Many congregations around this time of year start to enter a slump, that often does not subside until early September.
Is this healthy? What do you think can be done to help fight this? Or should we embrace it?
Looking forward to your posts and responses to others posts.
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9 comments:
Well, Down here where the weather is good, most of the faithful either do novenas (9 holes) or act like Peter and go fishing. It could be that people need to break the routine of the other nine months and do something different. To me that's where outdoor masses, VBS, Mission trips, etc belong. If the parish is involved and healthy, church may be where we are serving people. Most priests are looking at the sagging collection receipts rather than organizing the laity into action groups.
Summer should be a time for evangelism of the true kind, good works. We need to be active leaders in that cause. Preaching the Gospel is fun when swinging a hammer or sawing a board. Especially with a group. Ask the kids at the Cathedral in Indianapolis.
Blessings,
H OP
I like what Bro Harris said. Something that jumped out at me was “if the church is healthy.” The summer slack does seem to be a common phenomenon but it doesn’t need to be. If the church is healthy, people would rather be there. I’ve known priests who would start conversations about it in their sermons in the spring, so that it would not be one of the elephants in the room that no one talks about. Involved people “want” to be together. In fact, they would rather be with each other than taking a vacation from each other. Being involved and feeling like I was needed at church, even if it was for someone else, has helped me choose being there rather than feeling like I needed a vacation from church.
We actually tend to get a few people back actually as we have some that return from their winter elsewhere. Usually it is our church school that goes on vacation in the eucharist time that I attend.
I agree with Bro's Harris and Phil and just wonder if it is what it is. Besides, not everyone that is "missing" is not in church, just perhaps somewhere else.
All well said! Shifting to outdoor activities seems like a wonderful idea to keep the mission alive. I remember looking out the window when I was a young lad in school thinking about being out there...... sorry, I was thinking about being outside. Is that why we have stained glass windows in churches?
I recently worked with Br. Kevin and his congregation at Grace in Jamestown for a parish work day and enjoyed the fellowship. It can be profitable as well as fun. Maybe that should be prophet-able.
Good stuff. I think one of the dangers to our health as humans (in every sense of the word) is that we have mostly lost sense of living life seasonally. Technology allows us to work full-speed ahead all year.
So I think using summer as a time of rest, or re-creation is a good thing.
I think others are on to sometihng in advocating, not "embracing the slump" but embracing doing some different things.
Every Spring in newsletter and other venues I try to teach about how families can worship even if they are away from their home parish, by attending another church, or even doing their own little family devotions.
Brothers and Sisters, pray for me. I am too discouraged right now to post on this topic, since it would be quite angry if I were to do so.
Guy+
Thinking out loud, with no particular point in mind:
I think the idea of a church having outdoor activities during the summer is a good one. It's odd, but true, that church attendance seems to slack off in the summer.
Now I'm thinking of Matt. 26:41 -- "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."
Here's Wesley's note on that passage, which is great--
"26:41 The spirit - Your spirit: ye yourselves. The flesh - Your nature. How gentle a rebuke was this, and how kind an apology! especially at a time when our Lord's own mind was so weighed down with sorrow."
We need Christ because of our flawed nature. On one hand, people should be reminded that church attendance is important year-round. On the other hand, people get lazy, i.e., they take the kids to the park on that beautiful Sunday morning rather than go to church.
Outdoor activities, even purely fun activities, sound like a good way to remind people that they should be in church on that beautiful Sunday morning. I'm encouraged to try and organize some things like this and see what happens.
Sr. Jackie said:
I change much of my lifestyle during the summer....my work, going places more, etc. However, I still go to church on Sundays even if I'm out of town. Grace Church is also my social life. That's where all my friends are and people I want to spend time with are.
Outdoor church activities would be great, but like Fr. Kevin always says it would be "calendar bingo"....it's difficult to get things going with everyone's schedules, especially in the summer. I haven't taught dance in the summer for years, other than a short 3 day dance camp now and then, because it is impossible to go by everyone else's schedule.
Here in Jamestown the Frontier Village has outdoor church services and I've been to them. There aren't many people there, and that was discouraging.
Maybe it's just a good season to rest, meditate and increase our prayer time.
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