If you attended our church before the pandemic, attended virtually in 2020-2022 and then just came back in person this fall, you would discover that the sanctuary is a sea of new faces.
Although I do not know the exact percentage, I believe it’s fair to say it is around a 2/3rds shift. That is to say, enough people disconnected from the congregation or moved to online worship and enough other people joined the church or reconnected to in person worship to make it appear 2/3rds news.
I write this down for the sake of transparency. I suspect other congregations may have seen similar shifts and so may feel less alone reading this.
The reasons for this shift are manifold, so I am going to make a list of the many and varied reasons our church now looks different, and I’m going to try and be as honest and vulnerable as possible. Here we go:
Many young families joined during the pandemic because they sought overtly left-leaning faith community that would be a resource for their children.
Retirees followed me on social media and wanted to connect to a church and pastor willing to be on the advocacy front lines.
Some families left because I wrote harshly about Republicans. The biggest moment was in spring 2021 when I said F the Republicans when our all-Republican state legislature passed a set of transphobic legislation targeting trans youth.
Many individuals joined seeking a community that might be a healing space for them from religious trauma.
Others are still walking with their own social anxieties or concerns about Covid and are sorting out which groups and when to be in in-person community.
Some people left and joined churches closer to where they lived.
During the pandemic many people moved and got new jobs. This goes both ways—leaving and arriving—especially in a college town.
Some people decided to just walk to the progressive church near their house to be more eco-friendly, and we are that church.
They heard good things about GSLC in the community so they showed up.
They felt uncomfortable with how political we had become so sought a more moderate community.
They didn’t like it that we brought together our two styles of worship into one service so they left.
They moved to online worship and have stayed there. They do not come in person. Some report they simply discovered how comfortable they are as introverts not going into crowds of people.
They joined our online worship from far flung locales like Seattle and New Hampshire and have continued.
They simply disconnected and we don’t know why. Perhaps they also don’t know why.
We have visitors every single week, sometimes many, and we don’t always know why they’re here.
They volunteered with Queer Camp or rallied with us advocating justice at a county meeting or received rent relief or attended with their disability caregiver, and then stayed.
We no longer look like “their” church and feel uncomfortable connecting to the new.
The way we have transitioned during the pandemic inspired them and they found their place here.
None of us know why or how it is entirely a God thing.
Full disclaimer: I love all these people in every situation. I love the people who have left. I love the people who have returned or who are new. I especially end up in a lot of caring conversations with people caught by surprise by new anxieties or calmness about not being in groups at church. I report all of this simply to describe the breadth of reasons.
I feel guilt over anyone I alienated. I feel joy over those I helped connect. I feel abandoned by those who were here a long time and ghosted. I feel proud and joyous over those who discovered faith community that feels safe for them for the first time and are always showing up and contributing.
Here we are in the fall of 2022 and I’m pastoring a church that has had such a great reshuffling of membership that one of our church council members described it as a new start… and she’s not wrong. Except it’s not new church and it’s also not a redevelopment after a church almost died. It’s more like we went into a chrysalis called pandemic and emerged a wobbly butterfly.
I don’t know if there are any guides adequate for what is next. On the recommendation of a friend and new pastor, I recently finished reading Alan Roxburg’s book Joining God In the Great Unraveling. He’s one of the leaders of the whole missional movement and he basically says in the book he was wrong about everything and what comes next is uncertain. I appreciate the candor. But he’s basically saying “listen to me don’t listen to me” and I’m laughing alongside of him because I feel critical of his stance and yet I also see myself in him.
No part of me was trained for this moment, neither my formation in seminary nor my lifelong participation in the church, and yet on the other hand I’m doing just fine.
We’re doing just fine. It’s going to be fine.
This is true for a couple of reasons. First because I do trust God. Second because if we are following Jesus it is never going to be easy, it’s just going to be good and true and faithful.
Plus the Spirit is a hot mess which is why Lutherans have trouble talking about Her and yet I think this moment is the most Holy Spirit of moments I have ever witnessed. Replete with possibility and uncertainty and the real likelihood that the way forward will be glorious failure.
Back to the reality: it has become clear to me that it is the simplest things that matter most right now. Neoliberalism had convinced us and is still trying to convince us that complex organizational technologies will save the church. But that hasn’t been working.
What has been working not at saving the church but being the church has been flying by the seat of our pants responding to the needs of our neighbors during a pandemic.
What has been needed now is all of us just caring for and knowing each other.
Alan Roxburg’s informed opinion as a repentant technocratic elite is to just spend time in the neighborhood as the church and see what God is up to. He likes it that one church gave their pastor time to work at a coffee shop. My church gives me time to work as a school sub. He thinks it will be harder but worthwhile if whole congregations figure out how to be in the neighborhood simply to join them.
I wholeheartedly agree, and also recognize what a challenging ask that is to make of any congregation, even and including a “new/old start” like ours.
By analogy in a congregation like ours where many people and groups are new the neighborhood is us! So for example we have a very large Marshallese ministry that emerged during the pandemic and the new (or old) Anglo members haven’t necessarily met the Marshallese or attended their events. That could change.
And our church space has itself become a ministry, and we could meet those using our space. Again not in the old proselytizing sense of “we have something to give ‘those people’” but rather simply in the joy of joining with one another. Just this month our facility will be used for the NWA Board Game group, an East African Fundraiser Dinner for Canopy NWA (refugee resettlement), a debate team from Rogers, the regular use of our space for The Transition Closet and the Little Free Pantry, and as daily school drop off for the elementary, to name just a few.
And of course since so many people are new that means even the person in the pew in front of you Sunday is a new neighbor, which is why I’ve introduced the simple practice Sundays of ending the service by inviting everyone to meet someone new and ask how they are.
In that same spirit I’d love to meet each other in the comments of this post and learn from you all more about what I’ve described above. How are you experiencing the Great Reshuffle?
Loved reading this, Clint. The Hot-Mess Spirit is a constant of change/transformation.
This helps me understand my own context more fully. Will be borrowing and crediting you when talking about this revolving door moment!