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When I was growing up there was a distinct order to how the congregation exited the sanctuary at the end of the service. After the closing prayer—before anyone dared to sit down in their pews—the pastor would exit down the center aisle and take up his post at the exit. While the pastor was still in his landing pattern, the worship band would start to play. Only with the music playing were we allowed to relax.

After that, we’d grab our things and get in line to greet the pastor and shake his hand. We’d finally get some face time with the guy who we had just listened to for the better part of an hour.

The last two churches I attended were megachurches, and the closest I ever got to talking with the pastor was passing one of them in the hallway.

A recent Out of Ur post talks about the growing disconnect between the pastor and the congregation in multisite churches. The entire article is worth reading, but I’d like to just focus on a brief excerpt:

““I do miss having a pastor at the door shaking hands in the ‘check-out line,’” Lauren Green told Grossman. Green, a religion correspondent for Fox News, began attending Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City to hear Tim Keller preach. Keller doesn’t record his sermons to broadcast in other locations, but he scurries between several different sites in a grueling Sunday ritual that leaves him little time to interact with members and visitors. By contrast, Green and her family shared a close relationship with their long-time pastor when she was growing up in Minneapolis. But she acknowledges that this model appears to be a quaint and outdated today.”

I have to admit that I miss that “quaint and outdated” interaction with the pastor too. Frankly, I think it’s healthy for both the pastor and the congregation to have that meet and greet time. For the congregation it remind them that as much as they might respect their pastor, their pastor is a real person. Not a celebrity or a distant talking head.

Likewise, for the pastor, that end of the service ritual is a connection to the reality of why they preach: to transform the lives of their congregants.

Does your pastor still shake your hand before you leave? Is it easier or harder to get a chance to talk face to face with your pastor? Any other thoughts?

Share your thoughts!

I recently moved and am in the process of finding a new church. In doing research and visiting churches, one thing that’s surprised me is how is how each church seems to have a target demographic: student, young professional, middle age, kids, no kids, asian, black, white, etc.

You name it, there seems to be a church out there for you. Oddly enough though, most—if not all—of them purport to value the diversity in their congregations. Do you think that churches should target specific demographics?

Share your thoughts!

I’ve been in churches that do it every week and others almost never. They all have their reasons, but there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on how often we should celebrate the Lord’s supper.

How often do you think Christians should celebrate communion?

Share your thoughts!

Let’s say a person became a Christian some time ago and just never got around to finding a church. They read still read their Bible and pray, but they’re not a member or even an active “visitor” of any organized body of Christ. Are they still a Christian?

Is Church attendance required to call yourself a Christian?

Here’s an answer from the ministry of Faith Facts:

Yes, at least in a very technical sense. Salvation is not dependent on actions. God judges one’s heart.

But let’s be honest. The Bible says that we are to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). If you say you are a Christian yet do not attend church regularly, how can you say that you really love God sufficiently?

Jesus emphasized the importance of his church. The Bible further emphasizes that regular worship, Bible study, fellowship with other believers, and service to one another are important. Likewise, the Bible warns against willful and persistent rejection of God (Hebrews 10:26).

Read the rest of the article at I’m not into organized religion. Can’t I be a Christian without going to church regularly?.

What do you think?

Much has been written about church websites (good and bad) and the different ways that Christian organizations do ministry online. What level of internet presence does your church have? A simple website? An elaborate web presence that makes use of Twitter, Facebook, and other trendy tools?

And whatever your church’s level of internet engagement, is it serving the church effectively?

Share your thoughts!

Is it appropriate for Christians to attend worship services for a different religion?

I think few Christians would object to the idea of learning about or reading up on another religion, but is there something special about a dedicated worship service that makes it spiritually unwise for Christians to attend? Is there a clearly identifiable line between attending such a service, and participating in the worship?

Share your thoughts!

How does your church react when a member of the congregation leaves?

Gordon Atkinson, longtime pastor (and blogger) has written a thoughtful essay describing the importance of gracefully listening to the “parting shots” of departing church members… even when what they say isn’t what you want to hear:

Most of the time when people leave our church, however, they just disappear. We notice their repeated absence after some weeks have passed. If I can track them down, they’ll often give me their parting shot, a short, abbreviated explanation of why they are leaving. These parting shots can be difficult to understand. Sometimes people are angry over a real or imagined slight. Some people cannot honestly address why they are leaving the church, so they convince themselves that they’re “just not being fed,” or they need a place with more music or better music or different preaching. Sometimes people just lie—they don’t want to admit that they’d rather attend a large church where no one notices when they sleep in on Sunday morning, so they point a finger at a theologically wayward Sunday school teacher, or at my sermons…

Being in the ministry requires us to develop a thick skin. We need to learn to spot the bull and let it go without wasting too much emotional energy on it. But we also need to cultivate the ability to hear what people are really saying by listening to what is behind their words. However painful it may be, we must listen to the parting shots of those who leave, because there is truth buried there—below the anger and the scapegoating and the general dishonesty. My advice is to ignore one person’s opinion of you or your ministry, and to watch for trends and patterns.

I imagine that’s much easier to say than to put into practice; it can’t be fun listening to people tell you that they dislike your preaching so much that they’re leaving the church. If you’re a pastor, I’d be interested to hear how you handle these “parting shots,” and if you’ve learned to dig beneath the words to discern what’s really being communicated.

But since I’m not a pastor, my interest in this topic is more in how I, as a typical churchgoer, should act when I feel called to leave a church. I’ve never left a church out of anger or theological dispute; it’s always been something more mundane, such as moving to a different city. But reading Atkinson’s article makes me regret that I have rarely sat down with the pastor or leadership of a church to explain what I’m doing and offer a (friendly and positive) parting shot. Many employers conduct exit interviews with employees who are leaving the company; surely there’s valuable information to be gained from an informal interview with a departing churchgoer.

Pastors, how do you respond when you learn that a church member is leaving the church? And fellow churchgoers, have you ever delivered a “parting shot” upon leaving a church, and how did it go?

Have you ever lived through the death of a church?

Since posting about photos of abandoned churches last week, “church death” has been on my mind. By chance, I came across a post at Mere Comments about church growth and church death:

To abbreviate a long and painful story, I joined the line of unsuccessful pastors, both liberal and conservative, who were not able to grow the church on the terms its traditions laid down—and at the end of the road it faced dissolution. […]

I was reminded of this by a letter from someone sorrowfully anticipating the dissolution of her own congregation—a more “natural” death than mine died, for hers is not mortally diseased as mine was.  I think it’s just exhausted.  As a former pastor of a dying church, I feel quite strongly that such congregations should be allowed to die—that they, just like human beings, when they see the signs of impending death, need to take reasonable steps to dissolve in an orderly and peaceful way.  None should be assumed to last forever, and it may also be assumed that if God wanted them to keep going, he could easily and quickly supply the necessary resources, just as he could give any of us, if he chose, a greatly extended life span.  But as a rule he does not—in fact, he endorses happenings that lead us to death.  He expects us, when we are able, to make our preparations, and die well.

Does that resonate with you?

The default Christian advice to those facing adversity—whether in your personal spiritual life or in your church’s life—is to buckle down, keep the faith, and faithfully plug away in the hope that God will reward your persistence in the end. But is there a time in a church’s life when its failure to overcome the obstacles arrayed against it should be taken as a sign that it’s time to close it down and move on with our lives?

A friend of mine who is the pastor at a small local church recently went through a long and intense experience debating this question with his church. The church had, through a series of largely unavoidable spots of bad luck, experienced a major drop in membership and was faced with the question of whether or not it was worth continuing on with a greatly diminished community. After much prayer and debate, they decided not to call it quits just yet—but reaching that conclusion wasn’t simple or easy.

What about you? Have you experienced a church shutdown, and if so, was it graceful and prayerful… or was it characterized by denial? How do you tell the difference between obstacles that the church can and should work to overcome, and signs that it’s time to close down the church?

While seasonal flu happens every year, this year H1N1 (or Swine Flu) has been on everyone’s mind. It seems that everywhere you turn the entire nation is on high alert. Even churches are starting to take steps towards prevention.

In fact, the church I attended this past Sunday not only had the wine (well, grape juice) in separate cups, but the communion wafers were in separate cups as well. And the deacons who served us all washed their hands with the huge bottle of hand sanitizer sitting on the stage before they handed out elements out to us.

How has seasonal and swine flu affected your church?

What do you think?

Whether it’s a harvest festival, or a fall carnival, or a Haunted House-esque Judgement House, or something else entirely, many churches are making alternative Halloween activities available to their communities.

What about you? Does your church provide a Halloween alternative?

Share your thoughts!