You need to be there..

A recent blog post by Mikey Lynch got me thinking about church attendance, and how we can better serve new people coming into our churches.
Mikey gives 3 points as to why people stop coming, I won't list them here, but there was one thing that I came to realise after reading his blog, something that is so incredibly obvious, yet I'd never even thought of, that is so important in facilitating a solution to the points he shares.
And it was this:
We need to be attending church in order to recognise who is actually new. This might seem like a no brainer. And it is. Yet, I hadn't thought about it with such intention before.
If we're not actively participating in our church community, we have no hope of recognising new faces, and run the risk of alienating people by assuming they are either not new, or thinking they are newer than they are.
And it goes further into no-brainer land:
We need to be ensuring we are attending every week, so not only can we recognise new people, but serve them.
For example, to a gathering like TBT, a service of Crossroads Church Hobart, this is not only obvious, but one of integral importance. The community is specific and small, so in order for new people attending to have the familiarity that comes from seeing the same faces and further developing new relationships with those people, I would dare to say the members of TBT need to be sure of their responsibility to attend every week.
This is something I think they do really well, and it's very encouraging.
But for larger church services like Wellspring's Resonate, and for parachurch meetings like UFC, the issue is a lot more subtle, and returns more to the points Mikey makes.
Attending church is not just about our attendance as an end in itself, fulfilling our religious obligation, nor is it how we feel about attending or what we are getting from our attendance, as much as it is recognising that whether we like it or not, we are part of a community, and that community thrives and grows with our participation and commitment to serving one another, and serving those new to our community..
The best way we can ensure we're doing that.. is to be there.