Friends,
In the last few months, something amazing has happened at Montclair Presbyterian Church. Starting in November, our attendance in weekly celebration has been the same as or a little higher than attendance on the corresponding Sundays before the pandemic.
This is phenomenal. Even without the challenges COVID presented to us, I would have expected our attendance numbers to be a bit under what they were in 2019. Church attendance has been slipping everywhere in the United States since 1970, and while MPC’s decline in worship attendance has been less serious than the national average, we’ve still felt the effects of the broader societal move away from regular church attendance.
Yet somehow, despite COVID, we’re bucking the trend, (or at least we have been for a few months) and this makes me really happy.
Of course, I’m a little nervous to write about this because I don’t want to jinx it, but more than anything I want to thank you for showing up for celebration–in person and on Zoom. When it comes to making MPC attractive to newcomers, your participation in worship is actually more important than the music or the sermon or the liturgy or the art. If a visitor comes to a church and encounters the world’s best music and a mind-blowing sermon, but the church is empty, that visitor probably won’t be back.
However, if the visitor comes to a church service and is welcomed by a whole lot of warm and enthusiastic folks, there is a good chance they will return, even if the preacher had an off day and the hymns were boring. It is the people in the pews and not the folks on the chancel who make a church vibrant.
So, let’s keep filing the pews and/or adding more boxes on zoom. And while we’re at it, let’s redouble our efforts to greet visitors. This is so important. Those who are kind enough to stop by MPC on a Sunday morning should be rewarded with a warm welcome, so be sure you are lending a smile and a kind word to those who make the effort to cross Temescal Creek.
I thank you for all you do to make our Church family more vibrant.
God’s Peace,
Ben