The pastor of my childhood, youth and college years was Dr. Cecil Sherman. He ordained me, and though now with God, he is still a hero in my life. He was a brilliant man yet could speak so plainly. A favorite saying of his is, “Those who don’t worry about numbers ain’t got any.” Though a practitioner of excellent speech, he broke basic English to make a point .... if you don’t understand the dynamics involved in ministering to those surrounding you, you will lose them.
It’s true. When organizations lose touch with the people they are most connected to, they set themselves up for failure. When churches have an unintentional but very real disconnect among themselves, they are on a downward trajectory.
There are many reasons most congregations in our nation are in decline. The reason most often expressed is, “we haven’t gotten our people back from the Covid years.” There is some merit in that, but not much. Most congregations were in decline years before Covid. Covid may have accelerated the pace of decline, but it didn’t create it.
Is our Sylva First Baptist family in peril? Absolutely not! However, if the trajectory isn’t altered, we will be. This is NOT due to an unwillingness to love boldly, or due to some moral failure on our part. The reason for our decline is simple; we’ve allowed ourselves to be lulled into a stupor. We are not asleep, but we are sleepy, and sleepy people have difficulty staying tuned to what’s needed to function at our best.
To that end, may I offer a few ideas that may help us shift our trajectory in the direction of growth and depth. These ideas will take time. However, there’s no time like the present.
We must reaffirm our understanding that we are not trying to make First Baptist larger in population. Our calling is to make our church more and more into the image of our Lord. Doing that will require new sacrifices, and it will pour out new blessings.
We need to do a better job introducing people to our church. You folk love one another better than most churches I know. You are simply too good to keep to yourselves. Spread the word that those who miss us are missing a lot. HOWEVER, we must get ourselves ready for people to return, which leads to number three.
We need to give serious consideration to having a person on site with a focus on students. We have nostalgic memories of when our children’s ministry was overflowing, our youth group was “huge,” and our college student presence was impressive. Celebrate those memories by recalling what you were then doing differently to nurture those realities. They didn’t just happen. Visionary people guided us to provide time, resources, etc. to make those dreams come true. I’m so grateful for each of you who lovingly hold things together now. You are amazing. However, let’s do even more helping our church re-dream the dream.
Finally, invite someone to your home for a meal or dessert and talk it over with them of what needs to happen in our church family to make it more meaningful. But be careful, if you ask, the answer may not be easy to hear. Ask anyway ... after all, “if we don’t worry about numbers, one day, we won’t have any.”
– Joe