Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

My home church recently held its annual Steak Fry. I remember hearing about this event as a child, but it was never an option for us. It wasn’t really for my parents, either. Back then, it was an event for older, more mature (read: no small children at home) kind of adults.

That was the culture of my home church, my home neighborhood’s Old First Church. They excelled at all things social. There was the fall Harvest Home Dinner which, in previous generations, was a multiple day event. A bazaar in the fall featured an elegant luncheon in the room children were never allowed. My mother, in fact, is still a member of the ‘circle’ she joined in the 1970s. Evidently, there were lots of women’s circles – and they all had strange-sounding names (there was even a circle called “octagon”). One time, I asked her what they were, these ‘circles’. “Our group of women,” she replied. I tried to dig a bit more into what, precisely, their purpose and mission and objective were. Those weren’t exactly fruitful questions.

My home church had a strong choir, filled mostly with paid section leaders and led by a gifted organist and music director. It also had a thriving Sunday school, which is what drew my parents to that church. When they moved to the neighborhood in the early 1970s, they asked around for the Protestant church with the best Sunday school. There was a once-annual Men’s Communion Breakfast, held the day before Palm Sunday, and that was among the more intentionally spiritual gatherings. It was mostly Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Sunday school, coffee hour (served in coffee cups with saucers by women wearing white gloves, pouring from silver decanters), and special events.

That glue held for a long time. It held into my early adolescence, well into the late 1980s, but my neighborhood on Chicago’s south side was becoming more diverse – a good thing, my dad taught us – and more and more of my friends were moving out to the suburbs. Even among those friends of mine whose families didn’t move, they were less inclined to attend church – and their parents were equally less motivated to go or make them attend. My siblings and I (born in 1972, 1973 and 1975) seemed to be among the last of that church’s Sunday schools and youth groups. As the youngest of those three, it seemed to me like my brother and sister had far more contemporaries than I did – only a few years later!

Do people join churches because of social events? Or do social events serve as the glue around which people who’ve already joined a church come together?

This is a big question, around which is a fairly large generational divide. Once upon a time, the church’s social glue held together its diverse members – even though not all things were necessarily Jesus-focused. That world didn’t hold up in my lived experience, however, and I’m by no means a young adult.

I’ve been working with another, smaller Episcopal congregation in our community. Our focus, nowadays, is about defining their core and establishing some baseline practices around institutional sustainability. Let’s first talk about viability before we even dream about vitality. We’ve set out to identify this church’s active, engaged members. We’re also looking at establishing core practices around worship, formation, and service. Yet the conversation often, and obviously, shifts to ways to get people ‘through the door’. Equally often, many of the ways to generate foot traffic do not directly point to Jesus and the Christian gospel. What about better signage? Maybe a dance at the parish hall? What about an art show and luncheon?

This is an observation, not a criticism. I value those traditions that precede me. After all, the Lord called me to Christian ministry in my home church, and that church is the literal definition of conventional, 20th-century liberal Protestant Christianity. Not only do I value what was, there’s a part of me that secretly hopes for some of that stability to return: can’t we get people who, simply, join a local church and participate in its social life and connective tissue? As a church leader, today, we compete with the my-children-and-I-are-on-an-exotic-vacation crowd, which turns out the we’ll-attend-church-every-six-weeks (if you’re lucky) crowd, and that’s not even mentioning the fear that our biggest competition is the Big Box mega church, replete with darkened movie theatre lighting and the preacher in skinny jeans.

But what if we’re all in fresh, fairly uncharted territory? What if we’ve never been here before, or at least not in anyone’s recorded memory? What if what worked in previous generations – that deep belief that a lot of social activities will, in time, move people to become members of the local church – is simply no longer working? What if we are being called to explore those factors that do, in fact, move people to join a local church – and that this exploration is altogether new?

The theme of ECF’s blogs for October is evangelism, which is really about an invitation and an announcement. The word evangelism, of course, contains the word angel: a messenger, someone who announces and invites. So what are we announcing? And to what are we inviting? Are we inviting someone to the social life of the local church – the fall bazaar, coffee hour? Are we inviting people to our activities, our gatherings, our things? It gets even more tricky when we’re talking about inviting people to participate in truly good-hearted ministries, such as a food pantry or clothing closet. Or is it Jesus? Are we inviting people to Jesus?

The social life of a local church is so vitally important. The church’s secret weapon for so long has been potluck suppers and coffee hour following worship. It’s on us, church leaders today, to remember why we gather, why we ask people to bring fried chicken or deviled eggs. There are still people moving into our neighborhoods today, like my parents did 50+ years ago, asking around for the best local church. They may say they want a Sunday school for their kid, or a fellowship group or a way to meaningfully serve others. But then – as now – all are searching for a great church that has a centripetal force. And that force is no less than “the power of God.” It’s that same power about which Paul wrote so long ago: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” (Rom. 1:16)