Several months ago I discussed a number of issues about our church health and growth research with more than 300 formerly unchurched people. We looked at the issues that played a part in their decision to join a church. The first was the pastor and preaching.

In our interviews with the formerly unchurched, we asked two questions that engendered significant responses about pastors. The first of the questions was a straight-forward query directly about pastors that could be answered with a simple ‘yes' or ‘no': "Did the pastor and his preaching play a part in your coming to the church?"

Nearly all of the respondents (over 97 percent) answered in the affirmative. The second question required a more subjective response: "What factors led you to choose this church?"

What were the issues related to the pastor? What specifically did he say or do that so significantly influenced the unchurched? In most of the interviews, the respondents told us not only that the pastor influenced them, but they also shared how he influenced them. Eight issues were mentioned frequently. We will examine each of them in this series.

Issue #1: Preaching that teaches the Bible

Vera M. is a former Roman Catholic by birth, although she never had much attachment to Catholicism as an adult. She never thought of herself as unchurched, though she never attended any one church more than once or twice. Vera's church habits included going to seven or eight churches 10 or 12 times a year.

Interestingly, a crisis was the impetus for Vera finding the church in a town near Charlotte, N.C., but the crisis was not in Vera's life. Vera's neighbor, Lindsay, found out her husband was involved in an affair; the result was a messy divorce. Vera went to church to support Lindsay during her tough times. But it was Vera's life that was changed.

Vera's intention was to offer Lindsay support by going with her to Thompson Memorial Baptist Church. But then she heard Mike Lovelett preach.

"Mike preached in a way like I've never heard anybody," Vera said. She said his preaching was "line-by-line preaching," describing verse-by-verse expository preaching.

Vera never had an interest in studying the Bible until she sat under the preaching ministry of Mike Lovelett. "Mike gave me ‘meaty' preaching. He gave me a desire to study the Bible. It all happened so fast. The next thing I new, I realized what the Bible taught about salvation. And I realized that I was as lost as lost could be." Vera accepted Christ and insists that the single issue that brought her to salvation was the strong teaching and preaching ministry of Mike Lovelett.

In a previous study, we noted the high correlation between expository preaching and evangelistic effectiveness (see "Effective Evangelistic Churches"). Now we are hearing from the formerly unchurched that preaching that truly teaches the Bible in its original context is a major factor in reaching the unchurched. Indeed, this issue was mentioned by 211 of our 353 survey respondents. The formerly unchurched told us that they were attracted to strong biblical teaching and to understanding Christian doctrine. Pastors who understand these issues and who communicate doctrine clearly are among the leaders whose churches are reaching the unchurched.

Issue #2: "Preaching that applies to my life"

A challenge for pastors of healthy churches is to preach both expositionally and with life application. Yes, the unchurched strongly desire to learn deep biblical truths, but they also want to know how these truths can make a difference in their lives.

Craig L. is one of many formerly unchurched who makes his point cogently. I laughed at what the person on our research team who interviewed Craig wrote in the margin of his interview sheet, "This guy is really willing to talk and talk and talk." And the main issue Craig talked about was the influence of his pastor on his spiritual pilgrimage.

As we began to compile the different issues that impacted Craig, we noticed that many were related to the pastor of the church he joined:

- "The pastor was friendly and caring"

- "The pastor has a passion for new believers"

- "I was influenced by the humility of the pastor."

- "The pastor's preaching is incredible. He not only teaches the Bible well, he helps me understand how it applies to my life today."

We heard the latter issue repeated in over 40 percent of our interviews with the formerly unchurched. The topic of life application preaching was mentioned by 147 of the 353 respondents.

Craig was one of many of the formerly unchurched who saw no dichotomy between deep expositional preaching and life application preaching. In fact, if a single unique feature surfaced related to preaching, it was the ability of pastors to combine what many see as two different approaches to preaching.

In the next issue, we will continue to examine this fascinating relationship between preaching and church health.