Closing the Back Door of the Church

Yesterday, March 6th, I spent the day at Waverley Abbey House for a seminar about Closing the Back Door of the Church. Overall, it was an interesting day but I think we got a bit side-tracked. The discussion was good, but my goals for the day were to think through strategies for helping the church deal with through traffic of people coming and going in the life cycle of church, and we didn't do that. much of the discussion was about the nature of church.

There are many reasons people leave the church, many negative and some positive. The question is not about whether people will leave but how they will leave. If people are leaving via the back door, one of the hard things to discern is when to stand in front of the door and when to hold it open!

I guess using the "back door" image implies that people are slipping out unnoticed and potentially uncared for or unchallenged. This raises issues with the way we do pastoral care and discipleship. What was interesting is that some people articulated the view that you should get a new attender involved in something as quickly as possible and other advocated a waiting period. To be accurate, the "waiting period" view mostly related to any significant role in the life of the church, whereas the "get involved in something" view focused on small groups and relational things.

All this needs more though and reflection.