My church is a small one, and we love it very, very much. Often, when members are tired from our flurry of activities, we say, "We need more people. Why don't people see the joy we find here?" I am far from an expert in evangelism, but I know that wanting to "get more people" is asking the wrong question. I think we grow our church through the care we take for our members and our community. Our faith, and our church, are built on relationship. Without connection and relationship, it is too easy to come and go in a church. Without getting to know the people, depending on them and having them depend on you, and working together on shared vision, it is too easy to avoid conflict and leave when things get tough. Church is a voluntary organization. If you don’t like something about your current church, you can head down the road and try another one.
Society today is not like it was when my parents were kids, or even when I was a kid. When I was a kid, most of my friends’ parents grew up in the same town. Most of my friends lived in the same town their entire lives, even the same house. It was rare to have a new student in class, especially someone who’d lived in a different state. Kids from Philadelphia or Wyoming were exotic; I still remember when they moved in during 4th grade. People tended to bloom where they were planted and they had deep connections to their town, their neighborhood, and their faith organizations.
There was period of strife in my childhood church and I remember how it unsettled my family. Like many other families, we’d been part of that church for generations; we had weathered highs and lows. I remember how upset we were when other families left the church; families who had also founded the church, who taught Sunday School and youth choir. I remember my mother weighing her options, too--stay with a minister whose theology goes against your ideals for the sake of the community, or leave and find another church. Having no church was not even an option for my mom; I don’t think there has been more than a few weeks in her life when she did not worship on a Sunday. My family decided to stay, and we weathered the storms. I remember by grandfather saying, “This church was here before ‘so and so’ and it will be here after "so and so".” Eventually, the troubles abated and eventually, the other families returned. Would people today even give it a moment’s thought? Would they weigh the options, leave and wait to return, or would they just walk out in a huff and find something new?
I know I sound very conservative and old-fashioned. I don’t think things are worse now than they were 30 years ago. In many ways, things are better. There is more freedom, open-mindedness, and lack of judgment. People do not attend church out of obligation, or in order to develop the right social connections. The people who worship together on Sunday mornings show up because they want to be there. With all of that freedom and open-mindedness, there are options--lots and lots of them. There’s conservative, liberal, conservative theology with modern liturgy, liberal theology with ancient liturgy. There are taize prayer services, jazz services, praise band services, solstice services, and meditation groups. There is the ever-popular church of Starbucks. People talk about finding a church as if they are picking out their next car: shop around, make lists of “deal-breakers” and “must-haves”, do your research, weigh the options. With all those options, what do you do when a problem comes up?
So far, I’m new to my church. In a congregation where some people go back four generations, I’ve only been there for two rummage sales (that is how we measure time at St. Ignatius). I am still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, still hopeful, still enthusiastic. I will be quite upset the first time there is conflict at church. The first time I face criticism, or disagreement, some of the shine will come off the penny. I have skills to deal with difficult situations and I know they will arise. I really, really hope I have the strength to see the conflict through and persist with my church. I really, really want to be in it for the long haul. If church life is a relationship, I want a committed one; and I hope other people are committed, too.
It’s hard to make those commitments in this post-modern world. People move around, change careers, change spouses, change faiths. We have a wonderful amount of freedom to “find our bliss”. So, when church is not “blissful” anymore, what is keeping us there? It has to be the relationship, between the priest and the congregation, between the individual people, between every one of us and God. I mean where else can I go to find connection to the Holy Spirit, mystical experiences with the Eucharist, meaningful theology, and beautiful music? Where else can I meet my babysitter, my daughter’s dance teacher, and my dog breeder (who also happens to be the priest)? Where else can I go to relate to God in a tradition that goes back 100 years in this place, and thousands of years in the world?
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