Have I told you the story of the funeral I officiated for a 93-year-old woman who had been a faithful member of a Baptist church all her life but had no relation to a church or a minister to lead her final committal?
I fear the pandemic is creating many more situations like this, with people who once were faithful church members falling off the radar and quietly disengaging to the point they, too, will be dependent on an unknown minister to stand over their graves.
Mark Wingfield
This is something to think about on Christmas Eve, when people come streaming into the church. Perhaps more than ever, those crowds are likely to include members and regular attenders who dropped off the radar during the pandemic. How will we greet them Christmas Eve? How will we reengage them in the new year?
Back to the funeral for a moment. The dearly departed was, by all accounts, a fine and upstanding Christian woman. Her children rose up and called her blessed. And the stories they told included her volunteer work at the church, her teaching classes at the church, her faithful tithing at the church.
And yet, here I was, an on-call rent-a-pastor officiating her funeral and burial — at 11:00 on a Sunday morning no less.
What happened to bring her to this odd set of circumstances? I do not know. But based on my experience as a pastor, I have a few educated guesses. Perhaps as she aged, she was able to attend less and dropped out of sight and mind to the congregation. Perhaps the church dwindled and there were fewer left who knew her. Perhaps there had been a succession of pastors, ultimately leading to a pastor who knew not the saints of old.
“I think of this woman every time I run into a member of my own church I haven’t seen in three years.”
I think of this woman every time I run into a member of my own church I haven’t seen in three years. I return to her funeral every time I have a memory of someone who used to warm our pews and serve in our congregation but whom I haven’t seen in three years. The more I think about this, the more I realize the numbers of such people are larger than I imagined.
In my previous job, I’d be running attendance reports and figuring out who was missing and creating teams of people to reach out to them. But even that is an imprecise project for most Baptist churches because we only chart Sunday school attendance, not worship attendance. (This is, by the way, a very good reason to pass a friendship roll on every pew on Sunday mornings, something I once tried to implement and got shot straight to you-know-where by an angry layperson who didn’t want anyone spying on her church attendance.)
This is not a matter of spying; it is a matter of knowing how to offer pastoral care. We cannot reach out to absent people if we don’t know they’re absent.
Even before the pandemic, this was a huge problem for all churches. It is way too easy for regular churchgoers to quietly slip away without being noticed. Add a year or two of virtual church and it’s even harder to figure out who has come back and who hasn’t.
There’s a pattern I’ve seen happen among those who drift away. At first, they intend to return; they fully intend to return soon. Then they begin inadvertently filling their time with other good things and it becomes harder and harder to get back to church. By this point, they may be embarrassed about their long absence and not know how to make a graceful return without being pecked to death by questions. And then they’re gone.
“At first, they intend to return; they fully intend to return soon.”
It used to be that people who dropped out of church maintained an identity of belonging to the church they no longer attended. As a pastor, I was called upon many times to officiate funerals for people on our rolls who I never had met in my 20 years in the church but who claimed us as home. These are the same people who, if approached by a stranger and asked where they went to church would have quickly given our church’s name.
But I think COVID has changed that. I could be wrong, but my sense is that people drifting away today are drifting more firmly away. These are more intentional choices.
Not everyone who has dropped out of church wants to be found, just as not everyone wants to be wooed back. But how can we know until we ask? If someone is going to drop out of church and have a stranger officiate their funeral, it shouldn’t be because no one at the church demonstrated care for them.
With Christmas Eve approaching, this is a great time to begin preparing a strategy for reclaiming the lost sheep because some of them will be in your building for the first time in months or years.
Here are some questions to ponder if you want to pay attention to church dropouts beyond Christmas Eve and into the new year:
- Who in your congregation has responsibility for analyzing attendance patterns and making lists of people who have stopped attending? Someone needs to be assigned this task.
- Who is responsible for coordinating care to homebound members who cannot physically attend anymore? And what kind of continuing care do you give them?
- Who is responsible for keeping up with your livestream members? Do you know who they are? Do they know how to reach you in a time of need?
- How good are your records of who’s attending, and how could that be improved? Do you know who attends worship, Sunday school, weekday activities?
- What are you doing with the knowledge you glean about those who have fallen away? Who is responsible for organizing an outreach effort? (By the way, this cannot be the job of the pastor or pastoral staff alone. It’s too big. Yes, your pastoral staff must be involved, but this task will take teamwork.)
- What specific things could you do to welcome back those who have lapsed and help them feel welcomed rather than judged? Maybe this is a special event hosted by the pastor or another church leader. Maybe it is creating a special short-term class that allows people to re-enter through a new door. Maybe it’s taking cookies or bread or some other tangible gift to the front doors of those who have fallen away. (And for the sake of all that’s holy, do not take a budget pledge card or ask for money!)
- How might you listen to those who have dropped away and learn from their experiences? Consider small focus groups, small social events, coffee with the pastor, anything that can put a personal approach (no surveys, please!) to show that you are listening. Too often the church’s approach to getting people back to church is preaching at them instead of listening to them.
These days, renewing faith is just as important a form of evangelism as seeking conversions. And it is a truly biblical imperative, demonstrated by Jesus himself in the parables of God’s seeking love.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global.
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