Hello Saints,
I hope you are staying cool and safe during this crazy July we are experiencing. This pandemic has created a difficult time for families, businesses, and church communities to manage through. We have a mixed bag of people responding to this the coronavirus pandemic in a variety of ways. Some are extra cautious, and they will barely leave their home, and some don’t at all. You have others who think this is all blown out of proportion, and refuse to live in fear. And then some believe this virus is all a hoax, a political conspiracy, and after the presidential election is over, this virus will quickly disappear. I don’t know where you land in this variance of positions, but let me assure you, regardless of where you sit with all of this chaos, it’s not easy to manage your way through it. On top of all this craziness with COVID-19, you have possibly the hottest summer ever recorded in history. It’s a tough time for the world we live in, and it’s truly a global crisis with both the virus and extreme heat rearing their ugly heads on everyone.
The question I want to reflect on today is this, how do we effectively meet and serve the unchurched during this time of pandamonium? Barna’s research reports that polling now indicates a hard reality–that 62% of the culture will never step foot in our church buildings no matter what we do. Regardless of how authentically we love one another, how passionately we pursue excellence in ministry, risk great outreach endeavors, or spend millions that we don’t have on advertising or better facilities.¹ This reality is what I was mentioning yesterday in our message on the “Parable of the Weeds,” https://www.hillsboro-umc.com/sermons/weed-pulling-angels/.² Because this data is valid, and only compounded by the recent pandemic and heatwave, how does a kingdom community manage a way through all of this decline to effectively live out the great commission of kingdom people helping people to find and follow Jesus? I sincerely welcome any ideas for how to best do this in Jefferson County, Missouri, and the communities of Hillsboro, Missouri, and House Springs, Missouri.
Some of the things we’ll be discussing in our upcoming leadership meetings are how to create missional communities outside of our church. The next scheduled leadership meetings will be Monday, July 27, at 6:30 PM for Transformation UMC, (meeting downstairs in the fellowship hall), and Thursday, July 30, at 6:30 PM for Hillsboro UMC, (meeting downstairs in the fellowship hall). These are open meetings, and members are welcome to attend these meetings, but only leadership will be allowed to vote on the current needs of the church. Still, you can offer any commentary or suggestions for the leadership committee to consider, so your voice, ideas, and opinions do matter. To say more about missional communities, let me first define missional communities:
The “new church” trend of the last few years is the shift from an “Attractional” to a “Missional” model. The differences could be understood this way:³
Attractional vs. Missional
Consumer Producer
Large Small
Me Us
Gathered Scattered
Addition Multiplication
Centralized De-centralized
Life in Christ Life in Christ together
Transparent Accountable
Felt Need Community Need
Church Group
Come and See Go and Be
Evangelism Discipleship
Worship Fellowship
Informational Relational
Clergy Laity
Excellent Real
This list in no way captures the full essence and subtle nuances of each model, but perhaps it helps to formulate a working understanding.
There are many different models for this. John Wesley himself started “class meetings,” and you can say he influenced what the church communities like to call “small groups.” There are, of course, other names to consider, band meetings, house churches, life groups, accountability groups, and again the most popular name for these types of gatherings is “small groups.” Some church communities have enjoyed significant success in starting missional communities in bars, restaurants, exercise groups, yoga groups, music groups/gatherings, etc. The idea I wish to put in everyone’s head is what could a missional community look like in Hillsboro, Missouri, or House Springs, Missouri? I hope that you take this exercise seriously, and share your ideas with me, regardless of how crazy or out of reach they may seem. You can send you ideas to pastor@hillsboro-umc.com, or you can simply comment on this post. Friends, this is one of the ways we will have to learn to operate if we wish for the church to remain relevant in the 21st century. It’s a very challenging task during regular times and made incredibly harder with the COVID-19 still rearing its ugly head with no clear end in sight.
Eternally, we are in full swing; we are getting adapted to our new home and with two new church communities. It will take the rest of 2020 for us to settle in and get acclimated with everything, and getting to know everyone. We have attended a few small gatherings of 6-8 people, in people’s homes, and breaking bread together. They have all been great, and we encourage folks to continue to set up these gatherings and then coordinate with Suzie and me to get theses gatherings on the calendar. These gatherings are listening sessions, where you share, and we listen. You can reach Suzie at suzielong66@gmail.com, or me at pastor@hillsboro-umc.com.
So far, so good with immersing ourselves in the church and the community. I am looking forward to meeting with both the leadership teams next week, and then the committees within the leadership teams as well. Once we have had a chance to meet everyone in leadership, we can start to inventory where we are at, and then begin entertaining ideas for where we need to go, and what that will look like as we grow together. I ask for your patience and your commitment to your church through love and service during this time of transition. By the fall, we will be starting asset mapping exercises inside our leadership teams, and assessing the good, the bad, and the ugly. We will be looking at ways to strengthen our church with growth, discipleship, and maturity. We will inventory our missional efforts and who are the committed servants within the church. We will also be looking at our opportunities outside of the church by looking at demographics, interviewing people within the community, and allowing them to tell us how the church can best partner with the community to be of maximum service.
As you can see, there is a lot to do, and the challenge is doing it amid the coronavirus, heatwave, and transitional change. Your prayers, love, service, and commitment are what I am asking from everyone who calls Hillsboro UMC and Transformation UMC home. We need to up our game as kingdom people, and model our lives and our future after the 1st century Christians, which you can read about in Acts 4, and Galatians 3:26-29. The showed us what it truly means to live as kingdom people in a kingdom community. Their motto is where we get our motto, “Kingdom People Helping People Find and Follow Jesus.”
Shalom,
Pastor Harold Long
¹. https://www.barna.com/research/current-perceptions/
². https://www.hillsboro-umc.com/sermons/weed-pulling-angels/
³. https://nccumc.org/newfaithcommunities/so-whats-a-missional-community-really/
#halosblog
Leave a Reply