Dr. Thom Rainer is on a literary roll. His latest book, "The Unchurched Next Door," hit the shelves just as its prequel, "Surprising Insights of the Unchurched," went into its 11th printing. A forthcoming book, "Good to Great Churches," is scheduled for a 2004 release and has fans of his work waiting with bated breath.
Rainer recently launched Church Health Today, an electronic newsletter, in association with Church Central Associates, and his national reputation as an author and expert in church health and church growth is certainly on the rise. (Church Central Associates owns churchcentral.com)
Not bad for a banker-turned-preacher-turned-seminary dean.
"I never thought I would be where I am," said the soft-spoken author of 15 books, nine of which he has penned solo. "I don't know if I'm anybody in particular, but I'm a lot further than I ever thought I would be. It's just by the grace of God that all of these things have unfolded."
The grace of God  and a lot of laborious, tedious research few others have been eager to undertake.
Rainer filled what he said was a research void he identified as a student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the early 1980s.
"When I began to see what I thought was a lack of good research on American churches  there had been a good deal done on the international church  I was drawn to it in my dissertation," Rainer said. "Then from my dissertation, it just led to other things."
Among those other things, Rainer is founding dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Ky., where he completed both his Masters of Divinity and Ph. D. studies.
"I didn't plan to do a Ph.D. I had a godly professor who convinced me to do so. So, I wrote a dissertation," he said. "That dissertation led me to write my first book, and one thing has just led to another. As I see this whole thing unfold, I know it's just been a God thing. It hasn't been me."
Turning Passion into a Life's Work
Rainer took his studies  both undergraduate and graduate  and made it his life work. As an undergraduate student, Rainer majored in finance and minored in statistics and economics. Before entering seminary, he was head of corporate lending for a large holding company. His penchant for figures and statistics has served him well in writing.
While the research might be cumbersome to some, Rainer often finds it captivating.
"When it all starts coming together, you get excited," he said. "When you start seeing some new insights gel, you get all excited, but research is painful, laborious, and detailed, and there are some days when you wonder whether it's worth it. But then it all begins to come together and you say, ‘A picture is truly being formed.'"
He likened the research to the canvas of an artist.
"You put this line here and this line there and you can't make sense out of that," he said. "But the more and more you do, the more a pattern begins to develop. You say, ‘Oh, man, that's it. This is what is taking place.' That's excitement."
Removing Stumbling Blocks
In his introduction to "The Unchurched Next Door," Rainer writes that the goal  and prayer  he shared with his research team was that Christians would be better equipped to reach friends, neighbors, coworkers, family members and acquaintances with the gospel of Christ through their work.
The impetus, he said, came from the new Christians he wrote about in "Surprising Insights of the Unchurched."
That book was a study of new Christians relating how they became believers and how the church impacted them, Rainer explained. It was unique because their experiences as unbelievers were still fresh in their minds. They were the success stories evangelicals longed to hear about or encounter.
"The formerly unchurched also encouraged us to look at the wide mosaic of unchurched persons and not to accept the stereotypical picture some churches and Christians have of non-Christians," Rainer wrote in the introduction.
For research purposes, Rainer classified unchurched people into five categories, U1 through U5. U1 is the most receptive group to the gospel and U5 is the least receptive. These faith stages became the framework for listening to the unchurched.
After matching their faith stages with their openness to specific approaches by Christians, the researchers then asked the new Christians if the research interpretations matched the reality of their own experiences.
From that information, the book uncovers a way to reach those unchurched people with whom Christians have contact every day. According to his research, the vast majority of unchurched people are willing to attend church if invited.
"What we're trying to share in this book is, ‘OK you're going to hit one of those bad experiences one out of every 20 times. But in 19 out of 20 you're going to have an experience that's not so bad, maybe even great. So, hang in there. If you're persecuted, you're persecuted for Christ's sake,'" Rainer said.
A Different Audience
Rainer's new book is a departure from his earlier writing because it is not targeted specifically to church leadership.
"It's written to Christians and church members in general," he said. "So this is my first book I've written that has a broader audience of Christians in general."
From the early feedback, the departure was a good one. He said he receives e-mail and other correspondences every day from people who say they were affected by his writing.
"What I'm hearing is, it has taken away some of the excuses" for not sharing faith, Rainer said. "What they are telling me is, this book is making an incredible difference in giving them a boldness and a willingness to go witness, because the facts say only one out of 20 unchurched people are going to be antagonistic toward your sharing Christ."
Even though most of his professional dealings as a church-health consultant and seminary dean are with clergy members, writing for the people in the pews came easy for him because of his years behind the pulpit.
"I've pastored four churches and been an interim pastor at nine churches, so I feel a level of comfort and camaraderie with the laity," he said. "I feel like, because of the years experience I have that I do understand how to communicate both to church leaders and to the laity."
