What happens when the service is over?
If things are going as they should, the answer is “A lot!” The average person on the street might think that the service wraps up, the doors open, and people stream out, with church activities for the week coming to a close.
Actually, they’re just beginning. As we hopefully all know, church isn’t the place that we go for an hour and fifteen minutes each weekend to check God off our to-do list. In addition to being the place where the people of the church meet together to worship, it’s a base of operations – a place where we go to serve, to learn, to engage, to celebrate – even to grieve.
As a church consultant, I have visited many churches, including ones that are alive with activity during the week. They realize that their building and property is actually not the church, but rather a resource to be used BY the church (i.e. its people). I have also visited churches that are basically ghost towns Monday-Friday, almost as if they are being “protected” from use as if they were museums, rather than living, breathing expressions of God’s people.
Church leaders, if you are starting to feel more like a curator than a pastor, remember your “why.” You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) do it all yourself – just take the first step by casting a vision of what it might look like if your church was truly alive.
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