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‘What do you want me to do for you?’ is the question every parish should be asking of its local community, says Ken Morgan, co-ordinator of Archbishop Freier’s Vision for the Diocese – ‘Making the Word of God fully known.’ This includes a parish pilot program aimed at growth and renewal. The theme of ‘Making the Word of God fully known’ for 2012 is ‘Serving the Parish with Fresh Focus’.
“You gotta serve somebody...” sang Bob Dylan. John Lennon hated the song and its religious overtones. He recorded ‘Serve Yourself’ as his own personal protest.
Jesus responded to the self-serving request of James and John with one of his famous ‘inverted Kingdom’ lessons. “Whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all.” He went on to remind his ambitious disciples that he came to serve (Mark 10:45). I’m not sure John Lennon would have liked what he said.
Jesus immediately illustrates his lesson when blind Bartimaeus makes a fuss and wants Jesus to have mercy on him. He actually asks Jesus for compassion. Jesus’ response is a little surprising: “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:51)
Year by year church attendance in Australia is shrinking. About 8% of the Australian population will be in churches of various brands this Sunday, and about 178,000 of those will be in Anglican churches. That means for every Australian in an Anglican church there will be 114 others who aren’t in any church at all. The future of Australian Anglicanism lies in reaching the 20 million who don’t go to church.
The majority of parish churches that are growing through reaching unchurched people provide some kind of meaningful service to their local communities. It could be a playgroup, a meals program, conversational English classes, or one of a hundred other things. They gotta serve somebody. Somewhere, somehow, they’ve looked at their communities with compassion and asked, “What do you want me to do for you?” And it seems that people with little or no church background are more willing to listen to our message once they’ve experienced God’s love through us.
It’s unlikely that every single Anglican will meaningfully serve the needs of 114 other people. So through the pilot program, we’re training parish teams to identify a ‘Mission Focus Group’ ie a group to begin serving. Examples so far include ‘People involved with our local primary school’, ‘Families with children under 10’, ‘People who wish to improve their spoken English’. One church I coached began by serving partners of shift-workers; another with people who lived on a particular residential block.
Before randomly choosing a Mission Focus Group, we encourage parish teams to see the parish with fresh eyes. That involves spending time in the community looking, learning, listening and researching. It involves a lot of ‘learner-postured’ conversations, where parish team members in various ways ask their community,
“What do you want me to do for you?”
We also help teams to tailor other activities in the parish to be accessible and attractive to their Mission Focus Group. It’s important to ask, ‘How can we share the gospel in a way that relates to our mission focus group and their experience?’ ‘How can we tweak our worship service so that it’s accessible, understandable and meaningful for them?’
To be effective in mission, you gotta serve somebody – in a way that meaningfully communicates God’s love. In 2012 we’ll be offering workshops on Seeing the Parish with Fresh Eyes and Serving the Parish with Fresh Focus. Watch for dates and venues.
There are twenty million people waiting for us to ask “What would you like me to do for you?” Let’s find our best opportunity to meaningfully serve those that don’t yet come to church.