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Commentary: Who is visiting small churches today?

Sep. 24, 2008    News media contact:   Marta  Aldrich * (615) 742-5133*   Nashville {397}

NOTE: A photograph is available at http://umns.umc.org

>A UMNS Commentary By the Rev. Lewis A. Parks*

When small church lay and clergy leaders gather, their first comments  often reflect an understandable anger, defensiveness and dread of the  imminent future.

This is understandable given the challenges they face. But if you listen  long enough, as I have done regularly for the last several years, you  begin to pick up signs of hope. There's hope consistent with empirical  data showing that approximately 35 percent of small membership churches  are indeed growing each year-and hope consistent with the church's own  theological metrics for measuring the viability and vitality of a  congregation.

So who needs a small church these days? What I hear paints a hopeful  picture. Call it a work of prevenient grace. Call it a wooing by the  Spirit. Call it a happy confluence of the new seekers and the  congregations they seek. Whatever you call it, five types of persons  keep showing up as visitors to small churches, whether those churches  are located in cities, towns or rural settings:

1. Persons seeking surrogate family. They are separated from their  families of origin by work, school or military obligations. They are  estranged or divorced from those once dear. They are looking for  brothers and sisters with whom they can relate in reciprocity. They are  looking for aunts and grandfathers who can share wisdom for the journey  of life. They hunger for family-like gatherings brimming with assorted  characters and stories. The surrogate family language that dominates  Paul's letters written to congregations of 35 to 50 people resonates  with these persons.

2. Persons seeking an alternative to the anonymity of the workplace and  public square. They have learned to be compliant minds and bodies so  they can navigate the interstate highways to get to work or to get  through airport security without setting off alarms. They shop in  big-box stores like Home Depot, Target and Ikea, where consumers seek  products without regard for etiquette. They bank and take courses  online. But when it comes to worship and spiritual growth, they want a  setting where they know and are known by name. They want to be more like  performers in worship and less like audience.

3. Persons weary of self-absorption and in search of a corporate story  into which they can jump. Author and theologian C.S. Lewis once observed  that there comes the day when one realizes one isn't going to be a Great  Person after all! So where does one go from there? One of the healthiest  answers is to find a community or institution that is more than the sum  of its individual members, and give oneself over to it. One reason small  churches need to have their story ready to tell is that there are people  looking for such stories. Many of the seekers are looking for a story  bigger than themselves but still small enough that they might contribute  to the advancement of the plot.

4. Persons who have a score to settle with God but want to settle it in  a safe environment.  They have outgrown the eclectic and nebulous  spirituality of their New Age phase. They demand that God make sense of  the sudden death of a child, spouse or best friend. They regret the  setbacks of their lives and would like to find an overriding providence.  As they have it out with God, they have a strong preference for an  intimate setting. They want to be able to ask the preacher face to face  their hardest questions after the sermon. They want to tell their  stories in Bible study with persons whose ongoing stories they are  following. They want to be able to feel their way into new vistas of  faith and know that those who see the collateral tears read them  sympathetically.

5. Persons who are looking for a place to give back for the blessings  they have received. Life has been good to them and they have reached a  fork in the road. Will they be anxious and grasping like the farmer in  Jesus' parable whose logic is "more, more; there's never enough!"?  Or  will they deem themselves blessed to be a blessing? If the latter,  chances are they will look for a place where their gifts make a visible  difference. Behold the small church where the budget is nearly always  barebones and where "extras" like sending a teenager on a mission trip  to Bolivia, having a 2600 lumens projector for the worship service, or  making the bathrooms handicap accessible usually depend on the presence  of patrons and the energy of volunteer labor.

Whether these five types of persons will come back to the small churches  they visit is another story. There are issues of hospitality and  excellence of execution that must be faced. But courage for facing them  surely starts with a belief that someone is likely to show up and  notice. The signs are strong that someone will.

># # #

*Parks is professor of theology, ministry and congregational development  at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington D.C., and has done  extensive work with small membership churches and their leaders. This  commentary first appeared in Leading Ideas, the online newsletter of the  Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

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United Methodist News Service Photos and stories also available at: http://umns.umc.org

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