“Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”  Hebrews 10:25

This week and next I am sharing some information I prepared for our Church Council. This is normally the sort of thing that one would find in an annual report from a pastor, about membership and worship attendance, both to inform and to spur you to prayer for our congregation.

Hebrews 10:24 says “And let us consider how we may spur one another along toward love and good deeds.”  The writer is in “encouragement mode” in this part of the epistle.  My report to the Council (a summary of which I will share with you today and next week) is, I’m afraid to say, not all that encouraging. But I share it in the hopes of encouraging you to commit our Calvary congregation to prayer.

But first some encouraging news.  In June, I reported to the Council that since 2017 Calvary has received 71 new adult members, and 18 (who at the time of their reception into membership) were under the age of 18.   Presently, our official membership is 358 people, so new members in the last five years constitute nearly 25% of our total membership.   Their presence with us has invigorated our congregation. Many of our new folks have taken on leadership roles. A glance at the activities of these new members indicates that over 80% of them are active in worship and are involved in our ministries.  This is wonderful.

But now for some discouraging news. As most of you are aware, worship attendance at Calvary has not rebounded since the pandemic.  That may be for various reasons which I won’t speculate about now, but prior to 2020 our average worship attendance was 169 per weekend.  That fell to 103 in 2020, not surprisingly, and rebounded a bit to 127 in 2021.  Thus far in 2022 our in-person worship attendance is back down to about 116.  That is down nearly 32% from 2019.

We invited you to participate in a survey in last week's CONNECTIONS. If you haven't had a chance to take that survey, here is a link: Survey Paper copies of the survey are also on the OPPORTUNITIES kiosk by the Welcome Desk, and the survey will remain open until August 22.

According to the results received so far from the survey, 16 respondents said they watch our live stream service.  Ten of you said you watch it alone, six said they watch with another member of their household.  We could infer from this that on a given weekend as many as 22 people are watching our service, and if that is the case, that is encouraging.   We hope to be providing a quality broadcast and that it reaches folks who can’t come to worship.

But still, that means on average our worshipping community is down from 2019 (from 169 per weekend to perhaps 138, counting in person and webcast viewers).  By the way, this is consistent with the trends in most churches in America. Data collected to date indicates that nearly one-third of church members reported that they had not resumed worshipping in person since the pandemic-related shut-downs and subsequent precautions about public gatherings.   So, we’re back to the question of “habit”.  Once established, in any human activity, habits are hard to break.

Scripture calls us, however, to “not get in the habit of not meeting together.”

I’ll say more next time, but I write to encourage you to encourage other members you may know at Calvary who you’ve not seen in a while to resume their habit of meeting together.  If you are someone who has not returned to worship in some form, in person or digitally, I invite you to please do so.  Hebrews 10:25 addresses the very nature of the assembly of believers, known in the New Testament by the Greek word “ecclesia”, which means church, congregation, gathered ones.  Notwithstanding the fact that some of you can’t make to worship anymore, I still urge those of you who can to remember that “faces matter” – did we not learn that lesson in spades during the pandemic, when we needed to look upon our masked brethren?

Faces matter, which is why Hebrews writes what it does.

God had a human face – Christ Jesus.  In Jesus, God allowed something that in the Old Testament he forbade – once saying anyone who looked upon his visage would surely perish. But in Jesus, God had a face that he showed to many, and seeing his face one day is the hope of all believers. It matters to be together, and I encourage you to remind yourself how important your face is to us all.

Because of a cross,

Pastor Ken Nelson