Butts in Pews

Ok - I'm sometimes slow, but I generally end up getting there sooner or later.

Over the past week, several things have been niggling at the back of my brain just waiting for the right piece of information to put things together.

The local downtown Methodist church has been running this incessant tv ad for, oh......, 2-3 weeks now. It talks about their diversity and building community. Not bad things for a church to do. "Come join us" is the bottom-line theme.

I was interviewed by the local paper on what activities our congregation is doing or has scheduled to increase membership. The article itself is pretty good and mentions what a variety of growing churches are doing and speaks of what a religion professor suggests is important for growing church membership.

The religion prof notes, correctly in my opinion, that growing congregations create new approaches to reaching out to the community and are willing to try new things, but are flexible enough to ditch them if they don't work. He also comments that growing churches "are paying particular attention to children, and having programs in place for kids."

I opened the Houston Chronicle and on the front page is the promo for a Religion section article about a congregation with a Friday Night Live program that hopes it will "get a younger generation back in the pews".

That's when it hit me. The brain tied all of these things together and shouted, "GIMMICK!!"

Somehow church continues to be about butts in the pews. And it's not!

Growing church membership isn't wrong; however, it's not what church should be about. Church is about growing relationships and strengthening faith. It's about encouraging people to be better than their baser instincts lead them to be. It's about sharing an incredible story of grace and acceptance that all too often doesn't exist in our day to day world. It's about showing people the injustices which hit so many so hard and encouraging them to do something to eliminate them. It's about "feed my sheep" and "whatsoever you did unto the least of these".

I wish I could go back to that interview I did earlier this week and say something like this:

Yes, we have a growing congregation. You may not be able to tell it by the number of people in the pews; however, we have a congregation whose hearts are concerned for those in need, who feed the hungry at Some Other Place, who visit the prisoner, who help those who travel through our community at the Seafarer's Center, who care mightily for the children of our community at our Children's Center, who volunteer in our community to help make life better in so many ways for as many people as they are able, who encourage youth to try out leadership skills and stretch themselves, who care for the elderly in our midst by their friendship and compassion and regular presence, who lead by being and doing the right things, who are themselves Christians growing in their faith day by day.

That's a church that is alive and following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. That's a congregation whose membership is secure.