Most of my years in ministry, my messages after the holidays have been something along the lines of “Back to the Routine,” coming off of the holidays and returning to the normal grind. If you can say anything about the last couple of years, it would seem that there is a new routine – once people seem to start getting comfortable about coming to church, the Covid numbers spike and a lot of people don’t feel like they can go back now. I was so excited to see the crowd we had for the 4:30 Christmas Eve service. To follow that with 61 people at the 11 o-clock service two days later was honestly a bit deflating. On the week our children go back to school, we had 4 children in the Children’s Building for Sunday School. And that was twice as many as we had in the Youth class.
To say that we no longer make church a priority honestly seems like more than an understatement. But I had hope. People always start off a new year well, making a list of resolutions that so often include attendance at church or Sunday school. For the three years before Covid started, we’d seen 300-353 people in worship on the first Sunday of the year. We had 161 Sunday. I wouldn’t be so worried if the attendance at the football games was down, or the numbers of folks eating out was down.
But I do still have hope. I am so thankful for this church and it’s faithfulness. We had over a $200,000 deposit today, and you are so good with your giving. I do ask you to pray along with me that we can develop a new routine, as it relates to church attendance. We were doing so well in growing Sunday School and worship attendance when Covid hit. Let’s see if we can’t get the numbers heading back in the right direction!
In Christ,
Chip
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