Shifting Community pt 2 - The challenge of growth

In my previous post I started a series of reflections on my church community, especially with regard to our evening service at Wellspring, called Resonate.

This is my second post in the series.

As a church body gets bigger, certain things are obviously going to change. It gets more difficult, at a leadership level, to enquire and address the needs of the individual churchgoer (be they Christian, or visiting), and at the other end of the spectrum, as that individual, it gets more difficult to get to know the church leaders and other members of the community that you call your local church.
Where your church used all go out and enjoy a meal together, at one or two different locations, instead there are groups that regularly meet and hang out after church together. Where feedback on the music style or choice of songs used to be simpler because everyone knew at least one of the musicians, now it's up to the leaders of music teams to be perceptive and seek out that feedback from the congregation.

The way we experience community shifts as a church grows.

I'm not saying that growth is bad, on the contrary, a growing church community can very often be a reflection of God's blessing during that season and the work that God is doing through those that are being faithful to the word and serving the church. But with that growth comes challenges. Pastoral, stylistic, financial and stewardship, preaching, training and leadership challenges. These and more are all things that Wellspring currently faces.

And we know that in order to function as a church community we need to do more than set out more seats...

Shifting Community pt 1 - Reflections on prior years

Wellspring's evening service, Resonate, has grown a lot since I first turned up at the church. My first experience with Wellspring's young adult service was when we were called BayWest, and the service was called Sunday Night Live, it was a service of about 40-50 regular attendees (can someone refine this? John, Chris?). After the initial 2 weeks, and the hard slog of fitting into a church community as a newly committed Christian, I was finding myself getting to know many of the members, and after summer Camp and joining the praise and worship team, almost everybody.

The service has, over the years, experienced a few changes, and as we migrated into the hall adjoining our church building, we have gradually begun to fill the 200ish seats we have there.

But as the service style has changed, and the numbers have grown, our model of ministry has also changed.
Where there used be a volunteer 'ministry team' whose job it was to ensure they knew who was a part of our service, there has been a shift to a more traditional anglican model of service, but maintaining the style of our previous years.

This has resulted in a massive shift in community - something I'll reflect on over the next few weeks and blog posts.