This is a question that I hear often as I visit various churches within our Synod. It’s a valid question because we live in challenging times for the church. We are used to living in a world where people believed that going to church on a Sunday morning was a viable way to spend their time. However, we know that today the church is on the margins and not at the centre of society. People in our community and society have many other options on a Sunday morning whether it be book clubs, bushwalking, connecting with family and attending other community events.
So inevitably the question that people then ask is “How do we get more people to come to our church?” It’s a question that cuts to the core of our anxiety and desire to reverse the decline of the importance of the church in society. So, what do we do? Do we try to get back to the centre of our society? Or do we try to make our church relevant? Perhaps we should just “keep faithfully doing what we are doing” with a dismissive shrug that some will join us and others won’t; we can’t really do much about that anyway.
I want to share with you a few points of reflection, not as ways to “fix” anything, but as observations that stem from talking with people in churches within our Synod and beyond. These might be helpful questions to ask ourselves if we are baffled by why people in our community are not coming to church. And what we can do to create opportunities to connect with our broader community.
Our churches are great at being hosts, can we also be a better guest?
We are blessed in the UCA to have churches with great buildings and often large properties. This means that we run programs and events from our buildings. This is such a gift, and we need to keep thinking carefully about how to use our spaces well. We are very good at being hosts. However, in a context where people are hesitant to go to into a church is it also important to have the posture of a guest. This means instead of expecting the community to “come to us” we must also think about how to “go to them”- which was God’s “strategy” to connect with us – it was incarnational rather than attractional. We go to our community by finding out where they live, work and play and we connect- we come empty handed to them and say “I’m here to learn. How can I support your good work?” This puts us in vulnerable situations where we might have no clue about what to do. But that is a good thing! How can you encourage your church to have a guest mentality which means going to our community and supporting the work there for flourishing that community and neighbourhood?
Is your church safe and welcoming to “outsiders”?
When was the last time a person from the community came to your church services? Do you know if they felt safe and welcomed there? By safe we mean that the church understands the cultural context we are in and makes people feel a little more at home. Remember, people coming into church are unfamiliar with liturgy, church jargon and singing for instance. It doesn’t mean we don’t do those things, but it means we carefully screen our content for where people might feel very uncomfortable. You might even ask a person from the community to do some of that screening for you to help you see things with a fresh perspective. In all of this we need to decide what we keep and what we discard because it might get in the way of people encountering God through the church services and programs. Is your church inclusive? What sorts of religious jargon is being used that people might find alienating? Are you aware that some passages of scripture (read without context taken into account) are deeply offensive to some people? What will you do with that? Is your church friendly, but not suffocating, towards newcomers? Is your church building fresh and well-kept or does the building show signs of decline which speaks perhaps to what is happening at a deeper level?
Do you have multiple spaces for faith conversations beyond being a service provider?
Sometimes people tell me that heir church is very active in the community, and they share the many programs that they church is implementing. In the churches of our synod, I see what incredible works we are doing in the community, and it is deeply encouraging. We need to keep doing that. However, we also don’t simply want to be know as “service providers”. I hear that some churches are bordering on burning out people with a myriad of programs. These programs are great opportunities to serve our community and to build relationships with our community. However, we also need spaces where people can talk about faith and spirituality. These spaces need to exist outside regular church services. People need multiple entry points and contact points before they even think of joining a church service today. These spaces for faith and spiritual conversations need to be spaces where we engage with people in a soft manner around faith. That means this is not a space for proselytising or forcing any religion on them but instead they are spaces for listening and sharing about spirituality. “Death cafes” or “climate cafes” are a perfect example. People in these spaces can share safely their concerns, fear and hopes about life and enter into a meaning-making space. How can you open up more of these spaces? Sometimes it can simply mean creating a space that is connected to an already existing program.
Do all people in the congregation know how to share their story authentically?
Nothing resonates more in our culture today than sharing your personal story – if it is authentic and told without an agenda. Do you know how to tell your story of the way that God has impacted your life? We have such a beautiful story to tell the world. It is a story of good news. How has that good news changed your life? I suggest practicing -and having fun with – how to tell that story. Again, this must be authentic because people know when there is an agenda or when we are not being true to ourselves. We live in a world of multiple stories and our particular story can resonate very strongly in the midst of those many stories. In a messy, complex and harsh society, this can inspire hope in our community. We know that especially the younger generations are very open to hearing stories about faith and spirituality today.
Have you thought about innovating new expressions of church?
We must be honest and acknowledge that even if we connect with our community carefully as good listeners and students of our culture, many people still will not come to our church services. So how open is your church to cultivating other faith communities and fresh expression that might be more appealing to the broader community? There can be so much innovation in this space. A gathering could look like meeting in a living room in someone’s home, or going bush-walking, or a service that welcomes people’s pets. It might look like a gathering where people ask lots of questions and there is interaction during the sermon. It might mean sharing a meal together. We start up fresh expressions of church not for the sake of innovation but because some people, frankly, simply will not attend a church service. Will we let go of our love for tradition and start up new communities of faith that meet the needs of our broader community?
In these challenging times we keep in mind that it is God’s mission that we are participating with. God is the one who gives the growth not us. We simply need to be faithful. Faithful does not mean doing the same thing over and over nor does it mean doing nothing. It means deep listening , learning, letting go of anything that gets in the way of embodying God’s love in our community- we know what the “pearl of great price is”! We must practice being a people of death and resurrection – knowing that for things to live, sometimes they must die first. Ultimately, we are a people of hope of course, and if we have eyes to see it, we will discern that God’s Spirit is bringing life in abundance all around us.
Rev. Dr Karina Kreminski, Mission Catalyst – Formation and Fresh Expressions, Uniting Mission and Education. Karina also blogs at An Ordinary Mystic.
