Have you ever found yourself telling a story that was relevant for a brief time long after it was over?
I think we do this in our Christian life sometimes when we’ve been inactive for a while. Someone asks about service to our neighbor in a small group or a class, and we pull up that one time when we went on Thanksgiving to serve at that soup kitchen downtown. We talk about the highlights, the hard parts, and how God spoke to us…and then someone asks, “Oh, was that this last year?”…leaving us to pause and think.
“Oh, goodness, that was 8-9 years ago, I think. Longer than I thought it was.” And then everyone knows, yourself included, that those types of service are indeed _not_ normal in your day-to-day life. We hang on to it because it feels good, but riding that “high” blinds us to the fact that we aren’t still doing that more & more.
It’s a misuse of the opportunity for heart change. That positive moment is supposed to spur us on to do more, not just revel in what was. We do it all the time. We tick the box, feel good about it, and then for whatever reason we tend to neglect looking for another opportunity to do it again.
While I’ve been working on building out our national network of churches, I see signs from churches that the same thing happens on the scale of a whole church body, too. I’ll see community outreach events, something that looks above & beyond the norm, that are highlighted on the website that actually took place 6 years ago.
I check socials, I look through their calendar…and that one time was the only time. They obviously enjoyed it, plenty of pictures were taken, initial impact is usually communicated, but it never happened again. They keep the memory alive, but there’s no reality of it in the life of the church today.
They’re living in an echo.
But there’s echo isn’t quite true.
When we as individuals or together as churches make claims about the work of God in our life, we can’t live in the past. If we’re making claims about who we are and what we do, then those things need to be active realities in our life. We can’t say one thing, and then rest content in not actually doing it.
When people are looking for a church family, especially those labeled as unchurched, de-churched or “nones,” one of the main things they’re looking for is a reality being lived out.
Are you actually who you show and say you are?
Do you put into regular practice the values you claim to uphold?
Do you, in reality, love your neighbor?
Not just funneling money to a local food bank. Not just going on foreign missions. If someone in your community has a need, and they approach you…do you meet them in that space & help _somehow_ and in a way that acknowledges their heart & humanity?
If you’ve not read “The Great Dechurching” by David & Graham, you need to. This isn’t opinion, this desire to see this really-lived-out mission in the life of the local church is backed up by some pretty beefy survey data.
When we say we live our neighbor, we need current proof. When we claim to be on mission, it needs to be now. When we advertise a missional community, those pictures had better be from last quarter, not pre-COVID.
How do we stay on top of this?
Churches, check your sites & socials & weigh reality against what you claim. Look at your annual calendar and weigh out how many times you leave the bounds of your property vs how often you ask people to come to you.
What does your benevolence process look like, and what do you do to help people if the funds for the month won’t allow for financial aid, how will you help them somehow, some way?
Individuals, think about those service opportunities that brought joy to your heart and see how long ago they really were…then talk with someone at church and get on a schedule. Start with something regular and structured to form that new pattern.
Take that good feeling from previous service & let it spur you to seek more. And eventually, it won’t be about _you_ getting something out of it, and it will become about how _someone else_ is blessed.
