By Ed Thompson
What kind of church do we want to be? Even pre-pandemic, we had to deal with that question. Did we want to be known for our music program, our choir, our youth group? Did we want people to think of us as being open, friendly, and welcoming? Or did we want to be known for being mission oriented, justice oriented, or community oriented? These are not necessarily mutually exclusive options. There’s no real reason your church couldn’t be known for more than one thing. You might also be known for your chili suppers, pancake breakfasts, or perhaps your Fall Festival or Christmas Bazaar.
I think we have another choice facing us now as we begin to move beyond this pandemic. How will we incorporate the people who are joining us online into the ongoing life of our church? I think we’ve mostly been able to avoid that question. We’ve spent a lot of time and energy to just keep going, to be able to offer worship online, to hold meetings online, to provide classes online. For a while, that seemed like the only option. For a long time, that seemed like the best option. Once vaccines became more widely available, however, more and more people have become comfortable with and have chosen to resume in-person worship. It bothers them to look around and see the sanctuary half-empty, or perhaps half-full, depending on the way they look at it. They think, they wonder, they worry: How can we get people to come back to worship? Somehow, the number of people worshiping online doesn’t seem to count.
Some, like the author of a recent article in the New York Times, have suggested that we need to abandon online worship. That perspective may well be traced to her understanding as an Anglican priest of the centrality of the eucharist in worship. If the priest doesn’t bless the elements in the sanctuary, then they don’t really count. Somehow, their prayers apparently aren’t effective on whatever you might have scrounged up in your own home. They still remain doughnuts and milk or bagels and orange juice and aren’t really the authentic body and blood of Christ. While some of us might squirm at those choices for communion elements, for Presbyterians, when we look at it theologically, it’s not really a problem.
I think it becomes a problem when we step back from ways that proclaim the gospel, when we turn away from people who have been faithful participants, and when we effectively label some worshippers as second-class citizens. Some of these folks may be more faithful in their attendance and their giving than members who live within a few blocks or even a few miles from the church building. They may be paying more attention than the people sitting in the sanctuary.
Maybe they’re happy just observing what’s going on. Maybe they don’t really want to join. (We probably have people attending in person who share that same reticence.) If they showed up in person, we’d want to engage them in conversation. It would make sense to find ways to do that when they show up online. Even as we have greeters outside the sanctuary, maybe we need to have greeters for our Zoom meetings or our Facebook Live events. They could make people feel welcome. They could ask a few initial questions. This shouldn’t turn into a game of 20 Questions or the Spanish Inquisition but maybe something like “I don’t think I’ve met you. My name is ______. How did you find us?” If they show up again, you could ask another question. Or maybe you could make a general announcement during the service that “If you put your email address in the chat, we’ll send you our newsletter” or maybe “We’ll let you know about our upcoming events.”
During online classes or Bible studies, you could be more intentional about helping people know each other. Maybe you could ask a question, “Where have you seen God at work in the past few days?” These are opportunities, even for longtime church members, to get to know each other better.
An open ended invitation for membership can be offered on a regular basis. Not that membership should be about status or privilege but rather as a step in one’s discipleship. If online participants join and are regular in attendance and giving, why shouldn’t they be elected as elders as well as deacons? Yes, it will be different. Yes, we’ll have to make adjustments. But we are in a different era, an era that needs us to be different, and that means we’re going to have to make adjustments.
Do we want to be known as a church that is willing to change, willing to try new things, and willing to accept and welcome new people, people that we have never met in person? Or do we want to be known as a church that is afraid, a church that prefers the past, a church that is closed to new ideas and new people? We have choices to make about the kind of church we want to be.