“Why Church?”
That was a question posed at a gathering of clergy I recently attended. This wasn't a seminary classroom, but a lunch meeting with a group of colleagues. It was meant to be a provocative question to get us talking.
As you might imagine, there was a pregnant pause while people considered how to respond. The first answer offered was
“To glorify God…”
Other answers quickly followed. Things like:
“To help us more faithfully Love as Jesus commands…”
“To be Christ’s heart and hands in the world…”
“To Love God and one another…”
These were all the kinds of answers you would expect to hear. There were no buzz words being thrown around. The answers given were rooted in scripture and established theology, even if they were also replete with phrases that served as a kind of shorthand. As more and more people spoke, a picture of the Church began to emerge. The Church is first and foremost about our relationship with God, and properly honoring that relationship is bound up in Loving one another.
It was a useful conversation. It invited us to consider what is truly essential about the Church. Yet, as I left that lunch, a part of me wondered if the real issue was not so much about needing to better understand the Why of Church, but rather that we need to find ways to invite others to come to know and love God. If the Church is all of the things we say it is, then how do we share this world-transforming, life-changing Good News with the world?
In a way, that is what Invite Welcome Connect is all about. It asks communities of faith to think about what it means to Invite, Welcome, and Connect people with the power of God’s Love. It moves the question from “Why Church?” to “How do we more faithfully share what the Church has to offer, what God has to offer?”
For my part, I am not writing to you as someone who has it all figured out, but as someone who is committed to the journey. At the parish I serve, especially in the wake of the pandemic, we have had to find new ways to connect and (re)connect within the congregation and our community.
For some time, most congregations have been facing some combination of volunteer fatigue, financial limitations, and cultural shifts in church attendance (i.e. soccer on Sunday). Now, we find ourselves having to rapidly adapt to new horizons of social media and online spaces like Zoom and Google Meets. All of this can feel overwhelming. Yet, we don’t have to do this alone. This is where Invite Welcome Connect can help! Invite Welcome Connect teaches communities of faith how to pay attention to areas of their shared life that often go unnoticed. To be the Church, to share the Good News, in an ever-changing world, we have to be rooted deeply in our theology, but we also have to adapt with flexibility and resiliency.
Invite Welcome Connect is not a program, but a process, a way of thinking, an approach. That means it is an incredible resource for churches of every shape and size in the midst of a constantly changing world! One of the benefits of Invite Welcome Connect being a process rather than a program is that it is flexible and adaptable.
Whatever the size of your community of faith, Invite Welcome Connect can help you more faithfully be the Church in the world. In fact, I am convinced that in the long wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the resources provided by Invite Welcome Connect are more important now than ever before.
Moreover, one of my favorite things about this framework is that it can be used to think not only about how we invite people from the community into the congregation, but also how we more effectively engage with Invitation, Welcome and Connection within the congregation.
How do we invite people to help with the soup kitchen? To join the choir? To join the Zoom Bible study? Then, when people show up, how do we effectively and faithfully both Welcome them and help them find deeper Connections?
The Episcopal Church has an approach to theology that is nuanced and deep. We also have worship that invites us into a deep and abiding relationship with God. We have something worth sharing with the world! Invite Welcome Connect is not a program. It is so much more. It is an incredible invitation to think about how we share God’s Good News with others.
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