Sunday Morning is Not The Future of The Church

Sunday morning is not the future of the church.

I’ve come to this sobering conclusion only recently. It’s sobering because I have only ever known “Sunday morning church.” I grew up as a child attending Sunday School and worship every Sunday morning. Attending church on Sunday mornings was not optional in my family. It’s just something we did every week.

As a young married couple, Leah and I worked hard to find a church that we could attend on Sunday morning, no matter where we lived.

And as an ordained pastor, Sunday morning is viewed as the most important part of the week. It is the focus of our practice and faith. Here at Kessler Park UMC, a large part of the budget is spent on staff and resources which will be used on Sunday morning.

However, it is becoming apparent that the Sunday morning experience is in rapid decline, not just at our church, but at churches across the country. Look at our own numbers — our average attendance in 2018 is 108, down significantly from an average of 124 through the first half of 2017.

I don’t think this is necessarily bad news; our membership continues to grow, we’re financially stable and had one of our best pledge campaigns last fall, and we have active members. But our members don’t come to worship on Sunday mornings as regularly as they used to.

Why is that? How do we account for what Perkins professor Dr. Ted A. Campbell refers to as “the contemporary situation that active families do not consistently worship weekly as active members did earlier in the twentieth century”?  Why don’t they? I would argue because our lives are far busier and more complicated than in the twentieth century.

Today, like it or not, Sunday mornings are a favorite time to schedule youth soccer matches, baseball games, swim meets, dance practices, and a host of other activities. Parents who work more than one job often have only Sunday mornings free to spend time with their children. Families are often simply exhausted by Sunday; there is no other morning of the week in which they can sleep in, read the paper with a cup of coffee, and snuggle on the couch.

This doesn’t mean that these families have forsaken their commitments to Christ or the church; it simply means that they — and all of us — live out our faith in a different context. Every generation has to work out its own worship patterns and habits in its own context. In fact, the 11:00 am worship hour emerged in a 19th-century American farming context; that time was late enough in the morning to allow farmers to get their cows milked and morning chores finished before heading off to the service!

That’s why I think it’s time for the Church (by which I mean Christians of various stripes and sects) to recognize that Sunday morning is not the future. What I mean is that we should stop deceiving ourselves, thinking that if we only find the right formula, we can get large crowds back into church on Sunday morning.

The verdict is in — American culture has spoken. We don’t own Sunday mornings anymore. We’re not going to get crowds back into church on Sunday mornings.

That doesn’t mean we should stop having worship services on Sunday mornings. Many of you are in the regular habit of worship, which I highly endorse!

But if we’re going to peer into the future, and seriously consider what the church of tomorrow is going to look like, we have to reckon with the fact that it will likely coalesce around something different besides the hour-long worship service on Sunday morning. Furthermore, as we think about the task of creating new spaces for new faces, we will have to increasingly abandon the Sunday morning habits and rituals we have created.

We will have to consider different days and times to meet, based on the days and times that people are actually available to meet.

We will have to consider different places for people to meet, based on the spaces which are convenient and available.

We will have to consider different ways to worship, based on what makes the most impact in people’s lives.

We will have to reconsider how much money we allocate for Sunday mornings compared to other activities, missions, and ministries.

We will have to consider whether our precious programs and curriculum are necessary anymore.

We will have to rethink what we do in worship. Perhaps sermons aren't the best way to spend our time together.

This isn’t bad news, by the way. It’s simply a recognition of reality. The only bad news is what will happen if the Church (and our church) doesn’t adapt, doesn’t find a way to follow Jesus in this new context, doesn’t engage people where they are.

Jesus is moving on ahead, regardless of whether or not we follow. There will always be a Church; there will always be a community of faithful followers of Jesus.

But the time is coming when they may not meet on Sunday mornings anymore.

Goin' to the Chapel

KPUMC is currently undergoing an internal conversation about what to do about the chapel.

Wait … did you even know that we have a chapel?

On the second floor of the education building, down the hall from the choir room and sanctuary entrance, is a large room with twelve pews and a stage with an altar and lectern. An upright piano sits in the corner next to the stage.

In times past, this chapel has served as a place for (very) small weddings and funerals, as well as occasional special worship services, like Blue Christmas or Ash Wednesday. But these days, the only ones using the space consistently are The Kessler School students, who use the chapel to gather in the morning before class.

To be honest, the chapel is not currently in very good shape. The pews are uncomfortable, and beginning to get a little wobbly. The chandelier lights are the same as we used to have in the old fellowship hall, and just as unattractive. It’s not a very sacred space at the moment.

It’s time to address this space, and ask the important theological question, “What does God want us to do in this place?”

In my opinion, there are three other questions to answer first before we can discern the way forward. Let’s spend a little time reflecting on these.

We should begin by asking the question, “How can we love our neighbors better with this space?” Last Sunday, I preached about our neighbors, and I pointed out that, though we understand that everyone could be defined as our “neighbor,” we certainly have to begin by loving the neighbors who live closest to us. So it doesn’t hurt to ask how our chapel space could best benefit the people in our neighborhood. Is there a service or program that we could be offering in that space which we currently aren’t offering? Is there a need that exists in the community which we could meet by using the chapel differently?

A second helpful question to ask is, “What could happen here, in this space, that couldn’t happen elsewhere?” This question helps us identify what is unique about a particular space, in order to take advantage of its particular qualities. For example, one helpful feature of our chapel space is that it is on the same floor as the sanctuary. Members of staff have been musing about the possibility of turning the chapel into a Sunday morning welcome and fellowship space, where people could more easily mingle, converse, and have coffee. Some staff have also pointed out that it might be helpful to have a nursery on the same level as the sanctuary; thus, the idea of converting the space into a new nursery has also been broached.

Perhaps most importantly, however, I recommend we also ask the third question: “How can this space be used to be a catalyst for creative change in north Oak Cliff?” This question emerged from our Holy Conversations process three years ago, and I find it extremely helpful as we pray and plan for the church’s future. I would encourage us to be creative when we think about this space and its potential. This requires outside-the-box thinking. Could we turn it into a TV studio, where services are regularly broadcast or streamed live? Or a goat yoga studio? Or a coffee shop?

Yes, these are crazy ideas … or are they? The point is to spend some time dreaming about what God might be up to in our midst. Why not dream a little, throw some oddball ideas out there? You never know what might stick and catch hold of our imagination.

The world is in need of some shalom right now, and we’ve got a big empty space where we might be able to make it happen. The only thing we’ve got to figure out is what and how.

Come, dream with us, and let your imagination loose.

Signs of Hope in the Catskills

There’s an old church tradition that, when you go on vacation and miss Sunday services at your home church, you must bring a bulletin from the church you attended while out of town, back to your pastor. Ken and Colleen Kelley have been especially diligent about doing this while I’ve been at KPUMC, but I’ve received bulletins from others, too.

And so, in case you’re wondering, I have in my possession the July 16th worship bulletin from Roxbury United Methodist Church in Roxbury, New York.

While Leah and I were on vacation last week in the Catskill Mountains, we stayed at the summer home of Otto Wagenbach. He and Pat were gracious hosts, and we had a marvelous time of rest and relaxation.

But we went to church on my Sunday off! For one, Otto and Pat wanted us to meet their summer pastor, Donna LeRoy, who turns out to be a dynamite preacher and warm personality. Donna works hard on Sundays, because she is responsible for three different churches; in Methodist terms, she has what’s called a three-point charge. She preaches at Roxbury only on the first and third Sundays at 9 am; then she’s off to Margaretville UMC to preach at 10:30 am.

I was extremely glad that we went to church on that Sunday; the four of us practically doubled the congregation! There were ten of us in attendance that morning, not counting Donna and the organist.

I suppose one could be disappointed or distraught at the decline of Methodism in upstate New York; after all, this is historically one of the strongest bastions of Methodism in America. One could conclude that Christianity is slowly dying in the northeast, which is a narrative that is certainly being spread by some pundits.

The truth is that these small towns and villages are themselves in decline. Dairy farming was the primary industry in Roxbury and Margaretville at one time. Times have changed; big factories now do dairy work on a large scale. Jobs have shrunk, and most kids who grow up in these small towns move off to raise families elsewhere. Otto told me that, unfortunately, drug use has become a problem as opportunity has passed these places up.

Thus, the shrinking church is merely a symptom of what is happening in the larger community. There are fewer people around, so of course there will be smaller congregations.

But numbers are never the true sign of a vital church. The sign of a healthy church is the kind of mission it embraces, and the fruit it bears.

Fortunately, it appears that Roxbury UMC is a healthy church, and not just because Otto and Pat are there! That little historic church knows that they don’t exist merely for themselves, but for the good of the whole community. Earlier in the month, Roxbury UMC participated in the Celebrate Roxbury Festival; later in the summer they plan to have a joint service with a neighboring Reformed church. During announcement time, Pastor Donna shared that the churches in the parish were planning a joint Vacation Bible School for the children in the area.

In the sermon, which centered on Jesus’ Parable of the Sower, Pastor Donna emphasized the fact that the church was responsible for sowing the seed of the Gospel. She challenged all ten of us to be diligent in sharing God’s good news with other. She even dared to remind the church that its mission was to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”

The church of Jesus Christ only prospers when it recognizes that it is part of God’s mighty work in the world, and wants to participate. We are part of a movement, the unveiling of God’s kingdom on earth, and we have a deeply important role to play in that movement.

It was incredibly encouraging to see signs of life at Roxbury UMC, but I confess that I am even more excited about getting back to church at Kessler Park UMC, because the same thing is happening here.

Let’s get back to work!