OUTREACH + IN-REACH = CONNECTING
FOR A WELCOMING CHURCH
For years, this congregation has tried many different approaches to helping
All Souls become more welcoming to visitors and new members. The attempts
ranged from using yellow mugs for new members at coffee hour to arranging
circle dinners to integrate newcomers into the congregation. As the church
began to grow in the 1980s, these efforts became more difficult. Even with
enlarged spaces, when Friendship Hall was reconstructed, it became harder
to spot people with red carnations after Right Hand of Fellowship services
or visitors looking lost.
At noon on Sundays, Friendship Hall turns into a hub of
activity. Visitors to the church who venture downstairs after services must
fight their way
through the crowds in order to obtain a cup of coffee. This is because
Friendship Hall at that time provides not only fellowship to the worshipers
but becomes
a busy market place for committee chairs to find volunteers, discuss meeting
times, solicit signatures for weekly changing petitions or sell concert
tickets and other subscriptions.
The ever-growing list of activities sometimes overwhelms
the availability of time slots and meeting spaces. The need for concerned
activists and
advocates in our difficult world creates a growing roster of worthy causes.
They flourish
in a benign competition with educational or study groups, lectures, concerts
and working groups of members who in a practical sense make the congregation
function.
Even longtime members find themselves confused at times
by the many task forces and activities that vie for their time and attention.
Only those
committee chairs who attend the regular church Council meetings can
keep track of ongoing
projects and future events.
Our plethora of outreach programs has attracted many new
members, who find a way to focus on particular areas of need, and to channel
their
own impulse
to be of help in organized and constructive ways. But at one point,
this concentration on social needs began to impact on the spiritual
and emotional
needs of many members within the congregation. So a whole series of
in-reach activities were conceived. Social activities, study groups,
lecture series
and serious adult education offerings took their place in the All Souls
calendar.
Such variety
of interests was not always available. Those of us who were members in
the 1960s and ’70s remember the time when volunteer activities
revolved around the Parents Association, the Women’s Alliance projects,
the Deacons, the annual Church Fair and the Guild for younger members. Committees
dealt with congregational matters, such as Investment, Budget, Nominations,
Religious Education and Annual Giving—in short, with the nitty-gritty
workings of the community. Neither planned in-reach, nor outreach were
available to serve the spiritual and charitable impulses within the
congregation.
While our current
blend of social, educational, communal (congregational) and activist programs
may at times seem chaotic, it does
help new members
to fit into some niche or other. The common need is “making contact” and
finding like-minded souls within All Souls. It is, in fact, difficult
not to be drawn into some aspect of the varied activities. And the
search for
volunteers on our Faith Works Sundays is an open invitation to take part.
True, some people accuse members of our congregation of
being too busy with their own church concerns and friends to extend a welcoming
hand
to newcomers
and visitors. It is also true that in the hubbub of Coffee Hour,
it is sometimes hard to identify or find shy and bewildered visitors.
On the
whole, though,
our energetic mix of outreach and in-reach offerings does eventually
include all those who want to be included. Connections are made,
new interests
explored and adopted, and our aim of being a Welcoming Community
comes closer to its
goals.
We are still working to find a totally satisfactory solution
to the problem, but at All Souls, Outreach and In-reach are the tools to
make connections,
and that is the first step to achieve more inclusion in our community.
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