It is still important to care for the inactives ‘because they have been part of our life together. You have memories with those folks. You’ve done things together. And as a pastor, you’ve been with them during times of celebration and times of illness. So there is a connection—a connection you want to keep.’ Brenda Smith, ELCA director for discipleship
ing spiritually,” he said. “It’s really not about involvement. It’s about meeting or trying to meet parishio- ners’ spiritual needs.” Clergy and church leadership
teams should think about ways to excite members, Thumma added. One way is to take an assessment of members’ gifts and interests to help them discover what they are passionate about. “[Find out] what people are interested in doing for God in this congregation, and then [try] to find ways to make that hap- pen,” he said. Haugk said providing “good qual-
ity care” for people experiencing tough times doesn’t just keep people from slipping through the cracks. It makes them feel even more positive about their congregation. “We hear this all the time from Stephen Ministry churches,” he said. “Stephen Ministers provide one- to-one care to people during times of need so they experience Jesus’ love in a powerful, personal way during that critical time. As a result, people grow in faith—rather than lose faith—during a crisis. And they see their congregation as a place that really does care.”
Searching for ‘lost sheep’ In The Other 80 Percent, Thumma uses Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep to illustrate the church’s calling to care for all members, including those who aren’t active. “That calling can sometimes be
24 The Lutheran •
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difficult because we or they might have had feelings hurt,” said Norma Cook Everist, professor of church and ministry at Wartburg Theologi- cal Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa. Even so, it is still important to
care for the inactives “because they have been part of our life together,” said Brenda Smith, ELCA director for discipleship. “You have memo- ries with those folks. You’ve done things together. And as a pastor, you’ve been with them during times of celebration and times of illness. So there is a connection—a connec- tion you want to keep.”
Brian Burchfield, pastor of Glen- dale Evangelical Lutheran Church, Burien, Wash., agrees. “Of course, we want to get our members back and involved as participants in the life of the congregation,” he said. “But what is our motivation? It is because we care. They were a part of the community and now, for whatever reason, they have drifted away. So our strategy should not be about getting them back. It should be about being in relationship with them.” To help future leaders deal with
the misperceptions that influence relationships, Everist has her stu- dents role play active and inactive members chatting at a grocery store. Meanwhile, other students stand behind them and voice what they really may be thinking. “We have fun with it,” Everist said. “The exaggerations come out.
As a group we see that we do have issues with each other and it’s so important to be aware of them. It’s easy in the faith community to judge, misunderstand and be disappointed in one another.”
Returning inactives to the fold How can congregations change some inactives to active members? Church leaders offer this advice: • Be on the lookout for lapsed members. “An early contact to see if there has been a significant life change—such as job loss or divorce, extended illness, angry response to something about the church, or merely a change in habit—will pro- vide the opportunity for support, listening and encouragement,” Ped- erson said.
“Otherwise [people] can ‘disap-
pear’ from the life of the congre- gation over time without anyone noticing, at least not until ‘the list’ of inactives has been created—long after the noninvolvement began.” • Invite back. “So often we give up on people,” Everist said. “We label them and say, ‘Oh, they’ll never be back.’ Sometimes it just takes one caring invitation for them to return.” And it is important to “never underestimate how the Spirit might be working in someone’s life,” Pederson said. “A contact of encour- agement might be a holy act that restores a person to community.” (See
www.thelutheran.org/
feature/april for a related story, “Reaching inactives during Lent and Easter.”)
In addition, a pastor or outreach team can write letters and make follow-up calls or home visits “to ask what kind of vision inactive members have for the church, and what the church could be doing to interest them,” Smith said. • Pray. “We have let inactive mem- bers know we are praying for them,”
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