“But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ. From him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building itself up in love by the proper working of each individual part.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

My church publishes a newsletter each month. Our faithful office manager puts it together, prints it out, puts mailing labels on them, carts them to the post office, and out they go. It’s old school, I’ll admit, but it’s mostly working. I think we send out somewhere north of 200 of them. It’s a lot of work and some expense, but if we reduced the number of hard copies that we put in the mail by the number of folks who would almost assuredly be just fine with an electronic-only version it would actually cost us more to keep sending the smaller number to the folks who really do want the paper version because of the way bulk postage rates work. So, we keep sending them out. This month I was able to just brag on the church to the church because there have been so many things to celebrate lately. I’m awfully proud of this group of believers. They are a special bunch indeed. Here’s what I had to say to them.

Have you ever had the satisfaction of asking someone to do something that they not only did, but did really well? When I write these articles each month, I often include a piece—usually near the end in hopes that you’ll remember it—where I ask you to do something. It’s pretty much always something practical you can do to continue to be an active part of what we see God doing in our midst. The last couple of months in particular, I have invited you to pray over the work God is clearly doing around us and in us and through us, and I have invited you to make sure that you are an active part of that work by getting involved in our ministry if you aren’t already doing that. 

It would seem that many of you have taken me very seriously. 

The evidence for this is in the ways we continue to see God work. Let me offer some anecdotes that might help give you a more complete picture.

I’m writing this on Thursday, February 19. Last night we had the most people we have ever had at The Gathering Place. And everybody felt it too. As I made my way around the room, more than one person looked at me with big eyes and exclaimed, “There’s a lot of people here!” I understood the sentiment entirely. And of the more than 150 people who were there (more than had been here the previous Sunday morning, by the way), 68 of those were under 18. We live in a world that is hungry for community. We have that and word continues to spread. As a result, we keep seeing this part of our ministry grow.

Let me add something else here. I listened to a podcast the other day about the demographic death spiral many churches are facing over the net 5-10 years. Essentially the argument was that we are just a few years from the point where many from the Boomer generation are going to hit the average lifespan age. This is a morbid thought, I know, but that means many of them are going to start dying out. Churches that are heavy on the upper range of a demographic chart are going to suddenly find themselves rapidly losing members to death. The average age of the group that was here Wednesday was 33. The median was 30. And the mode was 15. The interquartile range (which tells you what the spread of a set of data is) was 42. That means it was an extremely intergenerational crowd that skewed healthily toward the younger end of the spectrum. In plain English that means that from a purely statistical standpoint, our church is really healthy and has a bright, long future ahead of us.

That same night I had a conversation with one of the youth who has been coming regularly. He doesn’t have any connection to this church beyond friends from school. He lives on the other side of the county and goes to church in another town on Sunday mornings. But he’s here pretty much every Wednesday night because he loves the community. He loves time with friends and growing in his faith together. Your faithfulness, your prayer, your involvement has helped to create the kind of community that has a high school student driving himself from New London to be here on Wednesday nights. 

Part of having so many kids running around is the need to have plenty of adults outside to help keep an eye on them. I’m in the Kids’ Volunteers GroupMe so that I can stay abreast of what’s going on with that crucial part of our ministry. Each week our amazing Children’s Ministry Coordinator sends out a call for Playground Patrol volunteers. In some churches, trying to get volunteers to do things like that is like pulling teeth. Yet I watch as one volunteer after another steps up to make sure our fun community environment is also a safe one. 

I got an email a few weeks ago from a local parent who shared that their church doesn’t really have anything going on for kids right now, but that they had heard that our program was dynamite (which, of course, is true because it is thanks to our excellent kids’ ministry leadership and the faithfulness of our amazing volunteers), and would it be okay if their daughter came to be a part of it. I gave the parent an enthusiastic yes, and their little one has been here almost every week since. 

A member felt a burden for making sure guests are not only welcomed warmly when they visit, but also that the welcome extends beyond the doors of the church when they leave. So now we have a hospitality team ready to be even more intentional at greeting everyone, but especially guests, and at following up with them to make sure they know about further opportunities to connect. We also have a really slick brochure about the church with all sorts of helpful information for guests in it. 

A parent of one of our little ones who is still just getting a start on the faith reached out about getting a Bible the little one could easily read and a reading plan to help direct that reading. I was glad to make the recommendation and put together the reading plan, but the reason that happened in the first place is because that little one is hearing the Gospel from our faithful teachers who are extending that Gospel experience all the way down to our youngest attendees. 

We recently experienced two tough losses as a church in Mae Brooks and Judy Tucker. Both saintly ladies are with our Lord. But their passings came within a week of each other. Meanwhile, there were a whole lot of other things going on at the same time. This church loves its own, though, and loves them well. A whole host of faithful servants helped to fix food and set rooms and run tech and care for the families and so on and so forth. As a result, both families were loved well and God was glorified. 

Like Paul wrote, the church works best when every part is playing its part, and all of those parts are in pursuit of Jesus together. We have a lot of parts right now, and they are all playing their part well. As a result, we have a church that is strong and vibrant and healthy in a number of different respects. I hope you are as excited to see all of this playing out before our eyes as I am. I hope you are as motivated to keep doing everything we can in pursuit of the goal of transforming this community with the Gospel as I am.

God is at work and it is exciting to see. The challenge for us is to keep on pursuing Him together; to keep on praying together; to keep on serving together; and to do all of that with that next generation that is being poured into firmly in mind. What we are doing in creating this community where our youth and kids programs are thriving is vitally important work; more so even than perhaps we realize. So, let’s keep doing it. Let’s keep giving it everything we’ve got. Nothing short of the future of the church, the community, and the world are at stake.