Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Your presence is a gift to us.

 It's been engrained in us clergy for 2-3 decades that ASA (Average Sunday Attendance) is the gold standard for the health of  a congregation.  It answers the questions; "how many people are coming on Sunday and how often are they coming?"  Traditional forms of measurements and values have forced us to reconsider how we gauge our parish health even before COVID.  An alternative measure has been financial support. It does provide indicators, but to me it feels mercenary to think of money in that way.  Persons are more important.

We still look at our ASA and go online to keep an eye on how many people are watching our broadcast.  We have to do these things for our canonical obligations to the Episcopal Church.  They want statistics on membership, finances, Sunday School classes and participants, as well as how much we spend on missions work.  Burger King does the same thing. These numbers represent a lot of activity, but don't represent the full picture of home and hospital visits, shared conversations amongst friends, prayers heard by only God and you, volunteer hours for internal and external ministries.  There is so much that happens here that we don't measure.  I'm glad about that.

All of this makes me turn to what I am concerned about.  We sense a void  of those of you who we do not see on Sundays or in the food line or in bible study and potlucks.  We completely understand for those of you who don't feel safe yet to come back to church.  I've been struggling to articulate my thoughts about this.  

Of course, I want to see attendance numbers return and exceed pre-COVID amounts.  Numbers feel good and they are something a little more tangible to use for evaluation.  But if I'm honest, even when numbers are high, they have never satisfied me in this regard.  They always leave me wanting more.

This thought brought me to remember the ancient church, how small the household churches were.  There might be 10-15 in the church in a city or village.  If someone didn't come, you missed him or her.

All of this leads me to my conclusion of what that void is.  It is just your presence that is missing.  Paul tells us this in I Corinthians 12.  Each person has a role to play. Your presence among us has an impact on the whole.  When you are absent from the Body we miss you and when each of you is present we are better for it.  We know it will still be a while before we're back to full participation.  But we long for that time.


Will you?

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