5 meaningful contacts with Christians before considering the claims of the gospel

Question

I've been reading a book on Church growth (Growing A Healthy Church by Dan Spader and Gary Mayes) with a chapter on evangelism that says something which I've heard in churches before:

"Typically an unbeliever needs to have more than five meaningful contacts with a number of Christians before he or she will begin to trust the message of the gospel

Growing a Healthy Church

This seems to be a linchpin point supporting relationship-style evangelism but the book doesn't cite any sources and I don't seem to be able to find any myself. Can someone else locate the source of this claim whether it be a study or merely an idea proposed by someone else?

Answer 1

In marketing, this is referred to as the number of "touches" required to make a sale or convince someone. It is not unique to religion, nor does it guarantee success. In marketing, this is called "funneling":

In fact, this approach only works on a small subset (typically a one-digit percentage) of the number of contacts.

The number of touches documented in market research is usually 6 to 8, which corresponds to "more than five meaningful contacts" in the question posted.