Praying for the Pews to be Packed

Good morning Trinity Tribe!

I hope you are well this morning. I am beginning to wonder if singing that anthem about rain pouring down was such a good idea or not! ;-) We do need the rain, of course. Cooler temperatures seem to be here as well! Maybe we will have fall after all!

I would like to hear thoughts from you about these two questions:

Who is this church?

Does the church reflect the community and the local schools? (Racially, economically, age, etc.)

I finally got around to reading the Red Springs Citizen this morning, since I had a busy afternoon and evening. L.A. had an article that caught my attention. She talked about how our church lost five people in one week to death. She mentioned our church by name multiple times which seemed to imply we are all dying off here at Trinity. She then talked about how churches in town are not reflecting the population of the world…that we are all grey-haired and dying. My take of what she says is that we are not open to people that look different than "we" do. While that critique has truth in it for mainline Protestant churches around the country, I am not ready to say that is the end of the story especially for us at Trinity. In my answer of the second question above that we must answer at Charge Conference next week, is that we are growing into the call to love our neighbor, all our neighbors. Our congregation is NOT all white or all elderly. We have plenty of room for growth in this area. L was exactly right saying that we have plenty of room in the back, front, right and left of our church pews. We have not yet reached standing room only.

So my question to you is, what are we going to do about this? In Matthew 28, 18"Then Jesus came to [the Disciples] and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'" Jesus told us to go and make disciples of all the world. I don't know about you, but the world is a pretty big place. I probably won't see all of it before I go on to Glory. However, I see Third Avenue a lot. I see Main Street. What are we doing to reach out to others and invite them inside our walls?

Feeding Jesus is reaching out to others who don't look like the majority of people here. Boy, Girl, and Cub Scouts definitely reach out to the people who are different than us in Red Springs. You should have seen the rainbow of colors of skin at Girl Scouts last week. It was a beautiful thing! How can we capitalize on what we are doing well to make our worship services look the same rainbow way? What might we have to give up? What might we have to modify? What will we have to do to be invitational?

I invite you to join with me in prayer about this opportunity for ministry that is before us. Let's pray until the pews are packed!

Have a blessed day and be a blessing!