To equip, empower, encourage and connect the churches of the Michigan Conference

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When our churches shut down in-person during the pandemic, we learned what we missed and what we did not miss. Speaking personally, I missed visiting the sick, comforting the grieving, praying in unison and singing. I missed eating food together and I even missed washing dishes. I missed funerals more than I missed committee meetings. It was clarifying. Today when I think of what the church should be about when we gather in person, I think of the things I missed the most when we couldn’t. 

Another clarifying question from that time was who, in our surrounding communities, missed our churches when we shut down in person. This question is not for the pastor or the church member, but for the outsider who walks by the building. What loss did the community suffer in our absence?

If your church served a free meal once a week, that would be missed by people outside your church if it had to stop. If you host twelve step meetings, if you offer meeting space to teenagers, if you provide coats in the winter and fresh vegetables in the summer, all that would be missed by people outside church. But if community members missed nothing when your church closed down, that is also clarifying. 

As I visit our Michigan churches, a different one most weekends, I look for commonalities among the congregations that feel vital to me. What is a vital church? It’s one where I feel the Spirit moving in the worship, where there is a sense of hope and hospitality, and a serious sense of service. A vital church is one you want to come back to. And when it comes to vitality, I am always reminded that size isn’t everything. 

We have churches with big budgets but who are actually in much more precarious shape financially than a smaller church that has right sized its budget. When it comes to matching pastors to open positions, we have larger churches that attract the most attention from candidates looking for a pastoral position, but we also have close knit small churches that are genuinely healthy places to be and who treat their part time pastor lovingly and well. We have churches of all sizes that have welcomed newcomers into their midst and allowed themselves to be changed by the stranger who becomes a friend in Christ. Vital church community comes in all shapes and sizes. 

But one mark of vitality I also look for is how the church feels to the person who has never stepped inside. Does the church have an identity in the town, such that even a stranger could say, “Well, that is the church that does X.” I have come to see this as another very clear marker of vitality - the idea that the church would be missed by the people who are not already a part of it.

Now, I know there are many ways to be generous, and that many of our churches choose to give to many organizations that provide direct services to their community. In this model, the church missions committee functions like a mini-United Way, responding to requests for money and then telling the church members what they have done on their behalf. I don’t want to debate the merits of that system, because when it comes to being generous, I’m fine with it. Just sharing your money collectively is a righteous and rebellious act. 

But the churches that I see as vital are known in their community, not for sending $200 to various organizations, or even for being long term supporters of an interfaith group, or sending delegates to meetings. The vital churches have at least one simple and concrete thing they do that a non-insider could see with the naked eye, and would miss if it were not there. (In other words, that thing your church does should not require a stranger to read your annual report in order to know about it.)



So, dear clergy and volunteers, as you consider how to spend your valuable time as churches, try to recall what you missed when you couldn’t gather, and do more of that. And in addition, try to recall what the community missed when you couldn’t gather and do more of that. Be the church that does “X,” whatever it may be, and does it so well that people outside the church would miss it if it were gone. 

Most church visitors these days are looking for that “X” factor.

Seekers may show up to help cook or show up to eat a meal, long before they’ll show up to worship and communion. Vital churches offer both: a deepening relational worship experience within the church and at least one very practical, simple and concrete thing the church does for others outside the church. 

Are you a church that does X?

Don’t ask your members, ask the community, and then listen to what they say, without interrupting, without explaining, and without being defensive.

You may be tempted to inform the person you have asked about your church’s amazing history by saying, “Well, we were the church that started X!” or “We were the first ones to do X,” but that’s not the point of the exercise and furthermore it’s cheating. Nobody’s X should be memorialized and set in stone.

The point is to ask how your church is perceived in this moment, in the present, to someone outside the church. If no one outside the church can fill in the blank in the sentence “That’s the church that does X,” it means you now have an exciting opportunity to go out and find your new “X,” because God is still speaking.  

Peace and Blessings, 

Lillian Daniel

Michigan Conference Minister

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Conference Staff is offering four monthly groups that are drop in.

These groups meet Wednesdays from 12:00noon - 1:00pm

We highly encourage Pastors and Members In Discernment to join these Caring Clergy Communities on Zoom any time.

First Wednesday Leadership Lunch with Lillian Daniel

Second Wednesday Book of the Month with Jenn Ringgold

Third Wednesday Clergy Cafe with Cheryl Burke

Fourth Wednesday Spiritual Practices for Pastors with Lawrence Richardson

Member in Discernment (Second Thursday and Third Monday) and

Retired Clergy Cafe (First Thursday starting May 2) are also available for drop in.

The Michigan Conference UCC desires to support leaders with resources that meet unique needs and help them feel encouraged, cared for and equipped in our shared ministry.