Like many churches, Wellington Fellowship has a care ministry that sends greeting cards to people going through all manner of situations. It's a great ministry, because it offers a bit of intangible support and connection from the congregation to people outside of the church setting. Keeping up with it requires a tremendous effort, and we are blessed to have a very dedicated volunteer that does the majority of the work. However, since I am the pastor, I do to sneak one in every now and then. This morning was one of those times, as I wanted to send a personal greeting to one of our families that just welcomed a new baby into the world.
Our card volunteer usually has her own supplies that she works from, so I use a stash in one of my office cabinets. Many churches have such a trove. It is a decently sized pile, and the cards range from recent purchases to some that are about 20-30 years old, complete with phrases I imagine were popular when Reagan was president (can't throw anything away in the church after all!) So after putting on my mining helmet, I dove in trying to find the one to properly celebrate a new life. Little did I realize how difficult this would be! After 10+ minutes of digging, I discovered that the cards broke down into about 4 categories. There were a select few depicting festive holiday scenes (Halloween, Christmas, etc), and some with floral imagery and the words "thinking of you" written ornately on them. There were also a number of religiously themed cards (we are a church after all) with the happy animals of Noah's Ark expressing thank yous, birthday/anniversary wishes or perhaps a blank space for another greeting. There were plenty of these, yet I was surprised to find they did not represent the majority of the pile. Rather, the bulk of cards I found seemed to denote bereavement. They wished people well who had moved far away, or abstractly promised support during many different life issues. There was not a card for a new birth in the bunch! Instead there were many for people going through life situations or non-descript periods of decline, interrupted by the occasional holiday or minor celebration. It was discouraging to say the least. So I ended up having to jury rig one of the Noah's Ark Birthday cards by writing my own message in conjunction with the card's text. But it did get me thinking . . .
What does this pile of cards say about the church?
We buy cards to commemorate the events going on in the life of the church, or to literally "be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep," (Romans 12:15 NLT) as the Apostle Paul would put it. Essentially, these cards reflect the current state of things. With so many negative ones seemingly detailing decline and misfortune in my pile, it appears the outlook for the church is not overly good. Unfortunately, this jives too well with of the statistics surrounding the decline of Mainline Christian Denominations (Methodists, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Lutheran, etc). It is well documented that our message is not reaching younger people, which means that the majority of churches now consist of elderly members who are sick, aging, or dying. Worse yet, the decline is steadily increasingly and there are church leaders who estimate that the Methodist Church (among others) have less than 50 years of life left if nothing happens. My card pile would seem to support this hypothesis, as is contents relates to many of the situations behind the statistic.
Thankfully, our churches are living things, so there are always shifts occurring on in the life of a congregation. For example, Wellington Fellowship is currently in an upswing of hope. We have had 4 babies born in the last year. Furthermore, in looking at our statistics, 20 of the 60 people involved in our 5-year-old congregation are under age 18. This means we have a lot of youthful vitality that we can harness and a new partnership with First Church, Fort Collins that can provide stability for our efforts. Between the two, I know we can buck the trend in our pile and similar movements in card ministries across the country! I have seen it, because I had joyful situation that was not present in overly negative cards we normally use. This sends a powerful message to us. For while the cards may tell us what is currently going on in our congregations, they can never restrict the future promise of God and the growing power of the Gospel when a church chooses to live into it. Our church, like many others, are living proof that we can change.
On that note, I need to buy some new greeting cards because I sense there will be plenty of new life, new possibilities and new frontiers in the future. Hope you are having a blessed week, my friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment