Fall is that season in which church boards turn their attention toward the deeper, more perennial questions of church life. What should we do next? And how can we reach more people?
These well-intentioned discussions often revolve around adding new programs, improving programs already in place, or increasing the visibility of all of the above.
I wonder if doing a “Trunk or Treat” this year would gain the attention of our neighbors?
I wonder if doing “Trunk or Treat” better would revive its flagging participation?
What if we opened Vacation Bible School to our neighborhood or to a partner church?
What might happen if we put up new banners?
What if we advertised more widely – like with the new sermon series we have coming up?
Let’s start a folk singing series.
Let’s start a film series.
Let’s start a children’s drama group.
Let’s advertise our book group more widely.
…you get the idea.
What often gets lost in these discussions is any attention to the actual people the church is hoping to engage. Instead of asking, What can we do to get more people in the door, you could ask, Who are these people?
We wonder what might change in the conversation if your church board really explored – in depth and complexity – the following four questions:
Who is your next participant?
(Describe her outlook, her tribe, her hopes and dreams and needs and wants)
What is the story she told herself before she met you?
(About the world, about her situation, about her perceptions)
How do you encounter her in a way that she trusts what you have to offer?
(And that “trust” is a hard-won value in today’s season of institutional suspicion)
What change are you trying to make in her life or her story?
(We are tempted to say, “we don’t seek to change anyone!”— but that might come as a surprise to God who authors change and redemption in each one of us.)
Brainstorming “good ideas” is fine, but unless those good ideas emerge from a deep and caring knowledge of the yearning and curiosity of the people your congregation is trying to reach, they amount to more cleverness. Ministry does not need more cleverness. Ministry needs more curiosity, greater empathy, and a deeper understanding of what it is that church offers to those who are wondering where their next ounce of support may come from.
In the following poem, Chilean American poet M. Soledad Caballero offers us one possible portrait of a next participant. Can you imagine others?
Agnostic at 47
by M. Soledad Caballero
At church I sit alone, not ready
for the faith, luscious around me.
Small building with
the smell of stale incense
and dark wood. Windows
the color of wishes.
Surrounded by saints and stories,
my anger about God.
I end up there on Sundays
to feel the way solitude feels.
I wrestle God.
Sing Stand Kneel
The whole story
hunts me.
Birth, life, fall,
death life again.
My mother arranges her entire body
around church, anchors
hands mouth heart.
She is certain, she knows his voice,
a rising phoenix.
What details stand out to you in the experience of the narrator of Agnostic at 47?
How would you answer the four questions listed above, thinking about the poem’s narrator as a possible ‘next participant’?
How would you have answered those four questions about yourself when you were your church’s ‘next participant’?
When, in your church life, have you witnessed, joined, or led a really fruitful conversation about your congregation’s ‘next participants’? What made that conversation memorable and what were its fruits?
What data, art, or scripture could you collect to start a fruitful new conversation with your church board about your ‘next participants’?
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