Portent of things to come?

I got the email Monday, but I didn’t read it until yesterday. I had a feeling this would happen, despite my optimism. The Easter production isn’t going to happen, at least not this year. We had a grand total of half of what we needed, and we announced the thing for a month.

“People just aren’t giving right now,” my music pastor said. I don’t know why but I can’t seem to get that out of my head. I know that it isn’t personal—this lack of initiative, at least from what I’m hearing, is everywhere.

I received some interesting stats about a year ago concerning the demographic of our local church. More than half of the adults in our congregation are involved in some form of secondary education, and almost all of them are married with kids.

That’s a stressful lifestyle, regardless of how well you manage it. And I don’t want any of these guys who are in school to drop out. So, how is the church supposed to foster involvement, and community, and all those other utopian ideas we hear about in Sunday school, if we’re already too busy to even come to church?

Perhaps it is an outreach problem more than it is an individual problem. Just thinking on my feet here. People are still responsible for working out their personal relationship with God. I don’t believe we should caudle people; we should meet them where they are.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that some of the church paradigms that we grew up with are insufficient. I know change is hard for the church—it’s easier delivering Novocain to a shark. But I am afraid we’re in danger of becoming obsolete before we even recognize it. We are in desperate need of innovation.