The three percent

Our family arrived in Charlestown in late 2016 to plant our lives and a church. We took photos, found our coffee shop and grocery store, discovered a park our boys loved and began to navigate Boston driving. But one thing we needed to settle on was how to meet people. If we were going to plant a church, who did we need to meet; where and when would we meet them; and how many people should we meet?

Statistics for reaching a community

We’d been told a people group is considered “unreached” if they are less than 3% evangelical Christian. (I’m not sure why that number stuck in our minds, but it was something concrete we could grasp.) Charlestown consists of 18,000 people living in one square mile. As we prayed and started our lives here we fixated on 3%…540 people.

We prayed to one day baptize 540 people as new followers of Jesus. We prayed to one day be a church of 540 people every Sunday. We prayed to one day see 540 people come visit our church and hear the Gospel.

But we started with a goal to know 540 people.

Meeting people intentionally

Every time we went to the park and met a family, we came home and wrote down their names as well as any other details we learned in the conversation — address or street, kids’ names or ages or schools, length of time in Charlestown or any other relevant details. We repeated the same process while walking the neighborhood, at a coffee shop, at neighborhood council meetings I attended or parent council at the boys’ school.

We kept a notebook in our living room, and day by day we would put in new names and thank God for new encounters. It took us a few weeks, but we got to 540. Then that number kept growing until eventually we believed we knew or had met a solid 10% of our community.

(Quick disclaimers: Our number wasn’t an assumption that no one was a Christian before we met them. We thank God for Erik and Sarah Maloy at First Church in our community, and we have met incredible followers of Jesus who live in Charlestown but worship in other communities or in churches of other denominational traditions. God’s work is bigger than any person or family. The 3% just became our measuring stick, our way of praying God would reach into our neighborhood and do something incredible with us and through us.)

You can’t love those you don’t know

You may not be a fan of numbers, but here is the truth: We can’t love people we don’t know, and we can’t personally share the Gospel with someone we’ve never met. Have all of those people come to faith in Christ? No. Have some of them come to faith? Yes. Do we still believe God wants us to become a 3% church and even one day baptize 3% of Charlestown? Absolutely!

But regardless of whether they accept Christ, we love those first 540 (and the other 17,460-ish who live here). So many of those 540 have become dear friends, huge encouragements and even vocal cheerleaders for Christ Church Charlestown — though many have never attended. What a gift! I believe friendships may one day translate into Gospel conversations, but when we were new to the city, those 540 became beacons of hope for what could and should be.  

So if your Gospel conversations are fewer and farther between, grab a notebook and keep a running total of people you know or people you meet. See with fresh eyes. Consider your community, your ZIP code, your school or wherever. Set your percentage at 2%, 3% or whatever number you like. Pray like it all depends on God. But be intentional. Be relational. Be one who pursues others for the sake of the Gospel.

JD Mangrum is the church planting pastor of Christ Church Charlestown in Charlestown, MA.