Fixing the Weakest Link - Strengthening People’s Ties to the Whole Church

If you’ve been involved in church life at any level of depth and for any length of time, you’ve seen it… even if you didn’t recognize it.  It’s a domino effect: an active member of the congregation is lost, and several other people suddenly disappear.  There is a cure for this. 

I’m not talking about a conflict in the church.  I’m talking about normal changes:  a church member moves to a new community, a pastor leaves for a new ministry position, a church member dies, that beloved member of the church family goes to a different congregation to be with grandchildren or to help with a new ministry… and then several other people whose circumstances have not changed suddenly stop attending.

This problem is very visible when a church’s pastor leaves.  Attendance suddenly and dramatically drops.  If you ask around, you find that those folks aren’t going to a new church.  They are just absent.

The problem is that so many of our church participants are not connected to the church “family.”  They are only connected to one person or family in the church.  For instance, a new pastor arrives, and the church is delighted when he goes out and connects with a several new people who begin attending.  But those folks are not connected to the church family.  They are only connected to the pastor.  And when he leaves, their connection is gone and they become inactive.

I’ve also seen it in a family’s involvement:  there is one strong faith leader in the family.  The other family members are there because this one person is their connection to faith and church, their inspiration, and probably also their spiritual care-giver.  And when he or she dies or becomes unable to attend, that whole family disappears from church life.

A pastor leaves, a member dies, a family moves to a new town… and the network of people that were connected primarily to them (rather than to the church family as a whole) drops out of regular participation because their main tie to the church is gone.  Our failure to help them develop numerous ties, numerous relationships, is a shameful failure of Christian fellowship and love.

There is one cure for this weakness in the church:  small groups designed for mutual care and mentoring. 

And don’t tell me that Sunday School works this way.  The vast majority of Sunday School classes do not really work to build deeper relationships (especially with newcomers), care for the needs of members in crisis, and mentor people toward spiritual maturity.  When those things happen, it’s usually because someone in the class is taking personal responsibility for that class member.  In other words, this one person is that single connection between the other person and the church.  And, again, if that person leaves or dies, the other person’s one connection to the church is gone.

Some churches may also try to solve this problem with deacon ministry - assigning each member their own deacon.  But I have not seen this really build additional relationship ties, and I still see plenty of people who disappear from active participation and not a single deacon even knows they’ve dropped out, much less why.  Additionally, small groups care for each other regardless of whether someone is on the church membership roll.  But the deacons’ “care list” often excludes non-members who attend - the very people who most need deeper connections to the church family. 

On a side note, I believe that having people with just one or two connections to the church actually invites greater conflict.  If you've only got one tie to the church, you might be tremendously protective of that one tie, regardless of what's right or wrong, what choice is best or worst.  We are encouraging polarization when we don't help people develop multiple, deep ties within the congregation.

But if we can get people into small groups - groups designed to build relationships, to care for people in crisis, to mentor them through the seasons of life - then their connection to the church family won't be "thin" or fragile.  And they won't disappear just because one person leaves or dies... even if that person is the pastor.

So how does a traditional “Worship + Sunday School + Wednesday Prayer meeting church” make the move to small groups?  The health and future of the church, and most importantly the long term connection of new people in the church family depends on it.

Ministry to Single Parent Families - The Measuring Stick for All of Our Ministry

Remember the story of Hagar, the mother who had been thrown out into the desert by Abraham and Sarah to fend for herself and her son the best she could?  Remember how she didn’t think she and her son were going to survive?  In this story from Genesis 21, Hagar provides us a powerful picture of the loneliness, struggle, and feelings of hopelessness that some single parents may experience.

Some of my recent study has reinforced a long-held conviction about ministry:  Churches should intentionally, aggressively, and consistently shape their ministries to target the needs of single parent families.

Statistically, somewhere between 70% and 95% of single parents and their children are not connected to any church family.  We are failing to reach these adults and children whose needs, struggles, and stresses are crying out for the love, support, encouragement, and assistance that a truly caring church family could offer in abundance.

The single parent household is a growing segment of our population.  A recent news story reported that 80% of the households in Richmond, Virginia were single parent households.  The number of single parent households has basically tripled over the last three decades.  Some might think this is just a problem among racial minorities, but in North Carolina, 30% of “Non-Hispanic White” children are being raised in single parent homes.  I hesitate to bring race into the discussion, but I know we have a tendency to say, “Yes, but that’s ‘those other people.’”  This is everyone’s issue, and, regardless of the ethnicity of the children, this is every Christian’s concern.

Think about the needs a caring church family could meet: 

• Providing a single parent with some “emergency contacts” to get a child home from some activity or to take them somewhere when the single parent is double-booked or held up at work or by an unexpected crisis.
• Giving them opportunities to be with other adults for conversation and to talk through problems in a place where their children are being cared for and are having fun.
• Providing them with love, acceptance, and encouragement in a world where they may feel judged or looked down upon by others for their family circumstances.
• Supplying them with home-grown vegetables in the summer, or buying a few extra items for them on your regular food shopping run, to stretch their grocery money.
• Showing them that, while they may feel forgotten and alone with their burdens, God remembers them and God’s people remember them and are eager to reach out in love.
• Planning and scheduling our ministries so that we don’t make it harder for them to participate -- making sure we consistently provide childcare or ministry groups for their children, and that we don’t expect them to be at the church building so much that they don’t have time to take care of the household tasks they are carrying alone.

So how do we do this?  A good beginning point would be to examine every activity we offer and every ministry we plan by asking, “How easy would it be for a single parent with a toddler and a 3rd grader (or 7th grader) to participate in this?”  And if the answer is “not very easy,” then we scrap it and go back to the drawing board.

And, if anyone should say, “Why are you leaving out the two parent families in your strategy?” the easy answer is: these parents are over-booked, too.  If we plan events with the stresses of single parents in mind, our two parent families will also benefit from that new approach.  It’s a win-win. 

We are in the "win" business, right?