In Connecting People to Church (2025), Gary L. McIntosh remarks, “Evangelism without connection produces spiritual orphans; connection without evangelism produces a stagnant club” (McIntosh 2025, 1). The image of the church McIntosh presents holds the tension of a church on mission to proclaim the goodness and good news of God, while also recognizing that hospitality and belonging foster more effective discipleship within the church community.
A few weeks ago, I received McIntosh’s most recent books and was excited to sit down and read them. This was my second read of the set. I am grateful that McIntosh took the time to get them to me, autograph them, and give me some essential reminders to wrestle with. At its core, this is a book that has much to teach us about belonging and hospitality in the church. McIntosh is giving us a trellis or framework to build around in our church communities in a contextualized way. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach. There are generally some good practices in this book that remind us — regardless of whether you are a house church, a big box church, a small rural church, or whatever — that hospitality and belonging are good practices to be aware of. They are also evidenced to some degree in Scripture as a defining aspect of a church community. Regardless of your ecclesiology and ecclesial context, you will find some meat to chew on, and perhaps some bones to discard that do not fit your paradigm or practice.
This is my third of four blogs about Gary L. McIntosh’s most recent books. This post continues my ongoing look at what I refer to as A Pastoral Triad: Three Distinct Books, One Pastoral Conversation with Gary L. McIntosh. I gave an overview two blogs ago, and then I reviewed Solo Pastor in my previous post. Though Gary emerged in the heyday of what is sometimes referred to as the church growth movement — among contemporaries like Wagner and others — I have always appreciated McIntosh’s slightly nuanced approach to many of these conversations. As I shared in my initial blog post, my ecclesiology has changed much since I first started teaching and preaching, and some of that I see as an inherent consequence of encountering McIntosh’s work, even if I land at a slightly different place than he does.
A Necessary Warning Before Connecting People to Church
I start this review with a warning. The church growth movement has long been captivated with statistics, formulaic approaches, and techniques to close “the back door” on visitors. There are three tensions unconsciously at play in such an approach. If we are not careful, we will treat people impersonally, like a number to retain. Such a vision becomes less about finding the people God is calling to our community and more about being a community defined by numbers retained. Second, we can turn ourselves into an unhealthy consumeristic model in which we are always trying to entertain people to keep them. A quote comes to mind from John Wimber: “How you catch them is how you have to keep them.” Third, the glue people are coming for must always be stronger than the glue they sense among themselves. A sense of belonging is essential and life-changing, but it cannot be made the primary “thing” or the primary glue. Rather, it must be built around the teachings of the apostles first and foremost, then fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. Fellowship — the place to belong — is an undeniable place of community.
McIntosh points out well that people were coming to faith daily and entering the community, but first and foremost, it was a devotion to the teaching. As he states, “Evangelism and connection were inseparable” (McIntosh 2025, 2). This book explores how “connection kept them involved” (McIntosh 2025, 2). Again, the warning: I can imagine individuals I know reading this book and finding a formula to copy-and-paste, to institutionalize, rather than “invent-ize” around. Human nature approaches such conversations far too often without awareness. This is a book that serves as an intentional and important reminder that “Hospitality — welcoming strangers into community — was central to Jesus’ ministry, and the early church. Today, it must be central to ours” (McIntosh 2025, 2). It does not teach a formula or a catching technique.
Connecting People to Church: A Handbook
Overall, this is a handbook for teams and pastoral leaders, not a textbook of information. The resource is just shy of 70 pages, features a large font size, and, in addition to a few poignant chapters, includes a practical next-steps guide. It also follows up with a practical next-steps guide built around each chapter and practice of belonging. This is where readers and church communities begin to contextualize and “invent-ize” what this important sense of hospitality and belonging will look like in their ecclesial context and ecclesiology.
The book starts with an important and scriptural look at why connection matters. It is a scriptural approach, not a survival technique for dying and plateaued churches. I have always found that McIntosh has a way of offering poignant one-liners that resonate with readers while also staying as important reminders to put into practice. As someone who has coached thousands of churches and pastors, I imagine he has developed some “isms” that have been repeated by many people over the years.
Good Practices, Cultural Cautions
Throughout this book, we are given good practices repeatedly. Some of these are cultural aspects rather than scriptural directives. We do not know exactly how the early church assimilated or welcomed newcomers. It looked very different from what we expect and from how we do it culturally today. Certainly, as large numbers of individuals confessed Jesus is Lord and came into the communities, they had a way of welcoming. The Didache, an early apostolic-era church document, shows meals and hospitality being intentionally extended to traveling prophets, speakers, and others. McIntosh, like many church growth voices, reminds us that most “guests decide within 7 to 11 minutes whether they will return” (3). I hear that. I have found that to be true. But here is where statistics can lead us to an unhealthy approach. Praying for those guests and expecting what God can do is of first importance, and I find that absent from many of these conversations.
At the same time, we do have a responsibility. If we are in church buildings — and I belong to a low-church model that feels like a house church on Sunday mornings, complete with coffee breaks — I know our building does affect our witness. Hospitality and space affect learning and how people inhabit those spaces. One of those one-liners shows up in this section: “Facilities preach before the pastor does” (3). Our space has undergone significant renovations since I arrived in 2022, but we also face external and facility limitations. I cannot make retention all about spatial concerns. I believe good hospitality can overcome some “first impressions,” but that does not mean we want to maintain a neglected space. The warning above speaks here: how we catch them, we must keep them. If we attract people with trendy, flashy spaces, they will want the same from preaching, teaching, and ongoing programs. It is not enough. Be respectful of your space, but do not develop sheep of consumerism.
I agree with McIntosh that visible signage, greeters, clean restrooms, uncluttered seating, and warm smiles are a must. He is right to mention that churches “focusing only on outreach without retention experience a ‘revolving door’ where growth is temporary” (4). Good connection “is the glue that holds evangelism together” (4). But it cannot be the gospel, or the primary glue.
The Prophetic Opportunity of Belonging
One of the strongest places I found myself challenged rather than merely reminded is the prophetic dimension of community that McIntosh offers. He remarks, “We live in the most ‘connected’ age in history through social media, smartphones, and video calls. Yet beneath the surface, loneliness and isolation are epidemic” (5). As a pastoral leader in an emerging small church and a shelter for those suffering from homelessness, I have encountered this in every demographic. McIntosh is on point with this challenge. The sense of belonging and hospitality we extend can embody, demonstrate, and even prophetically proclaim the goodness and good news of God through the overflow of his goodness in our own lives.
The epidemic of loneliness, as he states, “creates both a challenge and an opportunity for the church.” There is a world of skeptics, doubters, and critical thinkers who are wary of the church but are hungry for more — spiritually, communally, and purposefully. We live in a time where “people may have hundreds of friends online but very few in real life” (3).
The statistics are sobering: “without intentional connection, most churches retain less than 20% of first-time guests” (3). My challenge comes when the conversation turns toward retention truths like “retaining guests is 5 times more effective than replacing them,” because I think this borders too close to the warnings I raised above. Again, I think it is how we, as a church, are praying for guests and the way the Spirit can overcome obstacles that deserve our greatest focus. We remove the obstacles, yes — but we also use community as a prophetic image in our day, displaying God’s goodness and good news.
On Personal Invitation and the People God Sends
Recently, I was talking with an individual who asked why they were not getting visitors. In processing the visitors they had received, a common theme emerged: the people who came were personally invited. Great websites, apps, social media, and livestreamed services are good front doors, but they are not personal or tangible in the ways that communities truly grow. I know this because our church runs under 50, and we have all of those things. They are good practices. They are important front steps that show who we are. However, God works through people — that is why he created people as image-bearers and ambassadors of his Kingdom.
McIntosh points out that in addition to personal invitation, there are several other reasons people visit a church: a personal crisis or life transition, spiritual curiosity, being a new resident in the community, and special events or holidays. There is also the more traditional pathway through children’s ministry. I would add one more. In my two decades of pastoring, I have also found that some people are simply curious. They are not church shopping, but they are curious about that church in their neighborhood. We are a small rural church with a big website, an app, and good reach on social media and video. As a result, we get curious visitors who wonder about us. They poke their head in, but I suspect they have no intention of staying. No matter what you do, some people simply will not be retained — and that is okay.
A Genuinely Helpful Book
Overall, Connecting People to Church is a helpful book — more helpful than many I have read on this topic — on what extending hospitality and welcome rightly should and could look like. These ideas, paired with practical next steps and conversation points, give us a helpful way to welcome well, whether church happens in a living room, a big box building, a small rural space, or anywhere in between.
McIntosh is right: every Sunday, someone walks into a church for the first time. They come searching — for hope, for healing, for a place that feels like home. We must be intentional about turning these individuals into lifelong disciples in ways that are healthy for our context. This is a roadmap to help us get there.
McIntosh writes with the earned confidence of a practitioner who has sat across from thousands of pastors and congregations, listened more than he prescribed, and distilled what endures. This is not a book chasing trends. It is a book calling the church back to something ancient — the scandalous, subversive, Spirit-empowered practice of welcome. In a world growing lonelier by the day, that calling could not be more urgent. Even with the tensions I have named, this book remains deeply good and genuinely useful, not just for churches in crisis but for any community serious about becoming a place where people are found, known, and held.
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