I Don’t Know What’s Happening and That’s Okay
As the calendar turns to 2019, I’m 18 months in at my current church. I’ve been in full time ministry for 11 years now, and for the last 3 months, almost everything has been clicking. If I’m being perfectly honest, I don’t really know why.
To give a little perspective, this church is located in a small to mid-size town (about 15,000 in the immediate area). The major employers in the town are the hospital, the school system, and the local university (primarily a 2-year university). Surrounding the town, throughout the county, are a handful of small towns and a lot of farm land.
The town is located on the Wabash River in southwest Indiana, and the river serves as the state line between Indiana and Illinois. If you were to drive one county south (about 15 minutes or so), you would be in the Central Time Zone. If you were to cross the river, you would be in the Central Time Zone. So, you could say that we are in the corner of the Eastern Time Zone.
Statistical analysis of our area showed us that a significant number of households with children in our immediate area (within 5 miles) were single-parent homes, and there is a wide range of incomes in our area. Some people have to work 2–3 jobs just to get by; others are doing fairly well for themselves (as you would expect with a hospital being a major employer in town).
We’ve hit a bit of an economic uptick lately, with there being some significant business development. New restaurants have been opening in the area, providing jobs and gathering places in town.
The church itself is an old church. It was founded about 210 years ago by an early Methodist circuit rider by the name of Peter Cartwright, who by all accounts (especially his own) was quite a character. Our current building was built in 1919 — we’ll be celebrating 100 years this year. At one point, our church was a significant congregation in our conference. It used to be the meeting place for Annual Conference (the annual meeting of all Methodist clergy and lay delegates for a geographic area).
However, again, looking at a statistical analysis going back to 1979, the church has been on a decline, having averaged over 400 in worship in the early ‘80's to averaging about 85 as of August 2018. It is a very traditional church. It has an amazing pipe organ that is played on a regular basis, and it includes some even more amazing people. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time as pastor here thus far, and have no intention of moving any time soon (United Methodist clergy don’t have a ton of control over how long they stay in one place for the most part).
In October, after several months of discussion, feedback, more discussion and a lot more prayer, the church where I am serving decided to try something different. We moved our worship time.
For as long as anybody could remember, worship was at 9:30, every Sunday, for decades. One Sunday, somebody came late to worship. Usually, it’s not that big of a deal. This particular Sunday, however, it was a single mother, who came with 3 children… and they were 35 minutes late to service.
To her credit, it would have been really easy to simply turn around before ever going into the sanctuary. But she did not. Somebody had invited her, and she finally decided that it was time to come. In talking with her after worship, she mentioned that it was hard to get her boys moving in the morning sometimes, and that was why she was late. To be honest, it didn’t bother me at all that she was late. I was just glad that she had the courage to stay for worship.
Later that morning, I had a conversation with a couple of people in the church, who wondered out loud if we should consider having a later worship time so that parents who had kids would be able to make it to worship more easily. And that was the spark.
We started the discussion with our Administrative Council (the primary leadership group within the church), and then scheduled three “town hall” meetings to talk it over with the congregation.
Through the discussions, one thing became clear: people were willing to try something different. One person stood up and said, “Matt, we trust you, and we’re willing to try whatever you think is best for the church.” I can count on one finger the number of times somebody has actually said something like that to me in 11 years of ministry, and to do it in front of a majority of the congregation almost brought a tear to my eye. It was incredibly humbling.
We started talking about moving our 9:30 worship to 10:30. Factors mentioned above played into the decision, but something else happened, something unexpected.
It became clear that there were still enough people who preferred an early worship time. None of them were defiant about moving the worship service. In fact, they all said that we needed to do what was best for the church, but that they would probably look for a place with an earlier worship service and be present less often. They were not being malicious or threatening; they were just clear that they were morning people, and preferred a worship service that would take place earlier in the morning. So, what do we do? What do we do when 90% of the people want to do things one way, but there are still some who want something else?
Every pastor has a bit of a people-pleaser inside of them. Some more so than other. I try to avoid needless conflict. I’m not afraid of conflict, but if there’s a way to navigate the rapids without running into the rocks, you can bet that’s what I’m going to do.
In order to do that, we had to find a way to both move the worship service to a later time, and put something in place at an earlier time that would be able to catch those who may drop out otherwise.
We decided to do something unthinkable in an old, established, traditional, United Methodist church…
We tried something new.
To be perfectly honest here, I had no intention of starting a second service. The way I look at things, there are two reasons why you should consider a second (or new) service if you are leading a congregation.
First, you are running out of room. It’s the old Yogi Berra saying, “Nobody goes there any more; it’s too crowded.” Once you hit about 80% of your seating capacity, you are going to feel full. People like their personal space, and that is no different when in worship. However, at the time, we were averaging 85 in a sanctuary that could easily hold over 200, and that doesn’t take the balcony into account. We were not running out of room. “Crowded” is not a word that anybody would use to describe our sanctuary on a Sunday morning.
The second reason why you should consider starting a new worship service if you are leading a congregation is that you want to try something different. I don’t have any statistics to back this up, but I would venture to say that this is usually where churches find themselves starting a second service. They want a “traditional” worship and a “contemporary” worship. It’s basically the same service, but they change the musical style with the intent of reaching younger people. (Which, by the way, if you think you’re going to reach younger people just because you are playing “cooler” music, then you are setting yourself up for failure. “If you build it, they will come” is not a good church growth strategy.)
It became clear to us that if we were going to do a second service, then we were going to have to do something different.
There were two factors that we had to consider when it came to starting this second service. First of all, we did not have the personnel to pull off two fully functioning worship services with two different styles of music.
Second, before I arrived, they closed down a second service because it wasn’t working out. It was clear that we needed to have an earlier service, but history showed that a contemporary service would not necessarily be the right choice. So, we tried something entirely different.
We call it Simple Church. It is a 30-minute worship service that starts at 9:00. We usually pick one hymn (played on the piano instead of the organ) that is split up so that we sing a couple verses at the beginning and a couple at the end. There’s a time of prayer, Scripture reading and a shortened sermon. That’s it. It’s… simple.
Our first month, our average attendance went up to 95. The next, it was 110. Since the first Sunday of that second month, we have not had less than 100 in worship. We even had a couple of Sundays in which the attendance came close to Easter numbers. We are seeing new people come to worship. We have people who are interested in joining the church and getting involved in the mission of the church (to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world).
I cannot explain the increase in attendance. I cannot explain the increase in interest in this 210 year old church. All I can do is be faithful to the call that God has on my life at this time and try to lead this church the best that I can. It sounds cliche, but I really believe the Holy Spirit is at work right now. I don’t know what is happening, and that’s okay.
