The State of the Parish

            As we prepare for Charge Conference on November 4, I have been thinking about what an exciting year this has been in the Wheatland Parish.  We have a lot of good things going on here.  Some of them are things we’ve been doing for some time.  Others are things we just started this year.  All of them are things we’ve done to share the love of God both within and outside our churches.

            Many of the things we are doing are included in the Charge Conference Report.  If you’d like a copy of that, we’ll have them at Charge Conference.  If you can’t make it to Charge Conference, please contact the church office and we’ll get one to you.  I do wish to highlight a couple of things that may be missed in other reports, though.

            Our parish facebook page is up over ninety likes as I write this.  Some of these are people from our church, but many are not.  Some are from within our communities, but many are not.  We have likes from people of all ages.  We have likes from people all over the country.  We even have a like from a man in New Delhi, India.  We live in an age in which the things we do in Gettysburg, or in Onida, or in Agar, can strengthen people’s faith all over the world.  That’s an awesome thing.

            We had a Wednesday night worship service in Gettysburg this past summer.  It did not have a large attendance; the average was about eighteen.  Still, many of these eighteen people were people who are not regularly attending church anywhere.  We were able to bring God’s word to those people.  We hope to do this again next summer, and we hope to spread God’s word further when we do.

            We have nine kids in our confirmation class this year, and they are wonderful kids.  It’s easy to get down on young people, but if you spent time with these young people every week like I do, you’d have an entirely different perspective on things.  These are kids who want to know more about God and who want to do things to strengthen their faith.  This says good things about their parents and about our churches, but it also says good things about the kids themselves.  I look forward to being with them every Wednesday evening.

            As you look through the committee reports, you’ll see a lot more things that our churches are doing.  The churches of our parish are very active churches.  This is wonderful.  As I wrote in the October newsletter, an active church is a church that will be attractive to people.  Very few people would want to join a group that never did anything.  What would be the point?  Active churches like ours are churches that will grow.

            We’re starting to see that in our attendance.  Since Labor Day, both the Gettysburg and Onida church have seen significant growth in their attendance.  I’m not just talking about growth since the summer.  I’m talking about growth over the same period last year.  Last year’s average attendance in Gettysburg was 62.  We averaged that much during the summer; since then, we’ve been over 80.  Last year’s average attendance in Onida was 40.  We slumped during the summer, but since then our average has been about 45-50.  Agar had no summer slump at all, and continues to consistently average 15-20 people every Sunday despite the number of illnesses in that congregation recently.

            In my Charge Conference report last year, I wrote that the temptation in towns like these can be to assume that our churches will inevitably get smaller, and that there’s nothing we can do about it.  You have resisted that temptation.  You’ve shown there is something we can do about it, and you’re doing it.  That’s awesome.  We have wonderful people in all the churches of this parish, and I am incredibly blessed to be your pastor.

            Now, though, there’s another temptation.  The temptation is to be satisfied with the growth we’ve achieved and to settle for that.  The temptation is to think that we don’t need to do more, that we’re doing okay just the way we are.

            Let’s not give in to that temptation.  As many of you have heard me say, in life we are either moving forward or we’re moving backward, but we’re never standing still.  If we think we’re standing still, we’re actually moving backward and just don’t know it.

            There are still plenty of people in this area who are not going to church anywhere.  They may or may not nominally be Christians, and they may or may not nominally belong to a church, but they are not attending services, and they are not feeling the love of God in their hearts.  They need to feel that love, whether they know it or not.  We need to continue to find ways to reach out to those people.

            This church has had a good year, and we can and should be proud of that.  However, let’s look at this year as merely the first step.  I remain confident that we can continue to work together to find ways to reach the people of this area with God’s word and God’s love.  The reason I’m so confident of that is because of you, the incredible people of the Wheatland Parish.  Let’s continue working together to bring glory to God in this part of God’s world.