Making Mundane Events Missional
“There has been a healthy increase in recent years
of the recognition that in everything the Church does
its basic responsibility to evangelize must be involved….
Church schools, conference centers, parish houses,
coffee receptions, vestry meetings, altar guilds, covered dish suppers,
diocesan conventions demand to be evaluated on this basis
just as much as teaching missions and street-corner preaching.
The question is “Have we in this way enabled people
to discover or rediscover the wonder of God’s love?”
-Bishop Albert Rhett Stuart
Bishop’s Address of 1960
At the heart of the quotation above from our own Bishop Stuart is a key question to use in looking at everything your congregation does. As he challenged this diocese, can we really use all we do from coffee hour and altar guild to diocesan conventions to enable people to discover and rediscover the wonder of God’s love?
A Case Study – Church of the Atonement
One recent example from my travels around the Diocese of Georgia may illustrate the larger point of how to make the most of the events we hold. I met recently with the vestry and some other members of the Church of the Atonement on Tobacco Road, which is on the growing south side of Augusta. The church has long had a vital signature ministry as it is an important food source for those in need in the community. Its well-run pantry shares the love of God in a very concrete way to those in need. The signature event the church puts on is a BBQ sale in the fall.
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In working with the group, we discovered together two ways to maximize that contact with the community. First, I learned that while they use the proceeds of that sale to fund Christmas presents for needy kids in their community, this has not been advertised as part of the event. Making plain that the funds raised are not for the church, but to provide Christmas for more than 60 kids in a typical year will garner both more support for the already popular sale and may result in donations beyond the food purchase. This also lets the community know how Atonement is reaching out in love to kids in their community.
I further learned that the sale does not give anyone a chance to visit the church. I recommended that as the sale does not involve the church building, that they use signage and personal invitation to let folks know they may tour the church while they are there to purchase the dinners. Having some appropriate music playing a someone on hand to show the church and talk about it to visitors allows for important contact. The reason to do this is that the Holy Spirit could well use their coming to the property to interest someone in worshipping at Atonement. A tour will offer the opportunity for those who come to the sale to have a no pressure way to cross the threshold of the church, making it easier for them to return for Sunday worship.
None of this is particularly groundbreaking. These are just a couple of simple and free ways to make more out of what the Church of the Atonement is already doing for folks along Tobacco Road.
How does this apply to your church?
The same principal Bishop Stuart addressed to the convention in 1960 can help you find ways to turn mundane meeting and events to opportunities to discover and rediscover God’s love. The ways to make these events more missional abound. You can start meeting by reading a discussing the scripture for the upcoming Sunday, offer opportunities for prayer requests and thanksgivings followed by prayer so that those meeting may share one anothers’ joys and bear one anothers’ burdens. Try it for yourself. Think of one fairly mundane event in your church calendar, from a committee meeting or fundraiser to coffee after worship. Have the vestry or appropriate committee or other group, pray for God’s guidance, then brainstorm ways to use that time to discover or rediscover God’s love. The change may be small and need not be daunting, but the effect of doing this all across your church’s calendar is more than a subtle shift, it is recapturing a sense that everything we do flows from our love of God and is a response to that love.
Let me know how it goes for you and your congregation.
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary
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