Unchurched Friend #1

Female, age- between 40-50

1. What's the reason why you don't attend church regularly?
    -Because they ask for money all the time, which I don't have.

2. Have you ever been involved in any church or beliefs in the past?
    -Yes..

3. Do you notice anything different about Christians who go to church today? Why or why not?
    -No, because I believe that Christians do worse things than people who don't go to church.

4. Do you actually see going to church as something of value to you or other people?
   - Yes.

5. Why do you think so many people don't go to church?
   -Because people don't like to have things preached at them.

6. Did you ever feel unwelcome or like you didn't fit in when you walked into a church?
   -Yes.

7. If the church could do one thing for you, what would it be?
   -Help me to become more out going in some way.

8.Would you ever consider trying to go to a different church than you were used to in the past? Why or why not?
   - Yes. Maybe at a different church the preacher could preach the message differently so that i can understand it.

9. If there was something you could change about a church today, what would it be?
   -I would change the way the Preacher preaches straight from the Bible. I'd want it to be more practical to me and I want it to be taught to me in a way that I can understand it. Reading it straight from the Bible doesn't help me to understand.

10. If you could describe in your own words in a short sentence how would you describe God to me?
   -I believe he's there, but i don't like to have him preached down my throat all the time and have him forced on me.

When I was doing my unchurched friend interview, I honestly didn’t know what to expect from the lady I interviewed. She’s a sweet lady, but she is also very bitter and has a lot of problems with people and herself. She was willing to do the interview right away and I asked her the questions and she was all set and ready to go with answers for every question. Some of the answers she gave kind of shocked me in a way and I wasn’t expecting some of those answers at all. For instance the one about “Do you think Christians are different from ordinary people?” & her response automatically was to literally laugh in my face and say “Absolutely not, I believe Christians do worse things than people who don’t go to church.” I was almost crushed by that statement in a way, because I know from her viewpoint that’s all she saw, but in all reality I saw a glimpse of what she was saying was right in some Christians today. My first thought to cross my mind after she said that was what is it that I can do as a Christian to prove they aren’t all like that. Then when we got down to my last question for her she was getting pretty intense in a way, because I said in the beginning that it was going to be easy and not hard. So, when we got to the last question about describing God in your own words she just looked at me and laughed and said I thought you said this was easy. I think she would have gone deeper on it, but didn’t know how to word it. All her answers were good, and I was impressed with all of them. I really did learn a lot about her and people who don’t go to church after doing this interview because some of the stuff she said I would have never guessed that anyone would have thought about the church. One of the things that I did absolutely love about it though was she was very willing to say I wish in some way the church could show me how to be more outgoing with other people. That made me think well if she wants to get that from a church and nowhere else I think we’re doing something right. But, overall I was very happy with this interview and it taught me a lot.