Where are the Elders?

Dear Pastors

Today’s blog is about ATTENDANCE patterns...again. We all know they have been declining and declining fast over recent years but we are not quite sure what we can do about it. In fact some pastors are saying, “there’s nothing I want to do about it or even should. It’s just the way it is”. I get it. After all adults are free agents.

But other pastors are seeing this as a discipleship issue. These pastors respond by saying something like, “cultural trends and lifestyle decisions are pushing people in one direction but if the church is a counter-cultural movement then we need to help our people see and value the importance of church attendance irrespective of what is happening in the rest of their lives”.

So the issue for today is how might we encourage committed church attenders attend more often (including the Elders!). By the way most denominations now regard ‘committed’ attenders as attending every 3 weeks on average on Sunday mornings. That is about 18 times a year.

Here are a few thoughts:

• Ranting about it won’t help one little bit. Resist that temptation. It will only annoy your people and run the risk of them digging in. But you know that already.
• However, I would highly recommend talking about it in a pastoral and empathetic way. Show that you understand the pressures on people’s time and the many options we all now have on Sunday mornings. Talk about such things as kids sport on Sundays, work on Sundays, visiting family out-of-town, weekend get-aways (think about the volume of traffic out of Auckland every Friday afternoon in both directions), online options and the new challenge of blended families etc. These are real issues facing real folks these days and to pretend they don’t exist OR getting sideways about them are not helpful.
• Survey your people or run some focus groups. Ask them what would help them towards more regular attendance?
• Work hard at making the content of your services meaningful. Give people a reason to come. In my 15 church study¹ I have been troubled at the number of services that are lacking in creativity. But that is a subject for another day.
• Seriously consider a regular worship experience on a week day and/or night. Maybe just monthly.
• Encourage everybody to be in a small group. Attendance at a purposeful and functional small group could easily double the ‘times of connection’ an adult has with their local church family every year.
• Often times I can’t believe how the world has changed since I started in pastoral ministry in 1983 let alone since I was a kid growing up in church in the 60’s. But it has and now all of us as pastors and leaders have to navigate a whole new set of challenges. And that’s the very nature of leadership, isn’t it?

Blessings

Alan

¹ I am currently writing up this study and it should be available by the end of this month.

Alan Vink is currently the Executive Director for LeadershipWorx. Prior to this role he has been the Executive Director of Willow Creek Association NZ (WillowNZ), a Baptist pastor (23 years), Bible College teacher, and church consultant.