FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS

When I as in the active ministry, every congregation I served wanted to grow. That’s what we were supposed to do: go out and preach the Gospel and make disciples of Jesus of those who were not disciples. It was a daunting task and one which we strenuously avoided. Sharing our faith with another was just not what a proper Episcopalian (and I dare say Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran, etc.) would do. Leave that to the evangelicals. But when their congregations grew and ours did not, we found reasons to explain away their growth – as in, as many are going out the back door as are coming in the front door, as if that left us off the hook.

Of course, the main reason we wanted to grow was, in all honesty, financial. The reason why so many of the smaller churches are closing is, well, financial. There are not enough parishioners to pay the bills. And now it’s too late. The horse is already out of the barn, as they say. Besides, what we often forget is that the ones we should be recruiting feel uncomfortable in a church. Why? Church people are rich. They have discretionary funds to give away while they hardly have enough to make ends meet.

So what did we do? What are we doing? Maybe a day care will bring in people. Maybe a free meal once a month will. Maybe this, maybe that. It doesn’t matter. If we do what we are doing to bring in new people, we’re doing it for all the wrong reasons. We do what we do as best we can because that is what we are supposed to do.

That’s preaching the Gospel. After that, let the chips fall where they fall. If people join us because they want to share in our ministry, well and good. If they simple want to benefit from it, also well and good. As Jesus once said, when we spread the seed of our faith, we really have no idea what type of ground the seed will fall on. We just scatter the seeds and leave the rest in God’s hands. That’s all we can do.

There are, of course, all kinds of programs out there on how to evangelize, how to bring people to church. The problem is that it really takes a special person to be that kind of upfront evangelist. Most church people I have served with over the years are not those kind of people. They are dyed-in-the-wool introverts. If it were not for the few-and-far-between extroverts in every parish, we would have died on the vine years ago.

The reason why we do what we do as Christians is that’s what we are supposed to do. We do not have to have any long- or short-range plan. We are to simply live out our faith as best we can wherever we are every day of our lives. We will fail. We will come up short. We may never know if we made any difference in anyone’s life.

What we do know, if we stop to think about it, is that we made a difference, and still are making a difference in our own lives. That’s what matters. That is what is important. That is all we can do. The rest we have to leave in God’s hands.