CREEDE HINSHAW: Faithfulness in worship

Last Sunday morning during the communion service I saw a few new faces in church. That’s a good thing. I hope they’ll come back.

I have been working out at a gym long enough to know that, come January, new enrollees show up with intentions to do better this year. For awhile the exercise machines get more use and the wait times are longer but by February 1st things are back to “normal.” It is tempting to get cynical about these people, but it’s not my role to judge or feel superior. Frankly, sometimes it is all I can do to force myself to go to the gym. I should be glad these others have come at all.

Instead of being cynical about those who may attend worship for a couple of Sundays and then drop out, maybe it would be better to ask what is the church doing to make it easier for people to want to return?

I am an enthusiastic supporter of traditional worship. Planned and led properly the traditional service can offer far deeper, richer spiritual guidance and inspiration than that presented at many alternative worship offerings. Yet one of the challenges for the traditional worship (or any service for that matter) is that, having done things the same way for many years, those leading the service forget how strange some worship practices seem to newcomers

One of the key contributions offered by those who advocate contemporary worship is their deliberate intent to be welcoming and hospitable, an insight that much of the church has yet to learn. Attending worship — any worship service — can be a right scary thing for the uninitiated. Is your congregation making every effort to set the right tone of hospitality to help people who are unfamiliar with the flow of the service? Nobody wants to attend a service where they feel confused and unwelcome.

Let me pose another question to those who tend to sneer at January attendees who become February dropouts: before you get too self-righteous over those whose roots are very shallow, why not do a quick self-assessment. How many Sundays will you be in worship this year?

When I looked around the sanctuary last Sunday I saw some new people and I also saw a whole lot of empty pews. Yes, it was the close of Christmas break for some people and yes, attendance may have been smaller (inevitably but unfairly) because the associate pastor was preaching but these are weak excuses at best.

Rather than pass judgment on a few fleeting attendees, honestly examine your own worship habits in 2015. What is your definition of a faithful disciple? Did you attend Sunday worship once a month? Does sporadic attendance every few weeks define loyalty to you?

Fifty-one Sundays remain in 2016. Instead of looking smugly at those people who will give worship a half-hearted start this January, resolve to be faithful in worship for the remainder of the year. The only habits you can change are your own.

Email columnist Creede Hinshaw at [email protected].