Let’s follow up on our conversation about the summer slump in church attendance during the summer.
How is your parish doing with the slump?
How do you feel about it?
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6 comments:
The summer slump is a real phenomenon. I suspect it is part and parcel of the generalized slump we see in church attendance across the country throughout the year. When I was younger it seemed like people made their schedules around the church schedule, i.e. church came first and we planned around that. Now, it feels like the place of church in our lives has slipped down a few notches. That it may well be, in fact, irrelevant. As a rector, it is discouraging. At our parish (I just started as rector May 24) the first three Sundays, the numbers stayed the same each Sunday but they were different people. That’s scary! Today, finally, the numbers doubled. For a summer holiday weekend, it was very encouraging. I am hoping and praying and doing everything I can on my own to build a sense of importance of church in our lives. A sense that all are needed for our tasks; to re-establish church as a home base from which we all go out into the world.
I do not know. When I travel I try my best to attend where I am, not always possible.
Do your parishes close down adult and youth Sunday School? Ours does for the youth.
As for church attendance as a whole, my unscientific assessment would be a lack of community within the parish. This has to take into the account the number of things we seem to be doing now apart from the parish.
Br Phil, I am very grateful that you have a new parish home, I am sure the Lord will bless you and the parish. I look forward to hearing about it at chapter.
Traffic patterns have long memories. Traffic-flow experts have found that, long after an accident gets cleared, cars will slow down at a former accident site, even though there's nothing left to see. Delays will continue even though nothing remains to cause a delay.
I would suspect the same is true about summer church attendance. Historically, summer is the time for pilgrimages, and (more lately) for caring for crops. Even though those causes have disappeared, church activities still slow down or stop in the summer.
On the other hand, it seems like special activities increase in number in the summer; VBS, church camp, and special classes or programs like DOCC.
Maybe the challenge is not to increase church attendance per se, but to use existing patterns and expectations as paths for church-building.
Sr. Jackie said:
Fr. Kevin has three services on Sunday. One for the "early birds" (that's not me!!)at 8:30 am. A service at 10:30 and Sunday Night Praise at 5:00. Therefore, our congregation has 3 options. Which is great. My church is not only where I worship, but it's my social life. Most of my friends are my church friends.
I know attendance is down a little bit, but have seen some new faces also...people on vacation, etc. I don't really notice the "slump."
I teach dance during the school year and have summers off and use that time to regroup, relax, focus on other projects, clean the studio good and collect ideas for next season's dance schedule. By September I am refreshed and ready to go. Just like in the fall when more church activities start, everyone seems to be fired up.
Congrats Br. Phil on your new parish. You and Sally will do a wonderful job.
Our normal schedule at the Jamestown parish is 10:30am and 5pm.
We are flirting with the idea of letting the 8:30am service continue into the Fall. We'll see, its a lot of services for a small parish, but I have noticed the early service helped keep our numbers up last year.
Never the less the summer slump is very much here, with some folks we really won't see until the Fall. Plus, you have the numerous weekends when people are away, or things are just nice and they do not come.
It can be disencouraging, but thanks be to God for those who are coming!
Amazingly, my parish really doesn't see much of a summer slump. Last week, we had standing room only at our 8am Rite I service. We're adding a fourth Sunday morning service in September, because our three current services are running out of space.
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