Help Us Get to 130!
That magic mark of 130 represents what our attendance can be on Sunday mornings if we ask friends and family to worship God with us. However, if we aren’t asking friends and family to worship with us, they will never know about our amazing and loving church where God is always worshiped.
I know that almost every one of us has a presence on social media. It might be on Facebook or Instagram or perhaps Twitter or Snapchat. Many of you are my friends on my accounts online so I see what you post with regularity.
Now that summer is gone, I want to challenge each of you. My challenge is a simple one … I want you to post on your social media each week an invitation to your friends online to come to church with you. I will be posting this on the church’s Facebook page, on the church’s Instagram page, and on the church’s Twitter account so you can just copy and paste this “meme” onto your own.
If you aren’t attending church in person but are worshiping online there will be a similar “meme” inviting your friends to worship with you at your church through our live stream.
I want to encourage you to write something along with the meme. Perhaps say that you look forward to talking about the church service with them. Or you can’t wait to hear how St. Paul’s family welcomed them with love or how their children enjoyed Sunday School.
We have lost some good people who have gone home to the Lord since Springtime. They will never be replaced for all that they gave to St. Paul’s. But unless we ask people to come to church we will never replace them and we will shrink in numbers. We will continue to shrink unless people like you and me invite others to come to church with us.
St. Paul’s is not located on a well-travelled highway. We have not purchased billboards and we don’t have a huge brand new “cathedral” that tourists are booking bus trips to visit. In fact, I asked around town when I first arrived if people knew where Church Street was in “Thorofare,” or if they knew where St. Paul’s United Methodist Church was in Thorofare or for that matter if they knew where DeHart’s was located in Thorofare and the resounding answer I received was, nope.
We all love this church! We love being together! We worship with enthusiasm! I love hearing HE IS RISEN INDEED when I give the cue, and last month we sang the TREES of the FIELD with joy. But if we don’t start inviting people soon we will be like Colonial Manor or Westville, neither of which ever have 20 people in church on a Sunday and usually they have less than 10.
We can do it! You can do it! It’s out of our love of God that we can grow this church because Jesus deserves new disciples. This church has proven time and time again how strong we are when we work together!
Pastor Dave