxiety come crashing in – there are so many other people, how can I only pray for three?
Because of that, I’ve done a poor job of praying consistently for the same people, but usually some of the same people pop up for me: there’s a former student that I know has walked away from the church (sadly, not the only one I know), there’s a family member, and there’s a current student I know. And so I need to do a better job of following through on praying for them specifically – but the moment I think about doing that, the question “then what?” comes to my head.
Well, that is part of the plan. At the last pastor’s conference, I attended a pretty basic but challenging workshop. In the workshop we were encouraged to group the “disconnected people” that we knew into three groups: 1. The unreceptive, 2. the receptive, and 3. the seeking.
Those three categories broadly get defined like this:
The unreceptive – People who are generally closed off from hearing about Jesus or Christianity. They may groan when you bring up this part of your life, or they may be respectful of your beliefs but they are convinced those beliefs don’t work for them.
The receptive – These are people that might be curious about your faith. Note, curiosity may be as far as they are willing to go right now. They might have questions, or maybe they say things like “that’s really cool that your faith helps you deal with that problem.” They may even go as far as a little experimentation, like going to church with you – but there’s a level at which they stop and check out. If they don’t, then they are in the next category:
The seeking – These are people that are actively looking to see how Jesus and Christianity could make sense in their life. This is difficult work. If you’ve never slept in on Sundays for a year in a row, only to consider getting up early on a day off – you might realize how this is different. But nonetheless, they are trying to figure this out, and they might be interested if you try to walk with them through that.
Over the next few weeks, we’re going to be talking about these three categories. We’re going to try to help you make sense of them, and we’re also going to help you figure out what to do with people in each category. Spoiler alert, people who are “unreceptive” don’t just need you to re-explain why you think being a Christian is the way to go again.
We hope that this will help you figure out how to pray in a way that is clearer for each person, and find a way to witness to them in a more productive way. After all, Jesus loves these people with the love that He loves you with – and you probably love these people too if they are “on your list”. So let’s talk about how we love well.