GROWING IN GRACE
BEN GOSDEN
This is one in a series of columns documenting Rev. Gosden’s transition from associate pastor to senior pastor. Read more on his blog, www.mastersdust.com.
It’s the end of summer. Vacation is over. It’s time to get back to the business of being the church. Odds are you’re holding leadership meetings and addressing various issues in your local church. Odds are worship attendance has felt the summer slump. Odds are you’re behind on your budget and seeing a lot of red in the financial reports. It’s time to rally the troops and make that end-of-the-year push that we all know must happen every September if we’re to continue surviving.
Have you ever wondered if things could be different?
One of the biggest lessons I’m continuing to learn as I grow into my first senior pastor position is that we must do more than just show up on Sundays. The status quo can’t keep churches going. Folks are tired of doing all the work it takes to go through the motions of simply existing as the church. The church, in our decline, is being faced with the reality that people need a compelling reason to join a faith community. It’s no longer the cultural norm. And that might just be the very best news we could hear.
I recently read an article that said reporting average attendance numbers really doesn’t tell the story of congregational health that it once did. The reason for this is that the definition of “active member” has shifted over the last generation or so. It used to be that you were considered active if you attended worship services three or four Sundays a month and rarely missed an opportunity to get inside the doors of the church. Now, if you’re present once a month you’re considered active.
We can mourn this shifting reality. We can pine for the “good old days.” Or we can see this as an opportunity to ask ourselves big questions. We, as local churches, can dare to risk being self-critical and even entertain the notion of changing in light of the changing landscape of church involvement. The problems aren’t always the fault of others or “those people” or the culture – sometimes the problem can be us.
Instead of working so hard to keep up buildings and expecting people to come to us (and then mourning when they don’t), maybe we should think about more ways we can get out of our buildings and go out into our neighborhoods, meeting and engaging others. Instead of watching people age and move out of our neighborhoods and then complaining that the church has lost its relevancy, maybe we should consider ways to change in order to better adapt to a changing neighborhood or community around us. Instead of focusing on ourselves, our needs, our frustrations, our children, our budget woes, and our needs, maybe we should turn our vision outward to discover what God is up to outside of the walls of our buildings. It's ironic that we sing, “The church is not building...the church is a people,” and yet local congregations disband and close every year when they reach a place where they can no longer financially support a building.
As painful as it is to admit, the future of the church will be less about buildings and more about relationships; less about meeting budgets and more about giving of ourselves in ministry to the world. And on our most faithful days, it will be less about us and more about how we can better fall in love with God and our neighbors.
The Rev. Ben Gosden is the senior pastor at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Savannah. He can be reached at bgosden1982@gmail.com.