Niche Ministry
There is a concept abroad in the Evangelical Church today that seeks to persuade pastors and church planters that they need to identify a primary niche or target market and make that the focus of their ministry. The claim being set forth here is that this notion is entirely unbiblical and with no warrant in the history of early church. What follows here is primarily a series of Biblical examples of the mixed and variegated nature of the congregations of the early church.
Clearly in the life and ministry of Jesus we find no niche for His outreach and His discipling. It is noteworthy that His followers include priests, Pharisees, wealthy men, Roman centurions, former harlots, fishermen, and a host of others from all ends of the social spectrum. In the Jewish, Gentile, and the mixed (both Jews and Gentiles) churches of the New Testament there is a diversity to which Scripture bears witness. Additionally, the ministry of Paul is always to both Jew and Greek – that pattern never varies. This is not to say that the societal mixes of the congregations of the New Testament churches don’t give rise to problems (e.g. Acts 6:1, 1 Corinthians 11:17-22, 1 Timothy 6:17-19, and James 2:1-8), but that would seem to be unavoidable in a fallen world. Additionally, in other passages the reader of the New Testament discovers that the variety of spiritual gifts which exist amongst God’s people also has the potential to give rise to division (1 Corinthians and Ephesians 4:1-13).
Admittedly, more poor people responded to His ministry than did the wealthy and the highly placed, but that would seem to be a function of the fact that the poor and the downtrodden realized their need of a physician (Matthew 9:12-13), and also realized from whence they had come before they were accepted by the Savior (Luke 7:40-47), and thus they better understood the grace which had been extended to them. It is worth mentioning that a wealthy man and a religious leader of the Jews take his body for burial (John 19:38-39), and yet the visitors to his grave are a mix of women from throughout the social register (John 20:1, Luke 24:10 and Luke 28:1).
One has but to consider the constituency of the band of apostles which followed Him (Matt. 10:1-7) to see that there are fishermen, a tax collector, and a zealot amongst their numbers. Not all of their occupations were known, but clearly this is not a homogeneous group. The addition of Paul to their numbers (1 Corinthians 15:8-9) brings yet another social grouping amongst them.
Before there is a Holy Spirit-driven effort to have Saul and Barnabas raise up churches in the Gentile lands, there is first a gathering of men in prayer (Acts 13:1). That gathering includes a black man (some traditions hold that he was the son of Simon of Cyrene – Luke 23:26); Manaen, a close associate of Herod the Tetrarch; Joseph the wealthy Cypriot (known to the church as “Barnabbas”); and Saul the Hellenistic Jewish, Pharisee, tentmaker, scholar, and former persecutor of the Church. There is simply no niche of any sort to be discovered in the church in Antioch.
To consider the conversion stories associated with the founding of one church (Acts 16 - Philippi) is to see this wide spectrum approach to the social continuum which the Holy Spirit seems to have taken pleasure in creating. In the work in Macedonia one finds Lydia, a seller of purple, and thus a wealthy woman; the jailer, a military man; and the former fortune-telling slave girl as the initial members of the church’s first small group.
The churches of the New Testament apparently were comprised of many younger people, inasmuch as the texts of the epistles tend to take note of older men and women and how they ought to be treated (1 Timothy 5:1, Titus 2:2, 1 Timothy 5:1-4, 9-10, and James 1:27). Both Paul and John assume a chronologically mixed grouping, such that they include age-specific instructions for young and old (Titus 2:1-6 and 1 John 2:12-14).
Apparently, the early church congregations included slaves amongst their numbers, which is proven by the fact that they are not only given instruction about their responsibilities toward their masters (Titus 2:9-10, Ephesians 6:5-9, and Colossians 3:22-25), but they are also told of their equal standing in Christ with all other believers (Galatians 3:28). Masters are also present in those same congregations. It should be borne in mind that slavery in the New Testament tended to be due either to debt or to capture in battle, and was frequently a temporary condition. Believing masters are given instruction about the righteous treatment of their slaves (Ephesians 6:9 and Colossians 4:1).
As to the claim that Paul decided to focus upon Gentiles and make them his “niche”, God clearly did say that Paul was a chosen instrument to take the Gospel to the Gentiles (Acts 26:17-18). Nevertheless, Paul is a Jew, and as he took the Gospel to the Gentiles he always sought to share it with the Jews in the city that he was visiting before going to the Gentiles. There is a Biblical reason for this pattern in Paul’s ministry.
There is a strong understanding in the mind of the Jew which flows from truths set forth by Ezekiel regarding bloodguilt for one who fails to warn a group of people concerning their need to be made right with God (Ezekiel 3:18-21 and 33:6-9). This principle from Ezekiel provides a background understanding for the admonition which Jesus gave his disciples about wiping the dust from their feet of those cities which did not receive them as heralds of the Gospel (Luke 10:8-12). Such an act is a visible notice to those who reject it that they have placed themselves outside the people of God. It visually states the truth which Jesus declared to His disciples that,
The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me. (Luke 10:16)
Thus, those who reject the Gospel and those whom God has sent to proclaim it are made aware of their culpability before God for this choice. It also absolves the messenger of any further blame should those who rejected the Gospel message continue in their folly. That this notion is resident in the mind of Paul is clearly evidenced by what he says to the Ephesian elders:
Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God (Acts 20:26-27).
With that in mind consider what follows.
Paul does not have any particular juncture at which he switches his outreach focus from Jew to Gentile. He is adamant throughout his writing that the Gospel comes first to the Jew and then to the Greek (Romans 1:16, 2:9-10). It is the model for how he goes about the business of proclamation. Throughout the book of Acts he goes first to the local synagogue and makes proclamation and then, after a certain number of the Jewish leaders reject him, he takes the Gospel to the Gentiles. In Macedonia there is no synagogue, so he finds a gathering of God fearers (Gentiles who respect the God of Israel) and proclaims the Gospel to them (Acts 16:13-14). The last which the reader of the book of Acts sees of Paul is indeed a “wiping of the dust off of his feet” as regards the Jewish leaders in Rome (Acts 28:20-31) and a turning towards the Gentiles. Let the reader not fail to notice verse 24, “Some were being persuaded by the things spoken, but others would not believe.” As at times in the past, Paul’s message bears a harvest amongst this group of Jewish hearers, and the usage of the phrase “would not believe” demonstrates the willful unbelief of those who resist. Is this a new pattern? Does Paul here turn from making proclamation to the Jews and turn his sights towards the Gentiles? Let the reader decide. Consider Acts 13:14-49, Acts 14:1-4, Acts 17:1-17, and Acts 18:1-6. The pattern of Acts 28 is the very same pattern as that which has prevailed throughout the ministry of Paul. He always went first to the Jews, he always saw a harvest of a few Jewish souls, he always then experienced rejection, and he always used the Ezekiel 3 and 33/Luke 10 method of declaring his change of direction from Jew to Gentile. Paul never changed his outreach style in order to focus on a particular niche. The planting of niche-focused churches is an unbiblical intrusion of market-driven reasoning into the thought processes of the 21st Century church. Its most likely source is the late 20th Century Church-Growth Movement’s influence on the thought of 21st Century church-planting organizations.
If we wish to participate with Jesus in building His Church (Matthew 16:18) then we need to be open to “every kind” (Matthew 13:17) that Jesus will draw to Himself. This does not preclude the notion of reaching a particular cohort or group of potential converts. Indeed, the New Testament emphasis on the salvation of families demonstrates the tendency of groups of people with common interests to come to faith together, or in the same general time frame. What is without Biblical precedent, and which will create unbalanced, unhealthy, relatively homogeneous churches, is the idea of marketing a church to one particular niche of society to the neglect of others.
