Challenged, Concerned & Confident

Why host an event no one wants to come to?

Author

David Noel Jr.
October 20, 2025

When I told Christian marketing firms that we wanted our first public event to be a public forum instead of a church service they’d always do these 2 things:

  1. Ask why? And after I’d answer they’d say 👇️ 

  2. “We love it!…..But you do know that no one is going to come right?”

I’d then say yes 😂 .

Led By Christ Church’s first public event is this Sunday, 10/26/25 @ 5p.

If interested, the below is our why and why we think you should love it.

Why #1: Challenged

1. I was lonely 🥹 
2. Ryan decided to take a seat
3. It was a lovely time ❤️ 
4. But anyone who paces like this can’t be trusted 🤣 

You ever bite off more than you can chew? Well, that was me on Sept. 8, 2024 when I asked a stranger - Ryan, a PhD neuroscience candidate at Yale (see above) - if he’d be willing to talk with me about Jesus.

We spoke for 3.5 hours 🫠 and within 10 minutes I knew the following:

  1. This man is a lot smarter than me.

  2. He has thought more deeply about the problem of evil - “If God is so good, why is there evil in the world?” - than I have.

  3. And, he needs Jesus.

It’s that last one, #3, that since I met Ryan has challenged me and my church.

Because even though a good answer to one’s objection to Christianity doesn’t guarantee a change of mind, sometimes your answer is the only opportunity you’ll get to show the beauty of Christ.

While Ryan admitted that I gave him something to think about, I knew that I missed an opportunity to show Jesus to be exactly what He is: Beautiful.

Good things happen when healthy Christians are challenged and as me and LBCC want to be just that, we got to work.

“Is God Good?” is our response.

Pray with us that Ryan, the “Ryan’s” of the world and Jesus show up on 10/26.

Why #2: Concerned

If you sold shoes, would you rather sell shoes to people who already have them or people who don’t? That’s the question.

Please allow me to say a miserable truth out loud:

For all the complaining that goes on about how America is a godless country, our church growth efforts are a part of the problem.

I’ll explain this really briefly here, but I’ll unpack this more later.

Now let me get both feet firmly on this landmine and say:

  1. A strong faith in capitalism compels churches to become self-sustaining in 2-5 years. In other words, in 2-5 years your church is expected to live off of internal giving alone.

  2. To accomplish this you need a lot of Christians to join your church pretty quickly because only Christians are interested in going to church and only Christians give to churches.

  3. As a result, most churches start out by not trying to attract non-believers, but believers.

  4. The number of Christians in America has been on the decline for the last 20 years, so there are less giving church attendees to go around. The competition is steep.

  5. Proof of this is that over 50% of Christians in America now go to the biggest churches in America.

    I know that was a lot of info 😬 . Please take some time to digest it, it may sober us.

Even if this trend were to reverse itself, we then have to ask, “Why is it on the rise?” We shouldn’t be content with quantity but quality.

The result of all this is that we’ve made evangelism too expensive for us. Especially when conversion usually takes 1-3 years and the last thing to often be converted is one’s wallet 🤣 .

Now, tack on grim economic projections, incredible socio-political tension and the rise of generative AI and you don’t have to be a prophet to feel that dark times are ahead.

We’re concerned.

Pray with us that people walk away from “Is God Good?” with the best resource to endure suffering: Jesus.

Why #3: Confident

Despite all this we’re confident that “Is God Good?” is a good idea.

Not because it will bring in a ton of people - non-believers included - but because hosting events like this make us into the people Jesus wants us to be.

  1. People who do scary things for Him, without coveting outcomes.

  2. People who are willing to be embarrassed for Him because we’re not that impressive anyway.

  3. People who will sacrifice institution building for faithful living, if need be.

We desperately want to be those people, so we decided to do what those people would do.

Some call this, “fake it, till you make it”, we call this “being led by Christ.”

Pray with us that our hope doesn’t disappoint and that “Is God Good?” and events like it grow Christians who both meet the challenge and the concern.

If you’ve made it this far, God bless you 😆 ! As you are sooo invested please consider two things:

  1. Please join us! We’d love to see you.

  2. Please, please consider volunteering. We’re low on man power and would appreciate you joining forces with us.

Because God is good,

Dave