The growing importance of returns
I wonder have you made a greater switch to internet shopping like so many during the pandemic. It’s a whole different world to taking a trip to the shops. There’s so much more to see online, but of course you can’t touch or try anything out for size before you buy. That makes it all a bit more hit and miss. It can bring a greater anxiety about splashing the cash. What if it doesn’t fit properly or suit you when it comes?
To counter this downside of shopping in cyberspace, many companies have had to re-evaluate their returns policy. Where before shoppers were charged to return goods that they didn’t keep, now the offer is that if you don’t want to keep it you can send it back free of charge. It’s important to examine the small print, but having a free returns policy certainly gives greater confidence and reduces the feeling of risk.
Giving ourselves a free returns policy
As church life gradually returns, what about giving ourselves a free returns policy? How about allowing ourselves to reduce the feeling of risk, taking confidence that God knows what he is doing and will help us repackage anything that we have tried and hasn’t worked, not leaving us to bear the cost of what turned out to be a wrong choice? How liberating might that be? What possibilities might it open up? What recriminations might it save us from?
My grandfather used to say that, ‘the person who never made a mistake, never made anything’. It was an invitation to trial and error, experimentation and discovery. Maybe that is going to be key in making the most of the learning experience of lockdown and reshaping that might come as a result of return.
Getting the right size
One of the possibilities in many of our churches is that we have been wearing the wrong size for some time now. In common with many churches across the Western world, many of our congregations have gone from being large churches to medium sized churches, or having a medium sized membership to one that is small. But has the size of the weekly programme we try to run been similarly down sized? In most cases not. We soldier on, as if pretending that if we just work harder and faster we can keep all the plates spinning.
What if we intentionally decided that in our return to church life we were going to try on a smaller programme for size? What if in doing so we found something that not only fitted better the size of congregation we are now, but was also more tailored to the purposes God had for us anyway?
Dressed for the right season
It’s often said that there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. It’s never good when we find we have dressed for summer on a winter’s day, or get caught out without our waterproof when the rain comes on.
Recent decades have seen the spiritual seasons change in Ireland as in the rest of the Western world. The warmth of the sunshine of approval for the church seems to have disappeared behind
often angry storm clouds of public disapproval. We no longer live in a society which teaches Christianity and tacitly reinforces its values in school. People no longer naturally look to find shelter in the pastoral care of the church when life turns dark and cold.
Again, sometimes our church programme has not adjusted for this change in season. We assume a connection to our local community that just isn’t there the way it was for generations. We assume a starting point for children’s and youth ministry that no longer exists in the world of the unchurched child or teenager. We assume because we have a sign outside our church that says ‘everybody welcome’ that we can just wait for others to come to us, rather than have to find fresh ways to build bridges to take the gospel to them.
What if our familiar programmes having stopped now for over a year because of pandemic restrictions, we thought about a seasonal change of wardrobe? What still seems to be the right thing for today’s weather, what now seems curiously out of season?
Trying a different style
Most of us fall in to buying clothes that keep us dressed in a style with which we have become familiar and comfortable over the years. We decide on our look and brands and stick with them. How like so much of our church life.
Lockdown restrictions have rattled that however. We weren’t able to do things the way we have always done them. Suddenly we discovered that the pastoral phone call required a different style than the house visit. The digital message had to be fashioned in a different way to the in-person address. The things we did were more one-off, than annual programme. All still needed substance, but they also called for delivery in a different style.
Some of this re-styling will stick and some of it won’t, but at least let’s remain open to a different way of doing things, to lessons God might have been wanting to teach us for a very long time, but which we were reluctant to try.
Getting used to making returns
There’s a bit of getting used to with making returns to our internet shopping – how do I need to repackage things, what label needs to be stuck where, where do I take it to for return to sender. The main thing to grasp is in our own heads however, saying to ourselves, ‘I tried this, but I don’t actually have to keep it, I can send it back where it came from and it hasn’t cost me anything’.
As your congregation returns to a more normal pattern of life and witness, how about doing so with an eye to size, season and style, trying something different and seeing where God takes it? It really won’t cost you anything and you might find it makes all the difference in the world.
Rev David Thompson is Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s Council for Congregational Life and Witness.
This blog is part of the digital programme series, Refined: Fanning the Flame, an emphasis within the Refined initiative on gradually resuming more regular patterns of congregational activity.
Visit the Refined hub here.