How To Define Your Church's Target Audience

How To Define Your Church's Target Audience

The Question - Who Is Your Church For?

The start of all good communication is to define who you are talking to. If you are talking to everyone - you resound with no one and your communication can become noisy. In general terms, most churches are talking to two groups of people - their existing congregation & the unchurched. If your church is larger, and a resource hub, then you might be wanting to communicate with Christians who are outside your church about music, events, conferences, training, etc. The question is - Who is your Church for? 

Your Church Is NOT For Everyone

Wait, isn’t the Church for everyone? No, the Gospel is.

This is the number one mistake we see churches making. They assume that because the Gospel is for all people, their church is too. When in reality every Church is called to a specific group of people, like Paul was called to the Gentiles and Peter to the Jews. So your local church is called reach and minister to a certain, defined, group of people.

Define Your Audience: Current vs Aspirational

When defining who makes up your church, it's good to start by differentiating between who is your current audience and who is your aspirational audience. Your current audience is those who your services and events are actually attracting, so it's a good idea to focus your efforts on people from this demographic. Have a look around your church, you may even have data already. What type of areas do these people live in? What's their average age? Are they mostly families? 

Your Aspirational audience is those your church want to be attending. Is your Church is is called to a specific community or neighbourhood, what are the demographics of the people? 

How To Talk To Your Audience

Once you have defined who you’re talking to, make a decision about how you want to talk with them. It can be helpful to use your church values for this. This will impact the tone you use in your communications.  Often churches don't make their audience the hero of their communication, they make it about themselves. As a result, all communications become just like church noticeboard, or their messaging is full of christianese.

Your audience has to be the hero of your communication. Show them that you care about their problems and struggles and that you are there to help them and add value to their life. Once they know you care about them, they will show an interest in what you care about - JESUS. 

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