by Rev. Kari Collins
Many of our local churches are weary. Many are struggling. We have long treated our local churches like transactions. How many members do we have? How many are in attendance each Sunday. Are all of the vacancies filled on our committees and ministries? How many children and youth do we have? How much is our budget? And we’ve limited our ministry by saying, “We’ve never done it that way,” or its corollary, “We’ve always done it this way.” But transactions are numbers, and the truth is, those numbers have been in decline for many of our churches for decades.
And then the pandemic hit. Our in-person church stopped. Our society stopped. Our entire world stopped. And while many of our churches were able to pivot to online methods of worship and ministry, pandemic fatigue is real for so many of us!
In a recent article titled, “They’re Not Coming Back,” Reverend Rob Dyer contends that even as we slowly reopen our churches, people are not coming back to the church, at least not at the same level of engagement as before…. nor will they. We have all been traumatized by this pandemic.
So what do we do? How do we, our churches, reintroduce ourselves as a place that can tend to the wounds that this pandemic has opened in all of us?
I believe we have a choice. We can continue to be transactional churches and see our numbers decline, now even more precipitously post-pandemic than before.
Or, we can see this post-pandemic time as an opportunity to operate differently as church, an opportunity to transform lives in new ways.
And it is in this opportunity that I find hope. This will require innovative change. And, to be honest, we don’t know what these changes might look like. And this is where God comes in.
Each and every one of us has gifts for ministry. If we work to develop and deepen our relationships with one another, we can seek to understand the life experiences and beliefs that shape who we are and how we are each Called to share our gifts and talents in the world. And we need to deepen our relationships with intention. Now I’m not talking about joining more committees or ministries, where we have meetings to attend and tasks to be done. Rather, I’m inviting us to be in intentional one-to-one relational conversations with each other, during which we listen for and draw out the Spirit abiding in one another. It was during an intentional one-to-one relational conversation that I began to discern my Call to parish ministry, as my conversation partner shared his stories about the justice work that he had done in the local church setting.
And we have the opportunity to have one-to-one relational conversations with those who can’t or don’t or won’t come to a church building on Sunday mornings, and to listen for where Spirit abides in them. What they are longing for? And how can we, as church, partner with them to follow Jesus in new ways, ways that aren’t limited to bringing people into a church building on Sunday mornings?
When we shift our churches from being transactional to being relational, Spirit can be at work. And when we let Spirit work, we can develop partners in ministry to help us to truly live the prophetic and revolutionary teachings of Jesus, to find new ways to be the hands and feet of Jesus in our community and in our world. The pandemic has given us the opportunity to grab onto change.
Reverend Dyer concludes his article by saying, “The need for a major pivot is before us, and we know that God will provide for the times and places where we are found. Therefore, let us walk into this valley with eyes wide open, ready to step forward with intention, believing in the presence of the Good Shepherd, the proximity of green pastures, the provided meal amongst adversity, the anointing of our heads, the overflowing of our cups, and our place in the House of the Lord forever.”
Let us follow the prophetic and revolutionary teachings of Jesus together, in deep relationship with one another, listening for where Spirit is alive in each and every one of us, and seeing in what new ways God is Calling us to Be the Church.
Rev. Kari Collins (she/her/hers)
- Vice Moderator, Casas Adobes UCC, Tucson, AZ
- Minister of Stewardship and Philanthropy, Sixth Avenue UCC, Denver, CO
- Consultant to churches in the Rocky Mountain Conference UCC on ways to shift from a culture of scarcity in our churches to an expectation of abundance, inviting people to invest in ministry that transforms lives.