The end of the church year is coming up, and we’re all getting ready for summer, when things slow down. But I wish our liberal churches never slowed down, and I also I predict that within a few years, the most successful Unitarian Universalist churches will no longer take a break in summer.<\/p>\n
In fact, I believe worship attendance patterns are already changing, and we ignore this change at our peril. This past weekend was Memorial Day weekend. On Memorial Day weekend last year less than a hundred people showed up, so even though this year we’ve been averaging well over 200 men, women, and children at church each weekend, we expected a light turnout for Memorial Day.<\/p>\n
Our expectations were wrong. In spite of the beautiful sunny weather, we totaled over 160 people at worship, including the usual half a dozen newcomers visiting us for the first time. Fortunately, even though we didn’t expect that many people, we were prepared just in case that many people did show up. The senior minister was preaching, and we had a full church school program ready. I’ll bet this church may pick up two or three of the newcomers who visited this weekend, just because we were prepared.<\/p>\n
It’s also clear that it’s especially important to have regular worship services, with your regular ministers(s), beginning in mid-August. Why? Because that’s when newcomers are most likely to check out your church, and they need to see what your worship services and church school will be like the rest of the year. If there’s no place for children to go (except child care), and if the worship service features well-meaning but inexperienced worship leaders, the huge number of newcomers that comes in August will never return. In fact, there is no longer a “slow time” — churches have to be at their best all year round.<\/p>\n
I now believe that one of the forces that’s holding back liberal religion is our habit of closing down in the summer time. Not to be too cynical, but if church is so unimportant that you don’t need it in the summer or on holidays, why bother coming the rest of the year?<\/p>\n
I want to be a part of a congregation that believes every week of the year is important. (And even if I can’t make it to worship, I’m not so selfish as to think that church schould shut down, just because I’m not there!)<\/p>\n
What about you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The end of the church year is coming up, and we’re all getting ready for summer, when things slow down. But I wish our liberal churches never slowed down, and I also I predict that within a few years, the most successful Unitarian Universalist churches will no longer take a break in summer. In fact, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberal-religion","category-marketing-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}