Attendance Was Down Last Saturday
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document" /><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12" /><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12" />We had a good turnout for our inaugural worship service with 94 (including children) but many of those were Conference leaders, pastors from sister churches and other well-wishers. So it wasn’t surprising that attendance at our second service would be less. I was planning for 30 and hoping for 40. We actually had 27, so that was even a few less than I was expecting. A couple of our “regular” families couldn’t be there, so that accounted for the difference.
But as I reminded our praise team when we prayed together before the service started, worship is not about the numbers but about our faithfulness to God’s calling. If we are faithful and do our best to praise and glorify God in our worship, then the numbers will take care of themselves. Every new church struggles with the number of people for the first few weeks and months. It takes awhile for the word to get out and for people to respond to something new. I have no doubt that by the time we officially launch on October 25th we will hit that 100 mark and continue to grow from there.
Right now the focus is on worship but we also recognize the importance of Christian education and discipleship training. We’re trying to get some things established right now for every age group. Very soon we’re going to be looking at ways our new church can be engaged in missions, both in our community and beyond. We’re going to be looking at all the ways a church is in ministry, and what God is calling each one of us to be doing.
This coming Sunday I’m expecting a few more people. We’ll have some of our launch team members returning from vacations and I’m sure we’ll have some new families who will be interested to see my first art sermon. (That’s always been a way to draw visitors in my past churches.) I think the important thing right now is to build a sense of community within our fledgling congregation, and to focus on growing our church as we also grow in Christ.
Blessings,
Steve