Think about the last community event your church hosted. A free dinner, a fall festival, a movie night on the lawn. Now be honest. What was the real goal? If it was to get people through the doors for Sunday, your neighbors probably knew that before they showed up.
That’s the problem affinity ministry is meant to solve. Instead of inviting unchurched people to church events, you create spaces where people who genuinely share an interest gather around it, and where the Christians in the room genuinely love the people they meet there. In Turn the Key I call it “the model underneath every model.”
Why church-centric outreach struggles
Most church outreach is church-centric. We host something at our building, invite the neighborhood, and hope people come and feel welcome and maybe stay.
But unchurched people have very good radar for this. They can tell when the free dinner is really an invitation to a service, or when the community gathering is really a soft evangelism tool. People who’ve been burned by that approach won’t come, or they’ll come once and that’s the last you see of them.
I don’t think most churches mean to be manipulative. We genuinely want people to meet Jesus. But when the event only exists to deliver an invitation, people feel like a project, and they can usually tell within a few minutes which one they are to you, a project or a person.
What affinity ministry looks like
Affinity ministry turns that around. The interest is real, and so is the gathering. The church people there actually love the activity, whether it’s cars or motorcycles or gardening or volleyball, and they’d be there even if nobody new showed up. So when an unchurched neighbor does show up, he meets a Christian who likes the same thing he likes. Friendships start that way.
At Living Faith Church, this has taken a few forms:
- The Garage: people who love cars gather around cars, and church and unchurched people work side by side on jobs that matter.
- Free Lunch Fridays: a simple outdoor lunch in the summer for nearby businesses. A neighborhood gathering, not a church event.
- Art nights: artists come and create together.
- Bikers and Brats: motorcycle riders come for a simple dinner and a ride.
- Sports leagues: volleyball, cornhole, Frisbee football.
- A community garden: people who like growing things grow things together.
What ties all of those together is shared interest and real community, with no religious agenda hiding underneath. The Gospel travels through the friendships that form, over months and years.
Isn’t this just a softer bait-and-switch?
It’s a fair question, and the answer depends entirely on your heart and your structure.
Paul wrote, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). He wasn’t running a marketing strategy with that flexibility. He genuinely identified with the people he was trying to reach, entered their world, and cared about what they cared about.
Underneath that is the Incarnation itself. God didn’t send a pamphlet. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Affinity ministry, done rightly, isn’t a technique. It’s following the pattern of a God who came and lived among the people He loved.
So what separates affinity ministry from bait-and-switch? Whether the thing you’re gathering around is valuable in itself. Which brings us to the test.
The test: would they come if you never invited them to church?
The question I use to evaluate any affinity idea is simple. Would unchurched people still come if we never invited them to church?
If yes, and the gathering is genuinely valuable on its own terms, you’ve found something real. If no, and it only works as bait for a church invitation, it will produce resentment instead of relationship.
Try this with your current outreach calendar. Go down the list and ask it about each event. You may find some things that pass easily and some that are really Sunday invitations with food attached. You don’t have to cancel them all tomorrow. At least now you know which ones are building bridges and which ones aren’t.
How to find your church’s affinities
You don’t have to invent interests. Your congregation already has them. You just have to notice.
- Ask what your people do on Saturdays. Who fishes? Who restores old trucks? Who quilts, plays pickleball, bakes bread, rides?
- Look for the people already doing it. Who is already doing something with neighbors, without any fanfare, because they love it? Your next ministry is often hiding right there.
- Check for more than one. One enthusiast is a signal worth paying attention to. Two or three drawn to the same thing is a stronger one.
- Keep it genuine. Don’t ask a non-gardener to lead a garden ministry because it sounds good. The whole thing depends on church people who actually love the activity.
Then ask the practical questions from the book: can a handful of people run it, can you afford it month to month, will the same people come back, and can real friendships form?
Where the Gospel comes in
None of this means you stay quiet about Jesus. It means the Gospel comes through relationship instead of as a pitch. When trust is real, people eventually ask the question everyone asks sooner or later: Why do you do this? And you get to answer honestly, because you’ve been loved by a God who got His hands dirty, and you can’t keep that love to yourself.
That conversation lands a lot differently coming from a friend you’ve worked beside for a year than from a stranger with a flyer.
This week, sit down with two or three people from your church and list every hobby, skill, and interest you can think of in your congregation. Circle the ones that more than one person shares. You might be looking at your next ministry.
The affinity principle, along with a catalog of thirty ministry ideas built on it, is in Turn the Key. If you’re working through it as a team, the leader guide has questions to help you apply it.
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