The lost sheep in our communities
/Jesus once told this parable:
‘Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbours together and says, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.” I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.’ (Luke 15:4–7)
Jesus told this parable to the Pharisees and teachers of the law when they muttered about him eating with tax collectors and sinners.
The Pharisees had lost sight of the truth that the Kingdom of God was for sinners. They thought it was only the religious, the good, who could belong to God’s Kingdom.
But Jesus taught that no matter how far we have wandered, or how lost we are, everyone is valuable.
Indeed, one lost sinner is so valuable to God that, like the sheep owner who would leave 99 sheep in order to find one lost one, Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors so that even just one lost sinner might be found.
Seeking the lost
In Reformed evangelical churches we know and love this parable. We know that we all were sinners who needed to be found.
We also know Jesus’ charge to his disciples in Matthew 28 to go and make disciples of all peoples. As a result, Reformed evangelical churches are, by and large, missional churches.
We prioritise reaching the lost. We run evangelistic events and encourage our congregations to invite their neighbours and friends. We run ‘Introducing Jesus’-type courses.
Unlike the Pharisees, we don’t believe that a relationship with God is just for ‘religious’ or ‘good’ people.
With these things in mind, now imagine the weight of Jesus’ parable if it went like this:
Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses seventy-four of them. Doesn’t he leave the twenty-six in the open country and go after the seventy-four lost sheep …
It’s a no-brainer. Of course we would go looking for 74 lost sheep. Who would stay with 26 sheep and ignore the fact that 74 had gone missing?
Yet think about what is happening in Reformed evangelical churches. If 74% of the population in Australia aged 15 years and over are ‘everyday people’ by my definition, and yet so few of them in our local communities are in our churches, does this mean we have decided that 74 ‘sheep’ in every 100 that could be in our keeping aren’t worth finding?
If this is true, it is a problem we cannot ignore.
Check out the numbers
Reformed evangelical churches are full of university-educated professionals, yet these are actually a minority group in our communities. Where are the everyday people – the tradies, truck drivers, factory workers, hairdressers and retail workers?
We are leaving the vast majority of people lost and without Christ.
Now, I’ll admit that Reformed evangelical churches are not completely devoid of everyday people. Sure, most church members would be able to identify a truck driver, or builder, or hairdresser among them.
But the problem is that they are conspicuously underrepresented compared with the local community.
And what’s even more concerning is that many university-educated Christians don’t even realise that everyday people are missing from their church. Are you surprised to read that such a high percentage of people in our communities have never been to university?
Why is this?
We all tend to gravitate towards others who are like us. University-educated people hang out with other university-educated people, go to the same places and events, go through similar life experiences – and assume all this is the norm.
But the vast majority of people are everyday people. They are not university-educated. They are the norm.
Why not do a little research activity now to find out how many everyday people live in your suburb or town? It’s easy enough to do if you live in Australia. Just type this into a search engine: census quickstats [your suburb]. Click on the link for the latest census results. Then scroll down to ‘Level of highest educational attainment’ and you will see those who have a Bachelor degree and above. These are the ‘professionals’. Everyone else is ‘everyday’ (although some aged between 15 and 24 may be in the process of achieving degree qualifications).
You’re likely to find that even in areas you might assume are mainly professional due to their fairly affluent populations – Vaucluse on the shores of Sydney Harbour, for example – a surprisingly low number of people have a university degree.
To run with Vaucluse as an example: only 52% of working aged people there have a degree.
Now, you might object and point out that many people aged between 15 and 25 in Vaucluse would be going on to obtain a university degree.
That is true … but if we drill down deeper into the statistics, we still find that 25% of people 25 years and older in Vaucluse do not have a university degree.
That’s a quarter of the population – a very significant group of people who need to be reached and discipled by the local church.
My point is this: I’m not sure there would be anywhere in Australia where there are not many, many everyday people who need to hear the good news about Jesus and join a healthy local church.
Yet university-educated Christians are often unaware of their existence in our own neighbourhoods – and consequently, we do not see them as part of our mission.
We are, on the whole, not reaching our everyday neighbours.
How bad is it in our churches?
In 2021, the National Church Life Survey (NCLS) in Australia surveyed the educational attainment of those in church.
The graph below shows the results for Sydney Anglican churches and other Protestant churches where at least one leader identified as ‘Reformed’, compared with the educational attainment of the general Australian population.
Sources:
M Pepper, R Powell and S Sterland, ‘Educational Attainment for churches that consider themselves “reformed”: Results from the 2021 National Church Life Survey for Andrew Beddoe, Vocational Bible College’, NCLS Research, 2023.
Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Education and training: Census: Information on qualifications, educational attendance and type of educational institution’, ABS website, 28 June 2022, accessed 3 April 2023.
In all age categories, the proportion of everyday people in congregations is worryingly low. What’s perhaps most concerning is the large gap that exists between those aged 30 to 39. In this age bracket, we would need to double the number of everyday people in our churches if our churches were to more closely reflect the Australian communities they belong to.
This situation is not due to lack of effort. There are many ministers who have worked hard to reach the lost in areas with high numbers of everyday people, but have seen little fruit of their labour. Many are discouraged. There’s a temptation to put ministry to everyday people in the ‘too hard basket’.
What can we do to reach the many everyday people living in our communities? We are not bringing these lost sheep home. And that means we’re not fulfilling God’s purpose for his world and his church.
This article is one of a series that I’ve written about making disciples of ‘everyday people’.
It can be read on its own, but if you’d like to gain a greater understanding of how my thoughts around this important topic have developed, you may wish to read the full series of articles in order.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™