How to revolutionize your church experience in 30 minutes per week.
What are the secrets of involvement and connection, of getting to know people better and finding a place of belonging and service in your Christian walk?
Here’s big secret number 1: You can invest just 30 minutes that will result in a greatly improved sense of connection at church. How? Plan to get here 15 minutes early and then stay 15 minutes after services are over. Pretty simple isn’t it?
But it is really that time when people begin to talk and visit together and get to know one another. We say a word of greeting in the course of the service or at the welcome song, or on the way out, but there is just not time to have much more than that in the brief span of any given service itself.
Those who rush in late, or hit the door quickly after the last Amen are being short-changed in their relationship with the church family. Some may come to church for a year or more and may find they hardly know anyone, and hardly anyone knows them.
Think of your own family, gathered round the table at Thanksgiving dinner. Wouldn’t it be odd and funny if your brother looked across the table and asked, “Do I know you?” We know our blood kin because we have spent lots of time together. That’s also how your church family gets to know you. Try investing that extra 30 minutes next service!
Big secret number 2: Get into a Sunday School class. We have the children’s classes, but also at 10 am the youth are meeting in the Teens of Faith class, and we have four other adult classes as well. In these classes there is much more opportunity for interaction than there is in the morning service. That hour on Sunday morning is another great time to get better acquainted with your church family, and they with you.
An old, silly country song about a loser had a line in it that went something like,
“Playing solitaire till dawn, with a deck of fifty-one; Smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo, Now don’t tell me that I’ve nothing to do.”
Probably a lot of the things people are doing at 10 a.m. on Sunday are not as beneficial as spending some time with fellow believers in the Sunday morning Bible class. If you’re not already involved, we want to encourage you to come on out this next Sunday!