A friend sent me a discouraging column written recently by a pastor in Illinois. He felt that many people wouldn’t return to church after time spent away through the pandemic, and that those who did return would be less likely to volunteer their time and energy and imagination.

In a time of remote worship, people learned they don’t need church, he wrote.

“Harsh to consider,” I responded to my friend.

The next morning, a Saturday in September, I found many from the Sewickley United Methodist family inside and outside our building tending to a rummage sale that would raise more than $1,000 for mission projects. Others were selling walking tacos to fund church projects. And one of our young people put 29 empty Operation Christmas Child boxes into the community, confident that they will be returned, filled, bringing Christmas to God’s children somewhere on the planet.

The next day’s worship services drew 137 people, nearly double what we drew on some Sunday mornings in August. We had 13 children attend our kickoff Children’s Church during the Contemporary Service, and another handful in the Traditional Service.

“We need each other,” Pastor Hannah joyfully suggested when announcing the attendance numbers at the administrative council meeting.

The Finance Committee, at the same meeting, reported a slight surge beyond financial projections.

We welcomed six new members, and a confirmands class of three, on the final weekend in August.

We had Trustees and others taking on custodial chores throughout the building in August and September as we worked to hire a custodian.

The Operation Christmas Child donation bin is rarely empty.

It doesn’t feel like we’re one of those congregations that doesn’t need church. It doesn’t feel like we retreated into the pandemic, never to return.

Let’s pray together into our church. At sunset on October 3, at around 7 pm, from wherever you are, inviting and including whoever is with you, let’s lift prayer for Sewickley United Methodist as we continue to contend with the pandemic and its aftermath.

Let’s be thankful for each other. Let’s lift the brothers and sisters we see returning, and let’s lift the ones who have not yet returned, and the ones who cannot yet return.

Let’s lift the pumpkin patch and projects that are ahead of us.

Let’s ask God to bless us with the energy and imagination to find new ways to share our LGBTQ-inclusive hearts with the community, and for ways to reflect His love and His light into corners where racism and addiction, hunger and homelessness, depression and loneliness persist.

Let’s pray for other churches, those where friends and family worship, those in our neighborhoods, those who may be suffering beneath the weight of the pandemic.

Let’s pray together. 

Thank you for joining us.