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| The Early Days |
1. Create opportunities for those who have begun attending the new church’s worship gatherings to meet other newcomers and those who have been attending these gatherings for a while. The goal is to encourage the formation of new relationships and to facilitate the assimilation of newcomers into the congregation.
In the early days of St. Michael’s we asked couples to host small home gatherings in which adults shared a meal and got to know each other. This idea and the name for these gatherings, “Hungry Flock,” were suggested by an attendee who had recently moved to the area. Her previous church had adopted this approach to assimilation with a measure of success. Those who are participating in the gathering are encouraged to take part in the planning of the gathering, including arranging for a sitter for parents with small children. The sitter may tend the children at the same home where the gathering is held or at the home of one of the other participants. The church may pay the sitter. This approach works during the early stages of a new church when a lot of people do not know each other. A chief drawback is that it is possible to lose sight of the original purpose of the gatherings. A new church that adopts this approach will need to make sure that newcomers, singles, and solo parents are included in the gatherings. What may be a deciding factor in whether this approach will work today is how much home entertaining the new church’s ministry target group does, whether it is a part of the ministry target group’s culture.
Little over a decade and a half later the Church of the Beloved was launched in Mandeville, Louisiana. Its weekly worship gatherings were held on a weeknight in the home of one of the members of new church’s core group. These gatherings consisted of former members of what had been my parish until May 2002, current members of the parish, their friends and acquaintances, and other interested people. They had one thing in common—an interest in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The gatherings were preceded by a meal which provided an opportunity for those attending the gatherings to get to know each other better over food. Eating together also fostered a sense of community. The new church would eventually move to a vacant house on the outskirts of Covington, investment property owned by the husband of one of the regular attendees. The worship gatherings at the new location were also preceded by a meal. The children attended the gatherings with their parents at both locations.
Other possibilities are barbecues, clam bakes, fish fries, picnics, potlucks, Japanese shabu shabu parties, and soup suppers. Picnics do not need to be held once a year. They can be held year round. The culture of the new church’s ministry target group may suggest additional possibilities. Newcomers should not only be invited to these meals but involve in their preparation. Working alongside others is a good way to get to know them and to strike up friendships.
Among the ways a new church can help people to get know each other is community service projects, ministry projects, and mission projects. They might pick up litter along a highway together. Be sure to team up newcomers with people that they do not know and who do not know them. They might prepare sandwiches for the homeless together. They might assemble bags of nutritious, easy-to-prepare food for children for whom school meals may be the only meals that they eat. These food bags are then slipped into the children’s backpacks at the end of the week so that they get enough to eat on weekends and do not go hungry. They might do yard work for older people and disabled people who are unable to do it for themselves. As we shall see, these projects and similar ones can also be a form of outreach to the community.
Smaller new churches might rent a couple of cabins for a weekend at a nearby state park. They might organize a campout.
I recommend a policy for such outings that the Boy Scout troop for which I served as a chaplain and committee member adopted. It required the Scouts to turn over their cell phones and other portable handheld devices (e.g. video games) to a designated adult for the duration of the outing (e.g. overnight camping trip, weekend camping trip, hike, etc.) to ensure that they would interact with the other boys and not withdraw into their own digital cocoon. Participants can be asked to put away these devices for the duration of the outing.
Those planning the outing should plan plenty of activities that encourage participants to interact with each other—preparing meals together, outdoor games, a campfire, storytelling, sharing past experiences on similar outings, and if they are renting cabins, card and board games. My Boy Scout troop concluded overnight and weekend camping trips with an outdoor worship gathering when they ended on a Sunday. We had one Scout leader who was a self-admitted atheist. However, the other Scout leaders and the boys came from Christian backgrounds.
I also recommend that before they head home, the participants sit down in a circle and each participant share with the other participants what was for him or her the high point and the low point of the outing, going around the circle until all the participant have shared their high point and low point. In my Boy Scout troop we called this “Thorns and Roses.” It provided closure to the outing. We sometimes do something similar in my small group. Each participant shares in turn what were the high point and the low point of the week for him or her.
2. Determine what are the interests of those who are attending a new church’s worship gatherings and match them with a ministry that fit their interests.
Too often a church, when it discovers that an attendee has particular set of vocational skills wants to place them in a ministry slot in which the church will benefit from these skills. For example, if an attendee teaches school, they want to place them in a Children’s Ministry slot. But someone who teaches one group of children five days of week may not want to teach a second group of children on Sunday. The church may try to guilt the person into becoming a Children’s Ministry volunteer. This, however, is a formula for burnout. Rather than asking whether they can take a break from a particular ministry or try a different ministry, one which matches their interests, volunteers will simply drop out. In the end both the church and the volunteer are losers.
My mother taught fourth grade at an elementary school in Abita Springs, Louisiana for a number of years. In England she had been the head teacher of a small village school. But when she emigrated to the United States for the second time in the late 1950s, she was required to go back to college because the teacher’s college that she had attended in the 1930s had been bombed in the war and the college’s records destroyed. The college that she had attended had trained missionaries as well as school teachers. She had been trained to give children religious instruction as well as teach them the subjects that children are taught in elementary school. When she was the village school head teacher, she had opened and closed the school day with prayers from The Book of Common Prayer and taught a daily Bible lesson. But her interests lay elsewhere.
My mother had sung in the choir of the village church when she was a teenager and had acquired a deep love for church music. When she began to attend Christ Episcopal Church in Covington, Louisiana, she kept to herself that she had been trained as a religious instructor. After spending the better part of the week making lesson plans, teaching, and correcting and grading papers, she wanted to do something different on Sundays. She joined the choir at Christ Church and sung with the choir for more than two decades. During the time she was a member of the choir at Christ Church, she also served on the hymn selection committee which planned the music for the church’s weekly celebrations of the Holy Eucharist. She attended a Community of Celebration Come Celebrate workshop with me in Austin, Texas and learned how to integrate contemporary music into traditional worship.
My mother also operated the church’s book store, which also sold crochet embroidery, knitwear, and other handicrafts that the women of the church had made and donated to the store. The proceeds from their sale went to various charitable causes. My mother crocheted afghans, baby blankets, baby clothes, baby hats, and baby booties. She would crochet while she tended store.
While my mother retained her membership in Christ Church and sung in its choir every Sunday, she would drive to Mandeville after the service and add her voice to the voices of St. Michael’s fledgling choir. She brought her granddaughters with her. They would experience being a part of a new church as I had when I was younger. She also prepared them for their baptism and their first communion. All three girls were of an age at which they could answer for themselves at their baptism.
Matching worship gathering attendees with ministries that fit their interests has a number of benefits. They are likely to serve as volunteers for longer periods of time. They are likely to come up with innovative ideas that improve the effectiveness and the quality of the ministries in which they are involved. They are likely to retain their enthusiasm for these ministries. They are likely to become good candidates for leading the same ministries. They are also likely to invite friends, neighbors, relatives, and others to church. People who are excited about their church are more likely to invite someone to church than people who feel lukewarm about the church or even embarrassed by it.
A new church that is unable to match a worship gathering attendee with a ministry that fits with his or her interests can encourage the attendee to undertake a ministry of their own based upon their interests and their spiritual gifts. While this ministry may not be a ministry of the church, it is one of the ways that a church can impact the community.
A new church can help new believers and longtime disciples discover what Rick Warren describes as their unique “S.H.A.P.E”. for ministry. This acronym stands for Spiritual Gift, Heart, Abilities, Personality, and Experiences. By “Heart” Warren is referring to an individual’s interests and passions, what really excites that individual, what he or she is really motivated to do. What excites me, for example, is pioneering new churches, planning worship, discovering and using new hymns and worship songs, leading worship, preaching, conducting observances of the Lord’s Supper*, mentoring others, watching them grow as leaders, encouraging others to grow spiritually … I believe that readers get the picture.
A new church can develop a personal profile to help them discover what Aubrey Mulphur calls their “divine design.” I have one caveat. Sometimes a church will use such a profile to screen worship gathering attendees to determine their suitability for existing ministry slots rather than to discover that design. Its purpose may ostensibly be to help them to discover their divine design but upon close examination it is clear that the church is using it as a screening tool.
I believe that an individual’s unique S.H.A.P.E. is best explored in a small group. The best setting in which an individual’s spiritual gifts may be assessed is the small group. While spiritual gift assessments are useful for gaining insights into how an individual perceives the Holy Spirit may be manifesting himself in the individual's life, the observations of the other small group participants will determine the accuracy of the individual’s perceptions. They will also help the individual recognize blind spots. The Holy Spirit may be manifesting himself in the individual's life in ways that the individual does not realize.
*This was done in small home worship gatherings of a church that is affiliated with a denomination whose doctrine, worship, and discipline does not require an ordained or licensed minister to administer the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.Image Credit: New Hope Anglican Church, Oakville CT, Anglican Diocese in New England (ACNA)
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