Pastoral Reflections: On Sunday attendance and discouragement
1/20/22
If you had told me that this year New City Church would do something no other church in Raleigh would do, I would have gotten really excited. What innovative thing did we do to encourage and/or connect with people?! Well, we did do something this past Sunday that, while I of course don’t know what every church in Raleigh did, every church that I saw/know of canceled because of inclement weather.
It snowed/iced early Sunday morning, but we decided to hold our in-person service for anyone who wanted to come. Of course, everyone else was welcome to watch our livestream, and most did. However, we had more people come than I thought given how the weather turned out, so it ended up being just fine to hold our service. Unfortunately, as I write this, it appears we are getting winter weather again this weekend, and even more than last weekend. So we might have to go online only this Sunday.
This is very discouraging for me. For the first two Sundays of the year we dealt with many people being sick, either with COVID or normal winter illnesses. Last Sunday and this Sunday we are dealing with bad weather. This means starting off the year with four Sundays of smaller or no attendance at all. The problem is not that I want a lot of people in a building. The problem, and shutting down all gatherings when COVID first began revealed this, is that so much happens and comes from a Sunday gathering.
New people certainly can watch online, but they rarely take steps of getting connected until going in-person on a Sunday. People in our church often don’t take various next steps if they go weeks without attending a service. Personally, I have more meetings during the week when Sunday gatherings happen; both from connecting with new people and following up with people in our own church that I talked to that Sunday. It almost feels like I cannot fully do my job with how this year has begun. To be clear, this frustration is not aimed at our people (New City has great people), it is aimed at the circumstances that have caused this.
But challenges bring new ideas and opportunities. I started these Pastoral Reflections because I have connected with fewer of our people lately. Perhaps, and hopefully, this can turn into some form of encouragement and connection in response to that (though online is never as good as physical community).
And in discouragements like these, I am reminded that Jesus will build his church. In all our discouragements we are invited to realize anew just how little control we have. So let’s make a deal, why don’t you pray for me and I pray for you this week, that we find the presence and goodness of God in our discouragements?
Send me an email at dylandodson@newcityrdu.com with how I can pray for you, I’d really enjoy it.
