This is a series designed for use within the staff or leadership of your congregation (Board/Presbytery/Session/Elders/etc) as an opening devotion,
or as personal reflection.

OPENING ACTIVITY:

Close your eyes, and imagine your congregation. Maybe you can visualize where each person sits in the pews, or what their Zoom background looks like! 

Who do you see?

Likely the first faces that come to mind will be those who are involved in various ways in the life of the church: Sunday School teachers, board members, worship team leaders. 

So now, strain a little more.

Envision the faces that maybe come to worship once or twice a month, but don’t really seem to be connected in other ways.

Envision who tends to sit alone, or leave as soon as the service is over. 

Envision who has faithfully attended, but you never see outside Sunday morning.

Envision who was a regular participant pre-COVID, but hasn’t been back since then.

Make a mental note of the faces you just encountered.

REFLECTION: 

I once served a congregation for whom University of Kentucky basketball was… sacred. We kept its schedule in mind when planning meetings and events; congregants talked about players and coaches as though they were friends. I don’t really follow sports at all, but I’m always fascinated by what lessons the church can learn from other fields, especially on a local level, and this was no exception. 

I particularly remember learning about how Coach John Calipari had become famous for building a program on “One-and-Dones”: students who played for just one season, then would leave college to play in the NBA. I’m told that his program is considered successful, if unconventional, because of the volume of talent that he cultivates. Sometimes, a lot of people working together for a short amount of time can do really great things. 

Whether they intend to or not, many churches operate with a One-and-Done philosophy: Get people in the doors, even if for a short amount of time. Most people who participate in the life of the church do so in ONE way, usually Sunday morning worship; they aren’t really connected elsewhere, not through service or study or structure. Those are the people who are definitely a part of our congregations, whose names are on our rolls, who add to the numbers we submit on denominational reports. Churches spend vast resources of time, energy, and money trying to get more people in our doors. More visitors, more participants, more families, more people — that feels like success.

But… let us remember, the Church defines “success” differently. We must. Our Call is not to the institution of the Church, but to the Kin-dom of God. 

Gaining many new members in one year looks really great on paper, but we’ve learned that getting people in the door is only a part of the equation… because, often, they’ll just as soon step quietly out the back when the season ends. What if, instead, we paid more attention to who is already in the room, maybe sitting on the periphery? While outreach is vital to fulfill the church’s mission, if we don’t start paying more attention to inreach — to who is already inside our walls — our congregations become revolving doors of new participants, who don’t stick around because they believe there’s nothing really there for them after all.

Of course, sometimes the reason people aren’t as connected is that they choose not to be, for perfectly fine reasons. I’m not suggesting that church should be the only outlet for people to engage with one another! But what the last two years have taught us is that people are really looking to engage, looking for connection, looking for friendship, looking for meaning, looking for purpose, and it can be challenging to figure out how to do that. It’s likely that folks who have attended worship for years or even decades don’t really know each other; maybe they know each other’s names, but have never even had one conversation. It’s likely that many people on the pews feel very alone, or view worship as an event they attend but is not an integral part of their lives. It’s likely that they don’t see themselves fitting in to the broader life of the church, whether because of their family structure or job schedule or just because they’ve never been invited.

By increasing opportunities for connection, we strengthen the bonds within the Church. We create depth of relationship and meaning; we remind each other that we are not alone. We ground ourselves in being the love of God for each other, through the mundane and the magnificent. And though attendance and numbers should never ever be our primary goal or metric, it’s likely that the more connected people we all feel with each other, the more committed we will all be to keep showing up, even when the season ends. When each and every person realizes their value as a part of a whole, that they matter in every way, the cycle of connection grows and expands both within and beyond the church walls.

This is how we embody the Kin-dom of God on earth.

As the Church considers what ministry in this new COVID-and-beyond era looks like, this is the perfect time to remember that our invitation is not to create experiences for people to consume and then walk away from, but to cultivate encounters for people to connect with each other — and with God.

DISCUSSION PROMPTS/ PERSONAL REFLECTION:

Who is on the periphery of our congregation?

What prevents people who are already a part of our congregation from becoming more connected?

How can our worship and programming increase connection between participants in new ways this year?

How can our worship and programming increase connection between participants and God in new ways this year?

PRAYER:

God of all people, help us to imagine new possibilities of connection with each other and with you. Remind every person who is a part of our congregation of your unending love, and help us to show that love not just outside these walls, but inside as well. Amen.

*I use “Ministry Participants” instead of “members” or “regular attenders,” to convey a more expansive understanding of who is a part of our congregations.